Monkey's Audio files can be encoded and decoded on any platform which has a J2SE implementation, by the means of the unofficial JMAC library, which is Free software licensed under the GNU LGPL. It is also available as a port and package on FreeBSD. This code also provides playback support in applications that use GStreamer, as well as DeaDBeeF.Ī number of Mac OS X players and rippers support the format as well.

Monkey's Audio is also supported on Linux and OS X using JRiver Media Center or Plex.Ī GPL-licensed version of the Monkey's Audio decoder has been independently written for Rockbox and is included in ffmpeg. As of version 4.02 (19 January 2009) a DirectShow filter is distributed with the installer, allowing for compatibility with most media players running on the Windows operating system. Officially, Monkey's Audio is available only for the Microsoft Windows platform. In comparison, most lossless codecs are asymmetric, meaning that the work done to achieve higher compression ratios, if selected by the user, slows down the encoding process, but has essentially no effect on the decoding requirements. Many dedicated portable media players, and even flagship model smartphones have difficulty handling this. While Monkey's Audio can achieve high compression ratios, the cost is a dramatic increase in requirements on the decoding end. Since all of these formats are lossless, users can transcode between formats without generation loss. Īlternatively, FLAC and WavPack are available under open source licences, and are well supported in Linux distributions and in many applications.

This is not compatible with the Open Source Definition or Free Software Definition as stated by the Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation, respectively. Among other things, the source code license terms make it impossible to legally redistribute, and invites people to infringe on the GPL license of other software. The upside is that no data is lost compared to the input file, making lossless codecs suitable for transcoding, or simply taking up approximately half as much space as raw PCM data.Ĭompared to FLAC, ALAC, or WavPack, Monkey's Audio is relatively slow to encode or decode files.Īlthough Monkey's Audio is distributed as freeware, it is not open source. Typically about twice as much as a 320 kbit/s bitrate MP3 file.

Like any lossless compression scheme, Monkey's Audio format takes up several times as much space as lossy compression formats.

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