Someone reviewed v on Jul 5, 2022

Pros: 555

Cons: 555

Bottom Line: 555

Enlightenment reviewed v3.99.5 on Dec 19, 2014

I've been using since 1998. For MP3 encoding, it's the best.

SineWave reviewed v3.99.2 on Nov 20, 2011

For lossless encoding you can use FLAC or WavPack. It's pretty much the same, as the encodings are, well, lossless. ;) MP3 is always lossy, so there are differences between the codecs. LAME encoder being somewhat the best of them. Cheers!

Enlightenment reviewed v3.99.2 on Nov 19, 2011

This is the best MP3 enocder. Almost all people can't tell the difference between 320K CBR and a CD.. By the way, MP3 isn't lossless so "johnk119" is an i-d-i-o-t that is whining about something that he shouldn't.

johnk119 reviewed v3.98.4 on Aug 26, 2011

This program lacks support for lossless encoding which is not difficult to add. Basically I want to losslessly back up my music using as little space as possible... This is a half way useful program if you want to lose music quality

trents reviewed v3.98.2 on Nov 25, 2010

HI,
I agree with that it is really good tools to used...Try it and you will see the result...

darth reviewed v3.98.2 on Nov 20, 2009

Kudos, LAME is one of best projects ever, one with the widest impact on the digital life of everyone!

digitalking reviewed v3.98.2 on Nov 7, 2008

Creative Zen Vision:M which at one time was Creative's most popular MP3 player, does not play AAC, and this product is only 2-3 years old! Sorry some of us aren't spoiled brats and can't buy new audio/video player each year.
http://us.creative.com/p...product=14331&nav=1

teranova52 reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 10, 2008

People forget the codec wars ...
We are all free to choose from so many out there.

About this codec , i use it for years with the old free Plextor tools.

This is an win version with graphical interface , thats good for people that likes easy ways to do this task .

roj reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 3, 2008

pedromoreno:

Face a few realities.

Ogg is an expensive codec in terms of player resources and in the face of the ubiquitous mp3 is a non-essential nice-to-have codec to support. In addition, it offers no advantages in sound quality due to the advances LAME has undergone over the years.

Let me see:

Should I as a company support a format that relatively few people use (albeit a shrill minority) or should I dedicate machine resources and OS storage space to a codec that is everywhere.

BZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!

ogg loses every time - a simple business decision.

cowgaR :

aac falls into the same category, albeit less so.

The reality that is (and will continue to be) is that open source audio codcs (and aac) are a distinct minority in terms of practical market share.

And few care.

That's it, that's all.

FIVE stars for an encoder that continues to improve and guarantees that mp3 will continue to be the dominant standard for the foreseeable future.

EDIT:

If you're running one of the old 32bit Semprons, make sure you add --noasm mmx --noasm sse to your command line. If you don't, you'll crash LAME with the following error:

Faulting application lame.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module lame.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x0001967a.

Damned intel garbage... :) :) ;)

pedromoreno reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 3, 2008

Quit badmouthing ogg!!! It's not widely supported because most companies are plain stupid, period. Open source rules! Always will!

As for LAME, lol, it's great! Mp3 has come a long way since its birth, and LAME is an excellent encoder.

kholdstare reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 3, 2008

good to see LAME still being updated and the mp3 format is still alive and well with almost all media players being able to play mp3's and only some only being able to play AAC format. MP3 may be old and outdated but it is still the most wildly used format than any others

cowgaR reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 3, 2008

@roj: I agree with you completely, but still can't find a device that can't play AAC. Maybe some obscure ones. It is due to APPLE and iPods that AAC gained great popularity and APPLE began selling music only in AAC.
And in _many_ test I have seen (I can give you links) AAC crushed mp3 easily...in any bitrate, not to mention it is newer encoding tech than mp3, and I like its decoders philosophy better (same everywhere) than to look for players which can handle quality mp3 decoding (fault of mp3 format).

@pedromoreno: OGG is great although I like AAC more (obviously;-), but it is not about liking a technology. I LOVED HD-DVD, it was superior to blu ray in many ways! But it died. Logicaly no support, so we have blu-ray. Why stick with format that has had its chance to be adopted and is still ignored? Die, free the market.

@kholdstare: please name ONE player that can't play AAC nowadays, you must be on win95

-----------
best mp3 encoder...but deprecated, with no future

ppl, start using AAC encoders (or AAC+ for lower bitrates) as they provide tens of advantages over mp3 format (tens of features supported, smaller size, not dependant on decoder quality unlike mp3, and tens of other things)

and unlike ogg (which should die long ago) AAC is supported everywhere, from mobile phones to mp3 players and car receivers (again, unlike ogg)

so if I want lose compression, I choose AAC encoder (probably iTunes one prefered more than Nero's one now) otherwise I'll stick with any loseless format

mp3 is dead long time now, I wonder no-body noticed it, well APPLE did ;)

cricri_pingouin reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 3, 2008

Best? I don't know, I don't know other encoders enough to state this. But it works great, and for free. So it gets a 5 from me.

TuNk77 reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 3, 2008

• LAME 3.98.2 release is a maintenance release over 3.98.
- build system related: some fixes for mp3rtp and abx tools
- encoder padding values were not correct when resampling was involved
- frequency filtering API was broken; in case you want to use your own higher quality filtering method, it is now possible again to disable LAME buildin filters
- ID3 tagging:
--id3v1-only switch did not work anymore, fixed
--tg improved, now it matches more often one of the ID3v1 genres, even when small spelling errors are involved
--add-id3v2-size is a new switch, it allows to define your own padding of n bytes.
NOTE: Version 3.98.1 contains a bug that will let it crash when encoding CBR/ABR or with old VBR at setting q0, q1 or q2!

The best mp3 encoder :D

Undesired Username reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 2, 2008

Awesome encoder. You can keep OGG and WMA, thank you very much. I did some ABX testing with foobar2000 using LAME, and was surprised to find how much compression I could squeeze into an MP3 file and still not be able to distinguish it from the huge APE files I've been using for years.

DudeBoyz reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 2, 2008

I've been very pleased with Lame over the years. I have used the 3.97 version extensively with Bonk Encoder (up to and including 1.0.7) and that has turned out to be an excellent combination.

I only just upgraded to Bonk Encoder 1.0.9 and the included Lame v3.98.1 and do not have a large body of conversions to compare as of yet.

I hope that these v3.98.x versions turn out to be just as good as v3.97 has been.

I almost didn't upgrade to the latest Bonk Encoder because I was so pleased with 3.97, but I guess I can't live in the past forever... :)

I need to go find some detailed CHANGELOGS for the 3.98 series. Maybe then I'll feel more at ease with the update.

That said, in using the latest release (3.98.2) for sound comparison tests, I was unable to discern any changes to the sound quality when compared to previous versions.

I tested music at 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit Stereo (classical, guitar and rock) and Audiobooks at 32 kbps, 22.05 kHz, 16 bit mono.

Clarity seemed fine with some walkman-style headphones. High notes were good, music vocals were good, bass was good, spoken word was good.

I'm glad that they are updating Lame and hope they keep working on it. I also hope that they don't get hammered with some sort of licensing / royalties lawsuit.

I was a fan of the Fast Fraunhofer used in Music Match 4.5 and up and I guess I still am. It recorded music at 160 kbps and I could not tell the diff between it and 192 kbps Lame back then, and I still cannot.

But all the new musical stuff I encode is at 192 kbps CBR LAME and I'm pleased with the result.

I have not done any VBR tests, however, since I do not encode using that method. I also use standard Stereo instead of Joint Stereo.

Given that, I may not be testing Lame to its full potential, but for the way I like to use an encoder, it does a great job.

spacemarine reviewed v3.98.2 on Oct 2, 2008

LAME is unarguably the best
MP3 encoder (by far).

A lot of work has gone into
the 3.98 release, making the best
even better.

Highly recommended!

scious reviewed v3.98 Beta 8 on May 8, 2008

Simply the best of its kind and free. There can be only 1 rating for it.
If you are worried about AAC and the myriad of other formats out there, then if you want true high quality music there is only one format to encode to - FLAC.

Ciolouse reviewed v3.98 Beta 6 on May 1, 2008

Beta 8 is out since April 13 2008:

* LAME now accepts a floating point value in the range [0,...,10[ as VBR quality setting, like -V5.678
* Found and fixed some suspicious code in additive masking calculation for VBR-NEW
* bug-fix:experimental code was defaulted by accident for VBR-NEW
* fix for some endianess problem on big-endian machines

roj reviewed v3.98 Beta 6 on Oct 22, 2007

on successors to mp3:

mp3 succeeded DESPITE fraunhofer's predatory licensing because of projects like lame. it became so ubiquitous that hardware vendors were forced to take notice. it also had the advantage of being impossible to attach drm to.

whenever i hear of a new format that is so wunnerfull and thrilling that words fail those gushing over it (NOT), i remember those traits and re-evaluate.

anything that costs money and can have drm attached to it Is Not Worth The Price Of Admission.

Forget the techie-pundits - stay free and open.

FUVE stars for the old vanguard that still is going strong - EVERYWHERE.

thomas.tmc reviewed v3.98 Beta 6 on Oct 22, 2007

LAME is by far the best MP3 encoder.

However, MP3 is a 20 year old format and AAC (M4A) is much better at both high and low bitrates. The creater of MP3 at Fraunhoffer has said that AAC is the successor to MP3, and he should know.

If you are into great sounding MP3s, LAME is the best choice, but if you're into great sounding music, AAC is the only choice. BTW, use Nero's free AAC encoder, and if you're still worrying about making your encoding at 128kbps or 192kbps for smaller files, go get a terabyte HDD and an 80GB iPod and start worrying more about making your encoding actually sound as good as the CD, which 128 or even 256kbps has never done in any format.

bobad reviewed v3.98 Beta 5 on Aug 13, 2007

Great software at an unbeatable price. I am now thoroughly educated.

Alex Stevens reviewed v3.98 Beta 5 on Aug 13, 2007

Ha, I love how they try to skirt around the issue of royalties by saying it's an "educational tool for learning about mp3". It works great of course and everyone knows what it's REALLY for.

Arieligena reviewed v3.98 Beta 4 on Jun 25, 2007

I think the best format is AAC+. Great sound at lower bitrate than mp3, but fewer device support.

Look for comparisons in Internet.

roj reviewed v3.98 Beta 4 on Jun 25, 2007

Having listened to ogg, musepack, and other lossless codecs. I have to say that those claiming improved audio quality are experiencing pure placebo. I'd also have to say that LAME in general has evolved greatly and 3.87 was the great equalizer with other formats. 3.88 is more of the same.

Excellence rates FIVE stars.

Diam0nd reviewed v3.97 on Dec 19, 2006

I love when people say that LAME is "not as good" as other formats like MusePack, ogg, etc. And some of those are actually loseless.
Well, I think that milk is way better than tea ;|

LAME > *

JEdwardP reviewed v3.97 on Sep 25, 2006

I rarely encode to MP3 anymore, greatly preferring Ogg, MusePack, or WavPack (lossless), but for those occasions when MP3 encoding is required, LAME remains the best choice.

The 3.98 alphas are surprisingly stable, by the way, and they do handle some samples better than 3.97, so if you like 3.97, you should probably go ahead and move on to 3.98.

MeanE reviewed v3.97 on Sep 25, 2006

Nice. Best encoder around.

I just finished ripping my Cd's to the beta 3, which became this final.

Dreimanis reviewed v3.97 on Sep 25, 2006

not the best, but the most popular :)

brusco reviewed v3.97 on Sep 25, 2006

at last 3.97!! still the best encoder backend out there bar none.

BoNeLeSS reviewed v3.97 on Sep 25, 2006

At last a non beta version.

Zygi reviewed v3.97 on Feb 14, 2006

Yes, i agree you should stick to hydrogen wiki and rarewares for recommended version of lame, as i remember its 3.97b2 right now from HA Wiki http://wiki.hydrogenaudi...php?title=LAME_Compiles also check they guide on recommended settings to get best audio quality you need http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME

Kukac reviewed v3.97 on Nov 6, 2004

See http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html for another list of builds.

rotjong reviewed v3.97 on Apr 14, 2004

LAME is and always has been the best. In reference to getting the actual and correctly labeled builds I've given up hope of most sites correctly handling this so I only download from the official mirros sites. Check out http://www.jthz.com/%7Elame/c.htm. It has the _real_ 3.96 release along with older versions, betas, alphas, daily builds, etc.

ghammer reviewed v3.97 on Apr 13, 2004

Not a review of LAME. A warning. This file is NOT 3.96
It is an alpha of 3.97

LAME version 3.97 MMX (alpha 1, Apr 12 2004 06:00:31)

BoNeLeSS reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 30, 2004

LAME is THE mp3 encoder... Yes: There are better codecs, like Ogg vorbis, Psytel AAC, Nero AAC or Musepack (My favourite).

But Mp3 is still the standard for most portable devices and standalone devices (like DVD players). Then you need LAME.

roj reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 28, 2004

This is an improvement? It sounds like a 13-year old cranked up daddy's car stereo to get a "hotter" sound and in the process increased distortion. 3.92 for me thanks...

sld reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 15, 2004

The one and only for creating mp3s > 128 kbps. If you're using the VBR presets, stick with 3.90.3 though, because 3.95.1 has not been tested and proven yet.

Black-Wolf reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 12, 2004

Excellent program!

WndrBr3d reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 12, 2004

LAME is great! I think MP3 is on its way out, newer codecs make use of 2-pass encoding which gives a MUCH higher quality audio file. Still, kudos to LAME!

bsr500 reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 12, 2004

Hmm, that was fast.. Anyway, this is the best mp3 encoder and it's free. Cant go wrong

eosrob_UK reviewed v3.95.1 on Jan 12, 2004

for what it's worth i find Lame ideal for hi bitrates 160 and above, for portable players i encode at 128 or 96 and use blade i find it better for these low rates, speech i can get away with 64 with blade but they just sounds bad to me with lame. i will give this 3.95 a 5 as there is still no better Quality encoder.

JEdwardP reviewed v3.95 on Jan 12, 2004

Of course there are formats better than MP3, and of course one of those is Ogg Vorbis. But I don't see that as an issue when reviewing LAME.

Though I no longer choose MP3 when encoding files that will remain on my machine, the fact is that MP3 is still the best choice in cases where portability is an issue.

Therefore, there is still a need for MP3 encoders. LAME is still the very best of those, so it still earns 5 stars from me.

tvadakia reviewed v3.95 on Jan 12, 2004

devilrider... That's BeOS!!!! Anyway, about LAME. Can anyone tell me what's better?

devilrider reviewed v3.95 on Jan 12, 2004

Update out 3.95.1 .. 3.95 had a bug.
5 out of 5

Btw. tha screenshot .. what GUI is that ... URL ?

mbear reviewed v3.95 on Jan 12, 2004

If you're making mp3s then LAME is the best encoder out there. Certianly better then the Xing junk and arguably better then the reference Fraunhofer (inventor of mp3) encoder. Yes other formats (Ogg Vorbis, AAC, WMF, etc.) have their own qualities but for the most common/widely supported audio format, mp3, this is the route to go. As to the problems with players and high-bitrates that's not an issue so much with LAME but with *players*. For example my sweetheart's old mp3 player chokes on absurdly high quality 320k/sec bitrate files, but then he only uses it to listen to rock while working out at the gym so he just rips 120k/sec anyhow, and probably wouldn't notice 96k/sec (Pantera on $10 budphones). Finally as others have noted this is only the LAME engine, it needs more parts to make it really friendly and yes, CDEX, or my preferred CDEXse, are both free and highly recommended.

roj reviewed v3.95 on Jan 12, 2004

I'm looking at the TODO list for this flavor of the encoder and it says something about problems with hardware players and high-bitrate encodes that need to be tracked down. Buh-bye...

tourist reviewed v3.95 on Jan 12, 2004

Ogg Vorbis

DJSHURIC reviewed v3.94 Alpha (11/05/03) on Nov 10, 2003

It's a very bags this version
tracks 3 minits encoding 7 minits !!!!!??

_x_ reviewed v3.94 Alpha (11/05/03) on Nov 6, 2003

6 out of 5 stars.

vis666 reviewed v3.94 Alpha (11/05/03) on Nov 6, 2003

screw Fraunhofer, LAME is the absolutely the best encoder... and is it me, or is this 3.94 a whole lot faster than its previous builds? 6/5 ;)

ye110manz reviewed v3.93.1 on Jan 12, 2003

13 reviews and they're all perfect. i think that says something. add me to the list of people giving this encoder a perfect 5.

jpmccord reviewed v3.93.1 on Dec 2, 2002

As always, it works for everything I need it to do. I never mess much with all the presets. My favorite frontend by far is vbLAMEr (comes in two varieties, pro and regular), which has its own presets plugged in. It's a VB application that allows you to drag WAVs into its window and hit "GO" to rip away... Very nice.

WRFan reviewed v3.93.1 on Dec 1, 2002

better wait till version 3.94 comes out. I already got the alpha version, shouldn't take long till beta appears

JEdwardP reviewed v3.93 on Nov 25, 2002

It's sound quality and constant development make it the the best. And of course, when the best also happens to be free, there's no other sensible choice.

busta reviewed v3.93 on Nov 20, 2002

That's a BeOS front-end for LAME. There are many Windows based ones. Search for Razorlame or LAMEr.

BTW: Last I heard --r3mix was broken (in quality terms) in LAME 3.93 (3.92 should still be OK). But by now it's a pointless alias, there are better presets. --preset standard (also can still use --alt-preset standard) and --preset fast standard. Either will give better quality and far better pre-echo control than the obsolete --r3mix. --r3mix will likely be phased out in coming builds, probably by aliasing it to a new preset.

WRFan reviewed v3.93 on Nov 19, 2002

what's this lame mp3 encoder gui (see picture above)? where do I get it?

draconus reviewed v3.93 on Nov 19, 2002

Who would bother using that fraunhoffer codec now. I remember when lame appeared and blew everyone away.. the speed, the quality, VBR... fraunhoffer must've been pissing in their pants....and the project just keeps improving way beyond what fraunhoffer had done. 3.93 ain't no exception... plus it is generously given to us to use :)

snol reviewed v3.93 on Nov 19, 2002

lame --r3mix works for me

sopheryth reviewed v3.93 on Nov 19, 2002

LAME absolutely sucks. It doesn't seem to give the competition a chance when it comes to Quality. Even Fraunhofen-Gisellshauft Encoders are nowhere near as good as this.

Buggle reviewed v3.93 on Nov 19, 2002

This is -no doubt- the best encoder there is for the purpose of MP3 encoding. Especially in the field of VBR (variable bitrate, why doesn't everybody use that???). Concerning CBR, Fraunhofer is as good as Lame.

But the reason why I give 5 stars, is only because of the program: I think MP3 is old... Ogg Vorbis gives way better music quality in my opinion. I recently switched from MP3 to Vorbis for that reason. It's just great.

busta reviewed v3.92 on Apr 16, 2002

No question the best MP3 encoder. Use this commandline and you'll be in good shape:

--alt-preset standard

PhoenixPWC reviewed v3.92 on Apr 16, 2002

Best quality I've heard so far, and it's free =o)

DarkA911 reviewed v3.92 on Apr 16, 2002

Very nice programm user friendly interface nice system and very stable it better tehn dc so come check it out i bet you will like it :)

darkstraw reviewed v3.92 on Apr 15, 2002

really nice, i like the simple interface and that its like direct connect, and no spyware heck yea GO NO SPY WARE and it works good even tho its still beta, works alot better than i expected.no ads no spyware no crap in the way, good and reliable even if it wasent beta

klumy reviewed v3.91 on Dec 31, 2001

a very exceellent encoder and the best it's free

mrbee reviewed v3.89 Beta on Jul 7, 2001

Great Encoder - provides top quality sound for encoding music mp3s...the BEST! But get RazorLame to use it (also works well, but not as well, with CDex & Exact Audio Copy). For the best music files, in termsd of audio quality and file size, use the following command switches:
"-v -V0 -b64 -B320 -ms -h -k"