Convert APL to APE

Understanding apl and ape file formats

APL (Monkey's Audio Track Link) files are small metadata files that act as playlists or pointers to specific tracks within a larger audio file, often used with cue sheets. They do not contain actual audio data but reference positions within a source audio file, typically in the APE format.

APE (Monkey's Audio) is a lossless audio compression format. It preserves the original audio quality while reducing file size, making it popular among audiophiles for archiving music collections.

Why convert apl to ape?

Converting APL to APE means extracting individual audio tracks referenced by the APL files from a large APE audio file. This is useful if you want to have separate APE files for each track instead of a single large file with track pointers.

How to convert apl to ape

Since APL files are not audio files themselves, but rather pointers, the conversion process involves splitting the original APE file into individual tracks using the information in the APL files.

Best software for apl to ape conversion

CUE Tools and Foobar2000 are highly recommended for this task:

• Foobar2000 (Windows):
  1. Install Foobar2000 and the Monkey's Audio decoder component.
  2. Open Foobar2000 and drag your APL files into the playlist.
  3. Select the tracks, right-click, and choose Convert → Quick convert → Monkey's Audio to save each referenced track as a separate APE file.
• CUE Tools (Windows):
  1. Open CUE Tools and load the CUE sheet or APL files.
  2. Set the output format to APE.
  3. Click Go to split the large APE file into individual tracks.

Summary

To convert APL to APE, use software like Foobar2000 or CUE Tools to split the referenced tracks from the original APE file. This process creates individual APE files for each track, preserving lossless audio quality.