I think he's running a mac, but there should be macros you can create in place of batch files(I'm guessing)?
Yeah, if he's running a MAC, then it's a moot point. He'd preferably need to go back to where he used TurboRip.
NightWolve, I take it they're are command line(console) decompressors for APE and FLAC (I haven't looked into it)?
Right, and they're easy enough to use. FLAC has more platform support, but I like APE's compression rates. There are others which may have improved since last I checked. Anyhow, that's the thing though, I don't care so much about playing the encoded copy in say Winamp. I use and think of such programs as merely PowerZip/Unzip commandline tools. As long as I have the Unzip program, I can go back to the original wave, and if desired, convert to whatever else I want.
The context here I was going by was about creating a lossless image backup and achieving more compression than what you can do with what general compression algorithms offer you such as RAR, ZIP, blah blah. And to that point, I defended it well enough. If I can take a game like "Arunamu No Kiba" from 463 MB, using just a general compressor such as WinRAR, down to 280 MB by adding APE into the mix, that's
40% more compression than what WinRAR can do alone. This is controversial?? The world can do without it??
Night, this brings up an interesting question - how about including an APE encoder with Turborip?
Looks like you haven't played with it enough and I did essentially indicate APE support exists in the previous post.
Just do this at the commandline: "TurboRip /ape"
Just two codecs, MP3 and APE, are supported. I wanna add OGG as well some time in the future though. PCE emulators don't support OGG, but it is a better alternative to MP3 for numerous reasons when it comes to small, lossy, 'share on a website' PCE image archives. And yeah, it'd be good for ripping your music discs too.
BTW, I use OSX exclusively at home, and very reluctantly at work. The only positive Windows experience in the past several years for me was TurboRip. Thanks!
OK, well, that explains most of it... Given that I knew you used TurboRip, I guessed you were on a Windows-based machine.
APE, FLAC, and whatever the next thing is I can't play without installing software that doesn't work: The formats irritate the hell out of me. I just learned of APE a few months ago when I pirated something APE without realizing it. It won't play in iTunes, or on my iPod so I tried two programs to transcode it and neither worked. I can't play it. I can't burn it to CD. Furthermore a single CD album was 460MB! Certainly there is some kind of "loss" if I'm devoting 460MB to unplayable files. This pissed me off. Then I realized that since I didn't pay for this music I had no right to complain. This pissed me off even more. This is how it always goes with this crap for me. If I can't play it myself the last thing I'm going to do is seed files with the same problem. Maybe the file size was actually reduced to the point where it was worth it, but, IMO, it isn't. I spent enough time chosing the tracks, decompressing them, normalizing them and editing them (I wish I didn't have to do that last part, but CDs have limited running times). All the time it would save for users to download (something that can literally be done in their sleep) would basically be made up for by me as I wasted days learning which software actually works, and then of course answered emails from people that can't get the thing to unpack correctly. Its just a huge waste of f*cking time, to use the vernacular. We can come back to this argument when I do my next remix (probably GoT) and at that time I have no doubt whatsoever that another useless audio format that I can't play will be coming into popularity with the open source crowd. Even though we're listening to the same 16-bit 44.1khz files we've had for...24 years now, I'd guess, there is always a new way to encode them, isn't there?
Did you use the creator's program from
here? It has a simple GUI that allows a drag/drop of an ape file(s) and then the pressing of a Decompress button for conversion back to wave(s)... (I wonder though if you possibly ran into an album with one combined APE file with everything in it. I noticed certain archive creators make one giant wave file of the whole album, then APE encode it and provide a CUE file. I'm not sure if some other custom program is responsible for that, but anyway.)
Again, to clear something up, the context under which I suggested APE/FLAC etc. was for image backup purposes. APE has a commandline tool to encode/decode and I would've guided you on its use, but yeah, you're on a MAC mostly and didn't wanna complicate this, so yeah, bleh to that idea. I also realize now from what you're saying here that your one bad experience with an APE archive you came into contact with has forever shaped your opinion on the codec, and it appears not much of anything I say is gonna change your mind... Well, you know, whatever floats your boat at the end of the day. This ain't it.
When I say that these pain the ass formats not are "needed whatsoever", I guess that isn't true. They obviously entertain somebody or they wouldn't exist. The same can be said for OS/2, Cadillac SUVs, and carbon fiber back scratchers. They aren't useless, exactly, they have a use of some sort, but I think that often times it isn't really the exact use that people claim it to me.
Look, when you say to me the world needs it like you need a hole in your head, and a) I've been using it just fine for years, b) I can reduce a CD image backup's size by about 40% more with it, what it amounts to saying to me is the world doesn't need a lossless codec that is more powerful in certain circumstances (audio files) than RAR/ZIP alone and is capable of achieving up to a 40% extra reduction in size. Those are the results I'm getting and have been getting, so there's a huge disconnect between what you're saying and what I'm saying.
Do you think anyone else having read this believes you're judging the codec fairly? Also, do you think your bad experience with that one APE-based archive is universal?
Why the image is huge: I wanted someone to be able to open Alcohol %120, which virtually everyone has, and just tell it to burn the .cue file. Quality isn't even really the main issue since about 1/3 or more of these audio tracks came from MP3s anyway. It needs to be usable by noobs so everyone can enjoy. I don't even really understand what you are talking about in your wonderful, informative, and well spoken post, and I'm the one doing the remix. Expecting anything from users is a mistake (as I'm sure you are realizing more and more as you read this).
Understandable. Yeah, if some were from MP3 sources anyway, then going for lossless was pointless. Though, in that case, I know how to make nice, but lossy, archives with OGG, but let's not go there... Heh. Oh, and you don't need to tell me about low expectations for the common user.
Been there, done that when I ran an outfit called RIGG. Well, I still deal with it for all the fan translation projects I do and the occasional nifty tool I might come up with. My philosophy too is you gotta condense the whole operation for whatever it is you're offering into one click of a button, IF possible... If not, limit it as much as possible.
Bit Torrent: The upload for this torrent is slow because I am the main seeder. If people would leach less it wouldn't be a problem. I live the US with a home cable connection so the upload totally sucks. With more popular stuff I download though I get downloads of 500kbs, and sometimes twice that. I don't know of any other way to get that speed. I'm sure someone will tell me about one though, and I'm sure the program won't run for me.
Yeah, I mean, it was my choice to continue to download it. My squabble was mainly it could've at least been RAR'ed, ZIP'ed, etc. I really didn't want offense taken and then have to be stuck in a large exchange over this. Looking at my original post, I realize it's a little bit authoritative.
This kind of frustration often manifests itself in somewhat a$$hole-ish comments. Sorry about that. NightWolve on the other had, you have the manors.
Hehe. Well, don't give me too much credit. I kept my manners restrained because this wasn't a topic I felt should escalate into an all out war. I only wanted to offer up some of my experience with image backups since I did it for so many years having gone through all the mistakes and learned all the corrections, etc. What I wanted to offer you up was how to create an archive where the user simply UnRar's it, clicks a batch file (UNPACK.bat), and waits for the APE/FLAC files to convert back to waves. Then they can pick whatever CUE-supporting burning software they want and point it to the CUE file. But, this would've been limited to Windows based machines. All I needed to know was that you're mainly on a MAC computer.
APE on the other hand is just a huge pain in the ass way of doing something that could otherwise be much simpler, in addition to that I can't get stuff in APE to play or convert at all.
APE, FLAC, etc: Not as simple as MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, etc. Depends on massivly unreliable open source/sharware programs that may leave you with hundreds of MB is unplayable files.
To be redudant here, I really can't at all relate to this experience and I've been using APE for several years now. The plugin for Winamp works fine (it doesn't have one for iTunes), so I can play an encoded file with that if I want. And I have either a GUI or commandline program for encoding/decoding (this works fine for me). I don't see the problem. I do see a problem if you need a more platform independent lossless codec and/or you only want codecs that work with your favorite music player. Since I'm always on Windows and Winamp is all I use for my music, APE works just fine and is quite simple. I have no fear of being left with hundreds of MBs of unplayable files. I can always run, "MAC -d fileX.ape fileX.wav" at the commandline or use the GUI to convert them all back to waves (yes, I repeat, this all works fine for me).
But again, know that I don't use it for mainly for having playable music files (to repeat though, it does works fine with Winamp). I use it as a backup tool. That's my purpose for lossless audio encoders; I treat them as enhanced ZIP/7Zip/RAR programs, but for wave files, etc. There is the exception where if I'm in an audiophile mode and want perfect backups of my music CD collection, I'll use it there. But for general music files I want playable access to, that are reasonably sized, and/or are supported by my portable music player, I'll use lossy encoders like MP3 of course and/or something like OGG.
