Problems with monkey's audio files

[Spoon]

Re: Problems with monkey's audio files

You could try the mac.exe (monkeys audio official decoder), if that does not work then the file could be corrupted.

[MikeCerm]

Re: Problems with monkey's audio files

Ditto on what Spoon said, it's probably corrupted. Monkey's Audio is great lossless compression. It's so great that with it's internal CRC's, MAC can tell you whether or not a file is corrupted. Unfortunately, there's absolutely no way to recover the corrupted data, or even the uncorrupted parts. A few times I've wished that I could just output the corrupted file with some pops or clicks, but if an APE file is corrupted, it's dead and gone. If you've got precious files that you're archiving in APE format, always keep a back-up.

[brandonjp]

Re: Problems with monkey's audio files

If you've got precious files that you're archiving in APE format, always keep a back-up.

which is more than frustrating since my ape file WERE the backups

I can get the first 38% recovered with dMC...i've not tried the actual MAC converter, but it's worth a shot

should i basically just starting keep everything in WAV instead?

[MikeCerm]

Re: Problems with monkey's audio files

which is more than frustrating since my ape file WERE the backups

I can get the first 38% recovered with dMC...i've not tried the actual MAC converter, but it's worth a shot

should i basically just starting keep everything in WAV instead?

Well, depending upon how safe you want your data, WAV isn't a bad idea. I don't know how your APE back-ups got corrupted, but what I would strongly suggest is that you keep back-ups in a hard format. Always make "safety" CDs, or you can burn a bunch of APEs to DVD. Hard-disks are just not totally safe for long term data-storage or vital data, especially something like APE files that can be totally ruined by just a few messed up bytes. Hard-drives are always making copies of your data, even if you don't always realize it. If you defragment a hard-drive, your data will be better organized, but you do run the risk of dropping a few bytes here or there.

Seriously though, I could go on and on about backing stuff up, and everybody knows that they should, but nobody backs up anything enough. Mostly because it seems like a waste of time. I've been using Monkey's Audio for more than 5 years, and I've only ever had a couple of corrupted files. To be as safe as possible, just don't keep important stuff on your hard-drive. Also, think about how cheap DVDs are. You can back-up 100 gigs of uncompressed WAV's for maybe around $12. If you use Monkey's Audio, you can store the same amount of stuff for about $8. It's all about how safe you want your data, and what price will you are willing to pay.