Monkey's Audio (APE) music file format

Monkey's Audio is a proprietary lossless audio compression codec. Unlike traditional methods such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis, or AAC that permanently discard quality to save disk space, Monkey's Audio only makes perfect, bit-for-bit copies of your music. Even though the sound is perfect, it still saves a lot of space. Monkeys Audio can be used for distribution, playback and archival purposes. Monkey's Audio files use the file extension .APE for audio and .APL for track metadata information.

Features of APE format

A file compressed with Monkeys Audio sounds the same as the original sound, no matter how many times it is uncompressed and encoded again. That way, you'll never have to recompile your music collection to switch formats, and you'll always be able to recreate the original music CD if something ever happens to your discs.