The below article remains for archive purposes.  You can now easily convert APE directly to FLAC with ffmpeg.

##

# One command per ape... 

ffmpeg -i inputname.ape outputname.flac 

# ... in a loop cd into containing folder and... 

for apeFile in *.ape ; do 
    ffmpeg -i "${apeFile}" "${apeFile%\.ape}.flac" 
done 

##

You may come across individual APE files which you would like to convert to FLAC files.  This can be especially useful if you have an album FLAC and an accompanying CUE file and you are having trouble getting the APE to burn correctly.

There is a fairly simple tool for dealing with this conversion.  As fortune would have it this tool will also manage conversions to and from ALAC, SHN, TTN, and WAVE files.  How can they pack so much fun into such a small package?  Now it’ll be that much easier to clean your collection up and keep everything tidy: flacflacflac.

Ok, so you’ll need—and if you’ve been following along here you already have—the MAC (Monkey Audio Codec).

Next you’ll need to get something called apeinfo.   There exist both 32 and 64 bit versions so be sure you get the proper version for whichever Ubuntu you are running.  You will find them here.  You will want to change the name of the file you download to merely apeinfo (so remove the _32 or _64) or it won’t work when called up by the next tool.

The next tool being known as convtoflac.  You may find that here.

Download both of your files and they all gets stuck into /usr/local/bin.

I downloaded each of these to my desktop and then used sudo to copy them into /usr/local/bin.  Make certain you have given them execute permissions (set the execute bit).  By storing them in /usr/local/bin I am sure they are in my command path (basically those places your system looks when you type a command) and they are ready to use.  Here is the command you need to move the apeinfo file from the Desktop to /usr/local/bin:

sudo mv /home/[usename]/Desktop/apeinfo /usr/local/bin/apeinfo

You can copy and paste that line and make the necessary substitutions for your system, download location, and specific file.

Once you have these installed correctly you are ready to use the tools to make conversions.  I have written a small simple script for making all of this work together.  If you make my script executable and place it  in your /usr/local/bin you can merely call the whole thing up by typing the name of the command (whatever you decide to name your version of my script) in your terminal.  I named my script Ape2Flac.sh.

##
#!/bin/bash
# by JamesIsIn from JamesIsIn.com
# Do something nice today.

#  Ape2Flac.sh

#  also requires apeinfo and convtoflac
#  http://jamesisin.com/a_high-tech_blech/?p=1335

for i in *.ape
do convtoflac.sh "$i"
done

##

This method will preserve any existing tags.

To fire it up, navigate into the folder in which you have the APE files and run my script (by typing its name into the command line).  It’s that easy.

See, nothing to fear from the command line.

Happy hunting.