Installation instructions for Audacity call for the latest version of LAME but also mention LAME 3.99 in several places; there is no mention of the current version of LAME, which is LAME 3.100. Which version of LAME should I use with Audacity 2.1.2 and Windows 10 v1067 x64, 3.99 or 3.100?
Versions of LAME that are known to work correctly with Audacity are available via the links in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#lame
I doubt you’d notice any “improvement” with 3.100.
The [u]LAME Changelog[/u] shows a couple of “features” that wouldn’t be accessible (and probably not useful) from Audacity and several bug fixes.
I haven’t heard of anyone having trouble with LAME, so problems caused by those bugs must be rare. Maybe none of those bugs show-up when LAME is called from Audacity???
There’s nothing new related to sound quality.
LAME v3.100 is from October last year and contains a few fixes but a lot of overflow and buffer and security fixes.
LAME v3.99.5 is from February 2012 and contains “Bug fix for tracker item [ 3486753 ] Artifacts at the beginning of decoded file” marked in red in the changelog, this affects the audio quality of loaded files.
LAME v3.99.4 is from January 2011 and contains “possible divide-by-zero exception should be fixed”.
Considering how easy it is to add support for v3.100 lame_enc.dll (the API is exactly the same right, not a single change?) then I see no reason not to fix this.
It’s pointless to have a menu entry for a dll that is 6 years out of date.
A similiar issue exists with ffmpegs avformat55.dll, that file is now at 56 or 57 (or possibly 58?).
Make Audacity easier to use for people not harder, forcing them to find a 6 years old dll for lame is no userfriendly. Windows has native MP3 encoding (since WinXP I think?), why not use that? Zero need to install anything for users.
Make Audacity easier to use for people not harder, forcing them to find a 6 years old dll for lame is no userfriendly.
They are not hard to find… Just follow the links from the [u]Audacity download page[/u].
…The MP3 patents have expired and at some point in the future LAME will be included with the default Audacity download/installation. (But, I assume FFmpeg will not.)
Windows has native MP3 encoding (since WinXP I think?), why not use that?
I’m pretty sure LAME is better and the Microsoft-supplied ACM CODEC may not have VBR.