Dealing with .ape music files

People are starting to post files using .ape, a lossless data compression format. Thus I need to find ways to handle these files. My goal is always converting all these files to mp3 format so that I can enjoy them during my commute using my hard disk mp3 player.

Here's what I do:
Step 1: Run foobar 2000, drag and drop the .ape file in the UI. Right click on the .ape file and choose convert. On the popup Window, choose the .wav file format.
Step 2: Now you have the decompressed .wav file, you should copy the .cue file to the location where .wav is located. Drag and drop that .cue file in foobar 2000 again. This time select all the individual files and then right click. Once again, convert all files into .wav.
Step 3: Finally, use dbpowerAMP Music Converter to convert each file into .mp3.

I am pretty sure that there are some better ways to do the conversion, but since I have tons of other things to do, thus don’t have much time to do research. Also I don’t have a lot of .ape files, and I always settle with ways that does the job in OK fashion. So here you go.

BTW, please let me know if you can find a better way to do the job.

Open .iso files that failed on Alcohol 120

I was panic when I tried open an .iso of 3 learning application using Alcohol 120, and found that I couldn’t access some files in the .iso. I thought the .iso went back while I burned the DVD disc, which didn’t make sense because I always do verification on each disc after I completed a burn. If the verification said OK, and yet the file was not burned properly, that means the verification process was not accurate. It also means that tons of the discs I burned before may not gone bad without me knowing it!

But then I used winrar to unzip the .iso and I could get all the files back without a problem, only that most of the long filename files had the filename trimmed off. And thus I realized that maybe the file access problem was caused by the long filename and foldername. Well, as long as I can get my files back, I don’t care if it’s from one way or the other.

LG GSA-4163B Review

I was long been frustrated by the LiteOn 451S DVD Burner I brought a little bit less than year ago. It had problem running properly with a lot of DVD+R disc that I thrown at it, and FAILED almost every DVD-R Disc I throw at it except the expansive Sony DVD-RW Disc. To say it was one of my biggest frustrations when using my home computer is not an understatement

It’s time for me to reclaim my precise time by buying a new DVD Recorder. Price fell dramatically, and the speed is much faster than what it used to be. After consulted with my younger brother and my friend Kok, I realized that LG is my brand to choose because:

- Based on both my brother and my friend’s experience, you can throw all junky discs to LG and it will still accept it.
- LG has a great reputation on consumer electronic

And since I need to buy a DVD Burner for a friend anyway, I brought a LG GSA-4163B (16x super Multi DVD/CD Rewriter). I brought it as HK$530, which seems to be the cheapest price I could found at Golden Computer Center. Honestly I don’t really care about all the double layer, 16X DVD+R burning speed and stuffs like that. All I care is whether it can handle all kinds of funky disc that I throw at it.

And along the way, I also brought a kit to connect the an internet drive to a USB 2.0 port. The kit was selling at HK$55. I was very skeptical about whether it works OK since the whole thing looks very flimsy. In fact, as I figured out later, the device doesn’t seem to work very well when I try to use it to burn DVD or CDR at 10x speed.

Since I wanted the instant gratification, I connected the LG GSA-4163B to the EIDE to USB adapter, and hooked the USB plug to the computer. The process was not quite smooth as I expected. Although the EIDE to USB connection cable does not require driver on XP, my system had problem recognize it instantly. After a few trial and error, I found that removing the Flashcard reader or my external USB hard disk solved the problem. Maybe my system had too many USB drive connected to it.

Once recognized by the system, the drive worked pretty well. In fact, for read only purpose, this EIDE to USB cable is great. The LG DVD Drive could read almost all disc I thrown at it, even the “badly burned” DVD+R Disc that I burned yesterday. Ironically, I have two seems to be identically badly burned DVD+R Disc, and the LG Drive can recognize only one of it. But then, the LiteON Drive can recognize NIETHER, and the HP laptop I had in the office can recognize one of them too, just like the LG Drive.

While reading with LG Drive + EIDE to USB cable was very OK, the recording ability was kind of ugly, if not disastrous. It FAILED every single DVD+RW disc I thrown at it, even those that LiteOn had no problem taking. So forget back using this EIDE to USB cable to burn DVD. My cheap discs all gave me “Unspecified Target Error” and failed to complete the whole process, while my expansive disc like TDK DVD+RW 4x failed at the data verification (1 or 2 files inaccessible, I tried both 2x and 4x with the TDK disc and got the same result). I also tried burning DVD-RW at 1x. It’s a Sony brand and worked even on my lousy LiteOn, but it failed on LG when it connected with the EIDE to USB cable. It was ultra slow at the 1x 1385K/s speed (even slower than the CDRW, which was a big surprise.)


Unfortunately, CDRW burning was not going too well neither. I successfully burned CDRW on 1 disc at 4x (600Kb/s) (eBlue), failed on another 4x disc (Samsung), and failed on a 10x (1500KB/s) at CDRW disc (TDK).

(BTW, I got the similar result when I connect a CDR burner to my Compaq laptop. Only the eBlue CDRW disc burned correctly.)

So the conclusion is that this EIDE to USB cable is, well, kind of a joke. I haven’t tried it with external hard disk, but have some bad feeling that I would fail. So I won’t recommend this product to anyone who wants to use this thing to connect to a disc recorder.


Well, then, how about the LG Drive by itself? What happen if I connect the LG drive directly to the EIDE channel?

The first test I did was on a Sony DVD-RW 4.7Gb 1x speed. The result wasn’t good. The burning completed but the Lead-out never could complete. It hanged for about 10 minutes. I was planning to force the system to abort about 15 minutes. Not a good sign.
After just before I tried to give up, the program suddenly wake up, and then continue the verification. The whole process completed in 15:39 minutes, Data verification completed successfully. Played successfully on LiteOn drive. Test passed.

Second test: burning on another disc which failed when using the EIDE to USB cable: TDK 1-4x DVD+RW disc. Test passed.

Then, MaxPlay DVD+RW disc. This one FAILED on the LiteOn, and this time it failed on the LE drive too.

eBlue 4x DVD+RW. Works like a charm. Passed.

Time for CDRW.
TDK 650Mb CDRW at 10x. Works fine. Passed.
Samsung 700Mb CDRW at 4x. Works fine. Passed.
eBlue CDRW. Passed.

Now the funky one: DVD-R at 4x.
Cheap ToYama DVD-R at 4x. PASSED.
StarWorld DVD-RW at 4x. Passed.
Sky DVD+R Video at 4x. Filename with Chinese characters. Passed.

Notes that for each of the above test, I always use the LiteOn DVD Drive to try reading the DVD disc burned by the LG drive. In all cases the LiteOn successfully read the disc burned by the LG drive.

However, when I try to burn a set of 4 folders with no Chinese filename using some low price DVD-RW discs, I experienced some problems. To be fair, those DVD-RW disc were pretty scratchy at the back, and not all files are failed to burn, just a few (particularly the 2Gb .iso file). Those low quality discs included two Toyama DVD-R discs and one Goone DVD-R Disc. They were all capable and burned at 4x.

I used a eBlue DVD+RW and a Sky DVD+RW Video disc to burn the same continue. It was no problem at all.


Conclusion: the LG GSA-4163B is a great DVD Burner, but it wasn’t the bullet proof burner that I expected. Maybe the crappy discs I brought were really too crappy, just for now I won’t buy it as an additional burner.

In addition, I think I will stick with eBlue DVD+R disc. Even Sky (Video) failed me, but eBlue seemed to perform pretty well on my LiteOn DVD Burner so far.

DVD+R Disc price keeps dropping

I went to Golden Shopping Center and found something interesting.

I found the DVD+R disc price kept dropping, at least for the two brands I always use (eBlue or Sky). This seems to be mainly caused by the release of 8x media. Now a Sky DVD+R cost only HK$25 for 10. That's $2.5 a DVD disc.

In addition, the price between Tsuen Wan and Sham Shui Po Golden Center can be as huge as HK$10. So whenever possible, buy DVD blank disc and Sham Shui Po.

The price of Nintendo DS dropped to HK$1099. I guess the sales of Sony PSP have something to do with such drop. Still I am not buying yet since there's not any must have game that I want to play right now right this moment.

There is funny product called eBlue Syncbox, and it seems to be a copycat product of another SyncBox product. The idea is to let you copy files between two USB devices. Sounds cool, but the price, HK$200, is kind of steep for such a product. But then there are other USB hard disk case that has the copy functionality, and selling for HK$280. So consider that a regular USB hard disk closure cost HK$80, HK$200 for a syncbox is not way way too bad. By the way, you can download the SyncBox menu here.