Converting Music to MP3 with Lame

flaps2008

Hi All,

I was just wondering could anybody help me to convert my music to MP3 using Lame.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks

mp22

As far as i know lame is a encoder,software such as audacity ect use lame to encode music into mp3`s.For eg open music file with audacity tell it to save current project as a mp3 it will ask for the location of lame.dll and your cooking with gas

calex71

its can be used also with cdex , is that still around ? havent used iti in a good while

sceptre

Like mp22 said, LAME is an encoder (don't let the name, which stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder", fool you).

As he also said, you basically need other software to make it work - a front end piece of software that uses the LAME library to do its thing. Personally I use dbpoweramp as I like the batch mode it offers but they charge for encoding to mp3, even when using LAME.

There are a few pieces of software in the above link that are pretty much as good as you'll get (oddly enough, Audacity isn't on the list, it's freeware and quite good).

For ripping from CD audio to mp3s, a lot of people swear by Exact Audio Copy or CDex (as calex71 recommended) - both are linked to from the LAME wiki page above.

But if you're transcoding from one compressed format to another, I'd suggest (maybe) WinLAME, though I don't know if it does batch processing (where you can queue files to be converted which is very useful). Someone else may have a better suggestion from their own experiences as I just use dbpoweramp for pretty much everything.

Take note that if you convert from one already compressed format to another (like windows media to mp3 for example) you will get a file that is of lesser quality than the original and you may well hear the difference. If you're converting from an uncompressed format like FLAC or CD Audio, obviously what you're doing is compressing the file so it's of course of lesser quality but it's still far preferable than converting from a lossy compressed format to another. Having said that, I've done it myself where I had no other option and I'm generally happy with the results - but like you I've discovered the joys of LAME compared with other less-good encoders.

JDxtra

What format is your music in already, or are you talking about ripping from CD?

Khannie

calex71 wrote: »

its can be used also with cdex , is that still around ? havent used iti in a good while

It is.

Not actively developed any more, but I think that's just because it's stable and the feature set is complete. Great piece of kit.