Monkey's Audio is a lossless audio codec. Lossless means that if you encode uncompressed (PCM) data into Monkey's Audio format and then decode the resulting ape file, the decoded file will be exactly the same as the original PCM file.

Total Recorder can be used as an APE converter, APE editor, and APE recorder. With the built-in APE conversion feature, you can convert APE files to MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, FLAC, and vice versa. To convert multiple files at the same time, you can use the built-in batch conversion engine. Using the program's APE tag editor, you can easily edit, add or delete tag data, as well as generate file names based on tag information (such as the artist's or album's name, track's title, genre, or track number) .

Unlike traditional methods such as mp3, ogg, or lqt that permanently discard quality to save space, Monkey's Audio does not loose data during the encoding process, and encoded audio files are typically reduced to about half of their original size.

Support for Monkey's Audio (APE) format is built into Total Recorder. You do not need to download any additional software or libraries to work with APE format. You can display the version of the APE libraries being used on the "APE" dialog (menu Options -> Settings, Formats tab).

To learn more about Monkey's Audio (APE) format, please refer to the following links:
www.monkeysaudio.com
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey's_Audio