I have a question: if I rip all my CD's into wav format and then convert these into the lossless file of my choice, will I lose any quality in between? For example, monkey's audio does not support multichannel output, so if I convert from ape to wav, I would not get multichannel back. But .wav include EVERY bit of info on the CD correct?
Converting from WAV to a lower format e.g. MP3 will result in loss of quality, but if you choose a good format like MPC and encode to the xtreme setting it's not noticeable at all.
To answer your question, no you won't loose any quality going from PCM-WAV to APE or vise versa. Stereo (2.0 or 2.x) isn't considered multi-channel (3.0 and above is). CDs contain audio tracks with Left and Right audio info. So can APE files (and any audio codec for that matter). There are only two "lossy" multi-channel audio formats for the consumer. AC3 (Dolby Digital) and DTS (Digital Theater System). There are also only two "lossless" formats MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing A.K.A. PPCM and Dolby Lossless) used for DVD-Audio and DSD (Direct Stream Digital) used for SACD. There is no way to convert these audio formats into multi-channel files of any other type without first creating a multi-channel WAV (5.1 WAV) or six separete WAV files. Ced
