APE support!

[duancg]

I hope I understood the topic correctly. And if I did, then I finally see some discussion that makes sense. I was looking for the ability to mount APE files as CD drive for a long time. I have many CDs ripped into APE files and store on HD, I often want to 1) listen to then through my favorite players (iTunes, etc.) on the PC, and 2) transfer the music from APE files to portable devices. Since most players/programs know how to get music on audio CDs, I always want to the ability to directly mount the APE file as a virtual CD. I konw there are other ways, like "use your original CD" or "convert the APE to WAV first", but they are just too many hassles. BTW, I wouldn't mind too much about performance as long as I can play the virtual audio CD in 1x speed.

Even DT team just open the plugin APIs, I am sure there will be 3rd parties willing to create such plugins. Thank you and I am really looking forward to it!

[Nina92]

KoolMonkey, you're not alone :-)

I'm looking for the same feature

[fishstyc]

That would be a nice feature

If you ever look into this, it might be interesting to check if you could somehow use directshow for decoding (not sending the data to the audio card of course).

That would open up "cue sheet + compressed file" support for a whole lot of formats, including mp3, wma lossless, without the need for licensing formats imo. (I think also for flac, some directshow filter should exist somewhere).

Don't know if that's a stupid/impossible idea, or worth considering...

The reason I'd like this, as someone already mentioned, is that you could rip cds losslessly, play them in winamp, but for thranferring to portable players, could re-rip them with their proprietary software and encode in their proper format.

Anyway, thanks for your nice work.

[cRzcCs]

Another feature supporter

I just wanted to say that I fully support this suggestion, as this would really be a simple, yet cool, addition to daemon tools.

[onionbobo]

APE -> Ipod using Apple lossless

Ok, here is the main reason why I want to DT mount APE, I love my Ipod, but now, if I want an APE image to be converted and transffered to the Ipod in Apple's Lossless format, we are talking in hours. So if DT could just directly mount APE, Itune can directly convert the music via virtual drive! As far as I'm aware, there is NOT a single software able to do this now, if DT can be the first, I'm sure it will be very popular.

[Kikko82]

I had the same problem, and I've finally found a solutions. It doesn't involve daemon tools, neither image mounting (I tried that way first, too) ; so I hope it's appropriate.
I've found the solution here (monkey's audio forum; bottom of the thread) --> http://www.monkeysaudio.com/smf/index.php?topic=1871

I want to give more accurate instructions to be sure you'll try correctly:

the concept is to not to try to mount directly an ape image with the cue and make it work like an audio cd, but compress it directly to an unique mp3 file and then split it using the cue file and an apposite program.

1) I used nero to compress the ape track. U must have installed correctly the ape audio plugin for nero, it can be found on emule for example. Since there are various versions of nero I can't give exact instructions here, but u'll find easily a function named "decode audio files" or similar, properly configure it to decode the ape (remember to select the ape file, not the cue) and set compression parameters at your likes.

2) Now modify the cue file correctly. This is done opening the file with notepad, and on line "FILE" replace "*.wav" with "*.mp3" ; then "WAVE" with "mp3". Save your changes.
Obviously this passage is fundamental

3) Now get "cue_splitter"; I found it here --> http://cue-splitter.enfis.it/ (as indicated in the thread). I'm noticing that the one who suggest the solution is the author himself of cue_splitter
This program is really simple, too. It's already configured to get informations from the cue file and tag mp3's properly. Simply load the cue file (make sure it is in the same folder of the mp3) and click on split. The split takes very little time (some seconds).

There is another way, too; u can split the ape file (cue_splitter should support this) then compress the resulting ape tracks. In this way u don't have to modify the cue file; I choose the other way because I got an error msg trying to split directly the ape; but may be u won't get the error message and find this way more useful.

It worked great for me, hope this little guide helps someone

[bowbag]

Id like to see this feature added because it simplifies the process imensely, instead of a few steps and multiple programs, you can screw with it like a cd.

[Tractor]

I'm also very interested in this feature.
The reason is
that old CD-based software (i'm talking about Before Mp3 era)
were distributed with separated Audio Tracks.

Trying to keep these CD in proper format, you can't convert music to any lossy compression format, such as MP3, as it would ruin the TOC.
Therefore you have to keep Audio Track as they were (Lossless).

That's exactly what APE can do. And it saves quite a few hundred of Megabytes per CD.
As a consequence, digital distribution of such old software are often done with APE audio files.

Of course, one can still convert them back to Wav with the appropriate program, but that makes the manipulation quite somewhat more complex. Plus it costs more space on HDD.
Well, anyway, that's my current work-around.
However, i would really appreciate if Daemon Tool could simply load such cue/iso/APE format CD.without prior re-encoding.

Regards

[vfreak]

Hello,
I've been using this program for a few months now.
It looks like many many people would like this feature included in Daemon Tools. Over the last four years! I'm another one.
Is it convenient to add support for APE now?

The reason why I would like it is because I want to convert APE/CUE to MP3 (like many users obviously, and increasingly for sure). The only problem and reason I wouldn't use Foobar like an earlier poster suggested, is the tags. It only uses FreeDB, not the much better CDDB (obviously because of the licensing costs associated with CDDB). So I'm using iTunes instead.

A the moment the quickest way for me to do what I'm doing is to convert the APE to WAV, edit the CUE file to WAV insteed of APE and mount the WAV file with Daemon Tools, which is then ripped with all the nice tags in iTunes.
Adding APE to Daemon Tools would be very attractive and a world first, I'm sure it would bring many new users and a pleasant surprise to existing Daemon Tools users!

Please think about it.
Cheers
-vfreak-

[Herculianus CsDianus]

Wow...

Isn't C dead?Wow!So,if anyone in the devs need a undergraduate to do some of his dirty job call me.I may as well gain some reputation for my BsD and who knows...MsD???LoL!

[roytam1]

sorry for bumping this up but what about making cue/img plugin that supports winamp plugins?

[jemerlia]

APE/CUE Support

Daemon Tools virtual optical disc reader has come into its own in the era of the 1TB+ drive. From the perspective of a music lover most of the time it makes far more sense to access CUE/BIN images from the drive rather than insert physical optical media. Daemon Tools combined with a large capacity HDD meant that I could take a 400 audio cd collection overseas and listen to them with no loss of quality.

It appears that the latest fashion in lossless audio cd rips is the APE/CUE file format. It would be invaluable if Daemon Tools could handle this combination. Is there any support for this request?

Best wishes and thanks for a great and robust product!

[jluu]

Any news on .ape file format support ?

The ape format support is dearly needed, thanks for thinking about it.

Daemon Tools virtual optical disc reader has come into its own in the era of the 1TB+ drive. From the perspective of a music lover most of the time it makes far more sense to access CUE/BIN images from the drive rather than insert physical optical media. Daemon Tools combined with a large capacity HDD meant that I could take a 400 audio cd collection overseas and listen to them with no loss of quality.

It appears that the latest fashion in lossless audio cd rips is the APE/CUE file format. It would be invaluable if Daemon Tools could handle this combination. Is there any support for this request?

Best wishes and thanks for a great and robust product!