Some Playstation 1 (PSX) CD images come in more than one track (ala “[filename] (track 1).bin”, “[filename] (track2).ape”, “[filename] (track 3).ape”, etc.). Either these games generally run with errors (i.e. no music) or not at all. This is because the ePSXe emulator does not recognize APE files, so the game is effectively incomplete as far as the emulator is concerned. This guide shows you how to decompress and convert the APE files so that you can run the game as best as possible through the ePSXe emulator.
Note: This guide already assumes that you know what was discussed in the first guide and you are simply wondering what to do with games that contain more than one track and/or contains APE files.
APE files are losslessly compressed audio files. This means that, while they are compressed to save space, no quality in the audio track itself is lost. This is great for saving bandwidth and disc space, not so great for simply playing the game in question out of the box with the ePSXe emulator. Not only do you have to decompress these files, but also convert them in such a way that can be read by the emulator. So, what does one of these games even look like? It’ll look something like this:
We should point out that for games like this, it is especially important to store them in their own separate file folders to keep things running as smoothly as possible.
Naturally, our first step is to convert those APE files to something like WAV files. To do that, you can go to the Monkey’s Audio website and download the program from the downloads page. While the file name uses “MAC” in it, we think that simply stands for “Monkey’s Audio Codec” and not “Macintosh”. So, yes, this is a Windows install in spite of the somewhat confusing filename. Once you have installed this program, open it up:
Now, we are not compressing files, but rather, decompressing them. To switch to the decompress mode, click on the down arrow next to the monkey head and click on “Decompress”:
By doing so, the monkey head will change to a box with red arrows pointing away with “Decompress” below it. You are now in the correct mode to decompress APE files:
Now, highlight all of the APE files that are sitting in your game folder and drag and drop them into the program window:
By default, when you decompress these files, the decompressed versions will be placed in the same folder as the original APE files. To verify this click on the “Tools” drop-down menu and click on “Options”:
You’ll get a pop-up window like this:
Click on “Output” (I’ve highlighted this in the above screenshot). You’ll get a window like this:
Make sure the radial “Output to same directory as source files” is highlighted (I’ve highlighted this in the above screenshot). This is what you want to make things easier for yourself. Click on OK if you had to change something, but otherwise, click on “Cancel”. Now, simply click on the big “Decompress” button to decompress these files.
When the program has completed decompressing these files, you can close out of this software. What you’ll be left with is a series of WAV files mixed with the APE files in your folder with all of the APE files highlighted:
This is a very convenient thing because now you can either right click and delete the APE files (you don’t need them for the game now) or cut and paste them into a separate directory. Either way, you’ll be left with the .bin file and all the .wav files without having to sort through which file is which in the end.
Now that you have decompressed these files, you now need to convert them into a format that ePSXe can read (namely .bin files). To do so, check out this link and download “WAV to BIN.7z” from the first post (clicking on it works). Save the archive. Create a folder for the WAV to BIN executable and place it in there. From there, just highlight all of the WAV files and drag and drop them onto the WAV to BIN.exe file (link now contains a .bat file, but dragging and dropping it onto the .bat file works just as well). Ultimately, the files will be converted from the WAV format to the BIN format (WAV files will not be preserved).
What you should be left with is a bunch of BIN files and a CUE or SBI file.
If no such file exists, go to this post and download the Cue’s and SBI’s file. You’ll download a ZIP archive. Create a folder for these files in your PSX directory and extract that archive into that folder. Inside that folder, browse to the folder with the title of the game in question, open up the directory and move the cue file over to the directory with all of your BIN files.
Finally, load up the ePSXe emulator and, using the “Run ISO” option, load the .cue file of the game (unless it’s a multi-track game, in which case, you combine the information in this guide and the information in our multi-disc guide.
That should be it!
Happy gaming!
Thanks a lot 🙂 Thanks Thanks Thanks
Thanks a lot for clearing all that up and providing the links in one clear concise post 🙂
Very useful. Thanks to whoever took the time.
thanks. this method does work. the game will be playable with music in epsxe as long as its mounted in daemon tools usually mount the cue file. tested Dead or Alive (E) [SCES-01259]. it worked like a charm.
What about multi .bin files and a .cue file that come in the download…. i downloaded [removed] from [removed] and it’s 10 (Track *x).bin files and a .cue, i open the .cue but nothing, i open the (Track 1).bin and it loads the opening cutscene but nothing else…??
The bin files means that the files have already been converted for you. Because of this, you should be able to open the file via the cue file. If the game doesn’t load properly, it could be that it was a bad rip. I’ve run into this a few times and sometimes this format plays fine, but other times, it doesn’t. You can try a different rip or try the same game under a different region. One file I had never worked no matter what I did, but once I got the game from a different region (which turned out to be the much more convenient ISO format), the game played fine.
Hope this helps.
This is NOT a work around if you have to do 1,000 different things just to get music to work.
Now messing with plugins is one thing to get the right video/sound to work but to do all these different conversions defeats the purpose of emulators.
I really hope someone will come up with a *fix* so configuring this crap is at least limited if not eliminated.
Good app.
now this is just a question cause i don’t know if its been answered, but if i delete one of the tracks, does that mess up the game or is it just an extra? Because i had Track 1,2,3 of [game name removed] and got rid of 2&3 and [game name removed] still work so im confused
It probably depends on the game. I’ve never tinkered with this myself, but my best guess is that you’ll just not get any music whenever that particular track is meant to play.
I checked WAV to BIN.exe in Virustotal.com and it says it has virus! Is it a false positive?
Pretty sure it’s a false positive. The executable in question is publicly posted and was publicly posted a long time ago. This is the first I’ve heard anyone turning up a positive for malware for the program. I’ve scanned it myself and the scan came back clean.
Open the .bat in a text editor and you’ll see that it literally just renames *.wav to *.bin
Thank you kindly!!
You’re welcome. 🙂
How do I this on OS X?
The game I want to play has a .7z, .ape and a .cue file.
For the .7z file, you might want to try Keka to extract the file (it’s compressed). If you decompressed the Ape files and still have issues, Daemon Tools lite is available for Mac. It says it’s for Mac 7, but maybe it’ll work still?
As for converting ape files to bin on a Mac, unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure as I’m not a Mac user. I know it’s possible to convert ape to Wav format. Apart from getting a Windows user to do the conversion for you, the other possibility is to use a different source. Wish I had a better answer for you, but at least you have most of the steps covered at least. The converter I’m familiar with for that step is an exe file which, IIRC, is a Windows app.
I’ve keka’d the 7z and got a “Track 01.bin.ecm” file? Do I convert it to anything such as an ISO?
How do I decompress the .ape files?
You’ll need to UnECM the file. For that, try Googling ECM for OSX. Hopefully, you’ll be able to decompress it.
As for ape files, Ape files are Monkey Audio Codec. It’s much easier on Windows as you can just get WinApe, but for Mac, the only thing I can find is this converter. I can’t vouch for the programs quality, but I do know that it looks like trialware.
Again, it is probably possible to convert the Ape files to wav files (which is a needed step), but the program will likely be looking for bin files. This is the step that I do not know how to accomplish on the OSX – converting the wav files to bin files.
It is probably possible to run the game without the audio tracks, but unfortunately, you’ll likely have no music playing as a result. Some games won’t run at all without the music.
I got the UNECM, but I’m having trouble doing it on terminal. First of all, I did Appinstall for both ECM And UNECM. But when I do:
ecm-uncompress/Users/DESKTOP/Downloads/ECM/Game.bin.ecm
It says “No such file or directory
logout”
I’ve used terminal before in my other computer, I know I must be doing something wrong here.
I managed to use the Monkey program with WINE and I got 1 .wav file out of it. I’m having trouble converting it to a BIN file as I haven’t found any program that works for mac.
The only thing I know about unECM is that I just had to drag the ECM file over top of the exe file. Once I dropped it, the file decompressed. Of course, this is within Windows. I’m not entirely sure it will work in Mac.
Yeah, like I said, the last step of converting the wav files to Bin is something I wouldn’t know how to do on Mac. It might be possible to use WINE to use the Windows program for that last step. Otherwise, you might just have to find a different format of the game and hope it’s not in that format.
The above link for “WAV to BIN.zip” is not working on my computer (Win Vista). I have tried searching on the net but could not find any suitable software to convert WAV to BIN file. Do you have any recommendation? Many thanks!
I checked the post in the link and it looks like it may have been changed to “wav to bin.7z”. I’ve updated the guide accordingly. If you’re unable to extract the 7z file, try using 7zip (free and open source) https://www.7-zip.org/download.html
Hope this helps.
It looks like the “wav to bin.7z” on that thread is linked with a 7zip file sized only 157 bytes in which there is only one .bat file, I can’t find any .exe file.
Try dragging and dropping the .wav file onto the .bat file after extraction. Re-tested that and it worked for me, so I’ve updated the guide to reflect the change as well. Either way, it should work.
Just in case in the future the .WAV to .BAT file gets lost in time or you are having trouble downloadin it, literally all it does is rename the *.wav files to *.bat