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ira
Jul-05-2004, 9:54pm
so, after an incredibly busy end of the school year, and not alot going on this week, saw that rhb was the song (btw-cool versions so far). so, decided to try and learn, i remembered a version i had from a long time ago and never played.
went to audacity and downladed the audacity mp3 thing. then clicked on lame, and man did i feel it. so much stuff on there, and not sure what to click on to download. lots of info about bugs and popups.

1. is it safe?- cant afford a crash
2. what do i click on to download once i get to that green "lame" page?

thanks,
ira

Bluegrasstjej
Jul-06-2004, 1:42am
Very interesting question, that's why I didn't bother about Audacity's lame thing!!!

Martin Jonas
Jul-06-2004, 4:06am
The LAME homepage is deliberately non-flashy, as this is not a corporate product, but it's really much easier than it may seem and at least as stable as most commercial products. The file you want to download is the latest "stable version", which at the moment is "lame-3.96". The LAME homepage has links to 15 mirrors for the stable version, but all these links lead to the same file, "lame-3.96.zip", so it doesn't matter which one you download.

Once you have that .zip file, decompress it to anywhere you want. Only one of the files that you get is needed for Audacity, namely "lame_enc.dll". When you use Audacity, the first time you try to export a recording to MP3 format, it will ask you for the location of the "lame_enc.dll" file. Once you tell it where you've put that file on your had disk, you can forget about LAME -- all you get to see is Audacity.

I hope I didn't make this sound harder than it is. Try it, it's really straightforward.

Martin

ira
Jul-06-2004, 8:49am
hey mj- do you really need it? the guy who posted right before you says he didn't bother with lame. what will it do for me?

Martin Jonas
Jul-06-2004, 9:16am
LAME allows you to export files from Audacity as MP3. If you don't have it, you can only export as a WAV file. These files are much too large to be uploaded to the MP web site, i.e. you will then need to get some other external MP3 compressor to convert the WAV file for you. As far as I can see, there's no gain from not using LAME -- it's at least as stable as any of the other MP3 compressors that are bundled in other software.

I think what you might be confused by is a cultural thing in the open source community: whereas a big software company would do its product development behind closed door and you only ever get to see the final product (with no acknowledgment of whatever bugs it might contain -- there's no such thing as bug-free software), open source products such as LAME are developed in the open, through the web site. As a result, you not only get the latest stable versions, but also a plethora of alpha and beta releases. These are of interest only to those volunteers who are contributing to the ongoing development of the software. So, the descriptions of bugs that have been eliminated and so on and the various alpha and beta releases are not intended for you, the end user, but rather for those who want to help with the further development of the software. I can't guarantee that LAME won't crash on you (although I think it is extremely unlikely indeed), but I can say that I would trust it a lot more than I would trust, say, the latest version of RealPlayer or Microsoft MediaPlayer.

Of course, many people already have an MP3 compressor on their computers, e.g. as part of CD ripping software or similar. If so, you should be able to use that one instead of LAME and you don't need to install any additional software.

Martin

ira
Jul-06-2004, 12:21pm
sold- i'll give it a try tonight. i guess my initial click is on either mirror 1 or mirror 2 - the 2 biggest things on the top of the page.

Martin Jonas
Jul-06-2004, 12:39pm
Not quite -- those are just identical mirrors for the page you're currently looking at. You want to click on any of the fifteen links labelled "lame-3.96" two paragraphs down from the top of the page.

Martin

Bluegrasstjej
Jul-07-2004, 9:43am
I use a separate little software called dB Power Amp converter or something like that instead of that lame thing. I'd prefer to have it all in Audacity though, at least as long as I'll have to put up with using Audacity.

Dan Adams
Jul-07-2004, 6:19pm
I had the same problem months ago and asked the very same question. I think the thread was called 'Recording Software' and everybody was really helpful. I have a problem with Audacity now. I can't hear the tracks through the headphones while I record anymore. The audio is there when I play the selection back. I haven't touched anything, it just stopped? Anybody with ideas on how to fix this? Ideas would be appreciated. Thanks, I'm still a computer neandrathal! Dan