I have a couple hundred albums encoded in Monkey's Audio APE format. I am seriously considering switching to a Mac. If I do, I will finally use itunes, which I know does not play APE files. So is there a way to convert my APE files to Apple Lossless files directly? Or do I have to convert them all to WAV files and then use itunes to convert the WAV files to Apple Lossless? If the latter, will itunes do this?

Thanks for any insight.

Use dbpoweramp with the apple lossless codec

Once you get the Mac, you can use XLD or Max to transcode to Apple Lossless

Hopefully they'll be fully working with OS X 10.5 by then.

Just so you weren't aware of this don't wind up starting a panic thread when you finally find out - you do know of the dearth of (well developed) audio player options on a Mac, right?

Yes, which is why I've resisted itunes on my Windows PC. But if I go Mac for all the other good reasons to do so, do I have much choice? Is there another player that will work on a Mac other than itunes? I use Media Jukebox now. I don't need my player to do much: (a) be able to play lossless (I play my music through my home system often, so I need lossless), (b) have a decent tagging utility, © be able to easily make and manipulate playlists, etc. Gapless playback and other stuff is nice, but I can live without it. Will itunes do my basics? If not, is there another Mac player that will? Thanks again.




Thanks. So if I buy dbpoweramp and purchase the add-on utilities for APE and Apple Lossless, you expect that I can convert directly from APE to Apple Lossless? That'd be great.

The free version will suffice for the conversion part. The paid version does have some nifty extra features, and doesn't cost a whole lot.

I don't own a Mac, but I know a few people who say they have no problem converting Monkey's Audio to Apple Lossless.

I've never heard them express fear about it "not fully working" (though I'm not sure what "fully working" fully entails), and I'm pretty sure they use MAX.

iTunes should have no problems with gapless playback either.

PS: These guys will still only use EAC to rip, BTW. I'm not sure if they've tried the newest generation of front-ends, but they don't trust iTunes and have not had good experiences with CD Paranoia.