Install mac with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• mac

Project history

The official site presents Monkey's Audio as a fast, efficient, bit-perfect music compressor that can compress and later decompress audio back to the original data. The site footer and license identify Matthew T. Ashland's copyright as spanning 2000-2026, and the homepage thanks users for 26 years of the project.

The developer page documents an SDK intended to make the compression technology easy to embed in other software. It says the SDK includes source code for compression, decompression, verification, conversion, analysis, and APE tagging, plus Visual Studio and Xcode projects.

Adoption history

Monkey's Audio predates most modern package-manager audio codecs and is historically associated with the `.ape` format, high compression ratios, APE tags, and Windows audio tooling. The official homepage claims more than 10 million downloads and broad support by media players and rippers.

Homebrew packages the SDK as a Unix-style `mac` command and builds bottles for macOS and Linux targets. That makes a historically Windows-oriented codec available to package-manager users as a normal CLI encoder, verifier, and decoder.

How it is used

The official help describes compress, decompress, verify, convert, and make-APL modes. It documents compression-level tradeoffs and pipe-based workflows such as feeding WAV output from FFmpeg or FLAC into `mac.exe`.

The Homebrew formula tests the Unix command by compressing a WAV fixture to APE, verifying the APE file, decompressing it back to WAV, and comparing hashes, which captures the package's command-line purpose.

Why package nerds care

The Homebrew `mac` formula is package-nerd notable because the package name is short and opaque while the upstream project name is Monkey's Audio. It is also a good example of a package manager turning an upstream SDK/source bundle into a portable command-line codec.

Timeline

• 2000: Monkey's Audio copyright history begins, according to the official license and site footer.
• 2023-08: The official license page identifies the current license as 3-Clause BSD.
• 2026-07: Official homepage listed Monkey's Audio 13.18 and described 26 years of the project.
• 2026-07: Homebrew formula packaged the official SDK/source zip as `mac` 13.17.

Related projects

• The official help page names FLAC, WavPack, ALAC, and FFmpeg in conversion or external-encoder workflows. The Homebrew formula packages Monkey's Audio as `mac`, distinct from unrelated tools whose names include MAC addresses or macOS cleanup.

Sources

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/HEAD/Formula/m/mac.rb
• https://www.monkeysaudio.com
• https://www.monkeysaudio.com/developers.html
• https://www.monkeysaudio.com/help.html
• https://www.monkeysaudio.com/license.html
• https://www.monkeysaudio.com/versionhistory.html