Monkey's audio was developed by Matthew T. Ashland ``for fun to keep myself busy during the cold Minnesota winter.''3.10 The Monkey's Audio encoder can encode mono and stereo WAV files at resolutions of 8, 16, or 24 bits and at any sampling rate. According to Ashland, the program has been optimized for use with compact-disc audio (stereo, 16-bit resolution, 44.1 KHz sampling). It achieves compression rates of about 40 to 50 percent. ID3 tags are supported, but third-party tagging programs are required to use the more expansive ID3v2 tags.
The current Monkey's Audio (version 3.99) is available only for the Windows platform, although the official website mentions that versions for Apple and Linux are in development.3.11 Although Monkey's Audio is not an open-source project, use of the encoder and the format are free for personal or educational purposes; permission must be granted by the author for commercial use.