# Preferences - Audio Files - APE

The Audio panel allows you to control settings common to all supported audio formats, specific to ID3 (MP3, AIFF, DFF, DFS, WAV) files, MPEG-4 (M4A, M4B, M4R, M4V, MP4) files, FLAC & OGG and APE (APE, WV) files.

## Settings Specific to APE

See ID3 specific for the explanation of rating decoding. As with ID3 based files, there is no standard for APE. Yate supports the same decoding methodologies that it does for ID3 based files.

By default, when writing .ape files, Yate removes all ID3V1, ID3V2 and APEV1 tags. Yate always writes APEV2 tags. You can elect to also write an ID3V1 tag. Note that this is not recommended and should only be enabled if you have a player which cannot read APEV2 tags.

APE mappings to Involved People List Item items provide the means of mapping certain Involved People to alternate mappings. When the Keep Involved People List Items in Involved People option is set, items mapped in this manner will be written to the file twice. Once to the designated mapping and once to the default Involved People mapping.

Musician Credits and Involved People metadata is written in a format, which while not a standard, is as close to a standard as exists for APE files. If you want to preserve the two fields as entered you should set the Common Audio Settings when loading files do not sort the Involved People and Musician Credits option. However, this setting may not help if an application other than Yate rewrites the file and its contained tag information. There is no guarantee that the order of the credits in the file will be maintained by other applications. Further, as multiple items are written, a certain amount of coalescing is always done when reading the file. While the data may not be sorted or merged, the coalescing of the content may change the order of some items. If you always want the data to be reloaded as displayed, set the Preserve exact appearance of Involved People and Musician Credits option. This option does not affect the standard writing of the metadata. What it does is cause additional tag items, (YATE-IP, YATE-MC), to be written which preserve the metadata as displayed. When reading APE files and the option is set and the additional tag items are present in a file, the as is metadata will take precedence over the standard metadata. The additional tag items are not written if the associated metadata is empty. Note that the fields always have leading and trailing spaces and newline characters removed. Further all control characters are removed and newline sequences are normalized. When the Preserve exact appearance... option is set, Yate will ignore and toss subsequent changes made by other taggers to non empty Involved People and Musician Credits fields.

When the Write the Track and Track Count fields to the Track mapping option is set, Yate will Write the low level Track mapping as track number{/track count}. A low level Track Count mapping is treated as read only. When the option is not set, the two fields will be written to different low level mappings.

When the Write the Disc and Disc Count fields to the Track mapping option is set, Yate will Write the low level Track mapping as disc number{/disc count}. A low level Disc Count mapping is treated as read only. When the option is not set, the two fields will be written to different low level mappings.

APE tags support multiple values on all items. However as opposed to FLAC and Vorbis comments, APE tags can only occur once in a file. This means that you cannot use the same tag name in multiple types. When writing files, Yate will coalesce tags. Some items might be renamed in order to preserve the data when writing the files.

Ape tags can be designated as being text, binary, locators or reserved. All tag types other than text are stored in the Unhandled section. Further, individual items can be marked as read-only. Read-only items are also placed in the Unhandled section.

Additional information:

Common Audio Settings

ID3 Audio Settings

FLAC Audio Settings

MPEG-4 Audio Settings

Roon Audio Settings