How to play APE music files
Music has become the center of the days, thanks also to the extensive use of mobile computing devices. Through iPad and smartphone you can listen to your favorite music every moment.
It happens sometimes that when you download songs from the Internet, they are in formats not supported by common readers and commonly used software. In such cases, you are forced to download a special program to solve the problem or to be able to listen to your music in peace. In this panorama, one of the most widespread formats is certainly the APE format.
This is a very useful operation to learn, but unfortunately it is necessary because not all software readers are able to play these music files. The APE format is not lossless like the AIFF or the WAV, but it is of a much higher quality than for example: the common MP3 and most of the WMA.
Foobar Reader
There are several free programs to reproduce unconventional formats, including Foobar and VLC. Foobar currently distributed with the name of Foobar2000 is an excellent reader capable of reproducing several formats with a very small memory footprint. The first operation that must be carried out when choosing this software is to open the browser (Explorer, Chrome, Firefox or whatever you use) and go to the site to download the latest version for free at https://www.foobar2000.org.
On the Download page of the site click on ” Download foobar2000 v1.4.5 ” and save the setup file on the desktop. Once the download is complete, launch the executable file to begin the installation of the program following the automated guided procedure. If you want you can make a donation for programmers and developers who keep this project going using the appropriate form.
Adapt Foobar2000
At this point, ” Foobar ” is installed, but the APE files cannot yet be read, the ” Monkey’s Audio ” plug-in will be necessary, without which the format cannot be decoded. The operation to be performed is simple, but you must have a minimum of familiarity with the operating systems to succeed, even if following these indications, there should be no problems.
You must go to https://www.monkeysaudio.com/ and on the page that appears, click on ” Monkey’s Audio decoder 4.78 “. The search interface, being a non-commercial project, is not the best, but you can still find the plugin easily because the list of components is organized in alphabetical order. Clicking on the link will open a page for download, and simply press the button to start operations.
Install the plugin
Then extract the compressed file into a new folder. The extracted file has an ” .DLL ” extension and must be copied by hand into the ” Components ” folder located in the Foobar main directory, which should be in the default position: ” C:\Programs\Foobar2000\Components, it will be sufficient to use the browser of the Windows programs to find the folder in which the reader has been installed.
Re-open the program and try to reproduce an ” APE ” file. If you still can’t play them, try downloading the plug-in again and repeat the steps. Remember to close the program before doing this simple operation otherwise the DLL replacement will only return an error. Good job.
