Using Monkey’s Audio on Linux

Update: I now use X Lossless Decoder for extracting .ape files on OSX. It’s nice to have the option of a native decoder.

I came across a need to extract some .ape (Moneky’s Audio) archives from Ubuntu Linux. Monkey’s Audio is a lossless .wav file compression that preserves things like Sound Forge and ACID markers. I understand now that FLAC has a mode for preserving these also, but I think that this was not the case many years ago when I first compressed the files in question for archiving.

I have performed this decompression in the past using a command called “mac” that is a native Linux version of the Monkey’s codec, but this time around I couldn’t get it installed quickly enough, so I just installed the Windows version of Monkey’s under Wine.

I didn’t know if it would work out, but it works just fine.

Install Wine:

$ sudo apt-get install Wine

Install Monkey’s under Wine by just running the installer:

$ wine MAC_410.exe

The Monkey’s Audio GUI should now be installed, and you can decompress files as you would under Windows.

Run the the GUI like this:

$ .wine/drive_c/Program Files/Monkey's Audio/Monkey's Audio.exe