Monkey's Audio (APE)
Monkey's Audio is a lossless audio codec commonly stored in APE files.
An APE album may be one long audio stream with a separate CUE sheet identifying track boundaries. Monkey's Audio compresses the audio losslessly; the CUE sheet describes navigation through it. Moving one without the other can therefore preserve the music while changing how the album is presented.
APE audio, APE tags, and CUE track positions
| Piece | Role |
|---|---|
| APE audio | Reversibly encoded sample data |
| APE tags | Descriptions such as artist and album |
| CUE sheet, if used | Track positions in the album audio |
APE tags are a metadata convention and can occur beyond Monkey's Audio files. Their presence alone does not identify the audio codec.
Why compression levels do not change the sound
The codec predicts sample relationships and compactly codes the remaining information. More demanding compression settings can spend more processing work finding a smaller reversible description.
After successful decoding, the original supported audio is restored at every setting. “High” or “Insane” compression is consequently a size/processing decision, not an extra audio-quality grade.
This matters for a constrained reader: a setting's decoding work or seeking behavior can be relevant even when the restored sound is identical. The project's SDK and source are the implementation reference.
Verify an album conversion as an album
The tool's verification mode checks encoded integrity. For a conversion, also compare decoded audio count/rate/channels and preserve the intended CUE boundaries and tags.
A single stream can be split into tracks at the declared positions without making those boundaries part of the compression algorithm. A copy of the audio with missing boundaries can play continuously while losing useful album navigation.
For an Emby collection using such material, this distinction identifies which component needs attention: audio decode, navigation description, or library metadata. The codec's lossless guarantee answers the first preservation question, not all three at once.