Why can I not split a .ape file?

Question

I would like to split a .ape album into individual tracks in .flac format using a .cue sheet. For this I followed a tutorial I found. In short I pass this command to the terminal:

cuebreakpoints example.cue | shnsplit -o flac example.ape

But I get the following error back:

shnsplit: warning: failed to read data from input file using format: [ape]
shnsplit:          + you may not have permission to read file: [example.ape]
shnsplit:          + arguments may be incorrect for decoder: [mac]
shnsplit:          + verify that the decoder is installed and in your PATH
shnsplit:          + this file may be unsupported, truncated or corrupt
shnsplit: error: cannot continue due to error(s) shown above

Unfortunately I don't know how to overcome this issue. One thing I think can be discarded is the file being corrupt since I had the same error with another .ape and I have followed this procedure with origin .flac files with no problem.

How can I solve this problem?

Solution 1

shntool on Ubuntu 14.04

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:flacon
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y flacon
shntool split -f *.cue -o flac -t '%n - %p - %t' *.ape

flacon is a GUI for shntool, but it comes with all the codecs it needs...

In particular, the flacon PPA furnishes the mac package (Monkey's Audio Console), on which flacon depends, which has the mac CLI tool, which seems to be the main missing ingredient.

Solution 2

From the error message it looks like you don't have Monkey's Audio Codec installed. It is not mentioned as a dependency in the HOWTO you refer to but for decoding .ape that is necessary.

You can download the source from the link at the bottom of the Developers TAB

Comments

[Aubin]

Works well under Linux Mint 17.2, thanks!