Hello,

I looked around the forum a while about this but couldn't seem to find a topic dealing with my specific case. Apologies if this has already been dealt with.

I had started ripping my 500+ CD collection to APE images with embedded Cuesheets, using Synthetic Soul's recommendations and batch files with EAC, MAC.exe and TAG.exe.
Given the (not so) recent removal of the default APE support in Foobar2k, I think it would be wise for me to switch to FLAC.
Since I have already ripped over 100 CD images, is there any fast and very safe (I'm paranoid) way to convert all my APE images to FLAC images? All images have embedded Cuesheets, but I have also kept the individual Cuesheet files, just in case.
Secondary question: should I stick to FLAC 1.1.2, or go for 1.1.3?
One final note: I am still using Foobar2k 0.8.3 for APE support.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Hi florent,

Unless you're really tied to 0.8.3, I'd suggest updating to the latest foobar 0.9.x version, as it's converter (formerly the diskwriter) is a powerful tool for what you're looking to do - it can easily be configured to do this as a batch operation and has multiple options for cusheet handling. While there's no longer default APE support in foobar, there is an optional component, an "official" one no less. You can get it here:

http://www.foobar2000.org/components/index.html

AFAIK the converting process in foobar is completely safe, providing that your input files aren't corrupted. Lastly, I don't use flac so perhaps someone else can help you decide between those versions. Good luck.

You should be able to do that easily with dBpowerAMP if the name of the cue sheet tag is identical in APE and FLAC files. In my experience dBpowerAMP handles the audio data conversion fine.

Converting with foobar would not produce bit to bit identical disc image audio files if the cue sheets contain INDEX00 lines in TRACK01 because the passage between INDEX00 and INDEX01 in TRACK01 would be removed. I use external cue sheets so I can convert the disc image files separately from the cue sheet information also with foobar.

BTW, what makes you think that APE is unsupported with foobar2000 v.0.9.x ? The early Monkey's Audio plugins had some problems and were labeled with a warning, but the current plugin version is official (though optional) and in my experience bug free. The last bug I have encountered was related to how foobar interpreted pregap information when it made APL files (Monkey's Audio Link files), but also this bug was fixed about four months ago. (I assisted a bit in debugging: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=43247.)


IMHO, you should continue using Monkey's Audio if you are happy with it.


It was a great program. v.0.9x is mostly even better. However, you can keep both installed.

to perhaps alleviate some of your perceived points of worry/fears:
the monkey's audio decoder has (in foobar or out of it) has not changed at all, the only difference is that, since .9, the foobar devs are unwilling to endorse it outright so as to stop people from asking them to fix any and all problems they have with it (it was included in the standard decoder first, which meant that normal users didn't realise it was just the MAC decoder erroring when they thought foobar was at fault). however, if it worked fine for you before, it should work just as fine now, as there have been no changes whatsoever. granted, there are some theoretical issues with MA that could result in problems, but those shouldn't pop up with home encoded files..

also, if you want to change to some other format, you might want to wait with converting those MAC files to something else until TAK has reached a first release
it's oodles faster than the (current) flac implementation as it is in testing, so it might be a worthy alternative to look at then

Would you mind being a bit more specific? It would be nice to know exactly what problems these theoretical issues can cause. Why would something else be different than "home" encoding?

Thanks to you all for your advice.

Since I always try to avoid installing extra software, I'll probably pass dbPowerAmp and stick to the latest version of foobar + APE plugin.

Looks like I was pretty well inspired to keep the separate Cuesheet files, even though I had them embedded in the APE images. It seems I will have to remove the embedded Cuesheet before I transcode, in order to avoid any index problems