Recording vinyl to audacity, recording process goes off without a hitch! unfortunately the exporting is not going so well…trying to export to mp3, yes I have downloaded the lame program which seems to live up to its name by being lame 
, When I open the file in audacity that I just recorded and saved, properly, and choose the option “export to MP3” I get a pop up asking if I’d like to locate “lame_enc.dll” now? I click yes, it brings up “My Docs” to search for “lame_enc” I click on open, and instantly get a message “could not open MP3 encoding library”…very frustrating…I have searched for the lame program on my comp. and only finds the initial link for downloading and keeps putting me through the downloading process over and over…cant seem to figure this out!! please help I really don’t want to have to export to wav files which seems to be working fine but will take up much more disk space when transferring…
There isn’t an option called “export to MP3” unless you are using a really ancient and obsolete version of Audacity.
Please look in the Audacity “Help menu > About Audacity” to see which version of Audacity you are using.
The current version is 2.0.5, which is available here: Audacity ® | Downloads
Instructions for installing Lame are here: Audacity Manual
Details about how to Export are here: Audacity Manual
I’ve never had any trouble with the LAME linked-to from the Audacity website. But if all else fails, there are plenty of other (mostly LAME-based) MP3 encoders that can convert WAV to MP3. I assume you can export to WAV? [u]TAudioConverter[/u] can convert WAV to MP3, or from/to almost any other audio format.
If you convert a WAV file to MP3, you may have to tag the MP3 file (title/artist, etc.) with MP3Tag (or your favorite tagging application) because WAV tags are not well-standardized.
well, to Steve, that’s very sad that mp3 export would be ancient when everything is mp3 based in this day and age…as I’ve read through most of your forums and they constantly talk about the “export to mp3” option sooo it must be real, seeing as I just downloaded the newest version of audacity yesterday, I believe I’m up to date!!
To the post from DVDdoug, thank you very much, having no problems with exporting to wav and will try your suggestion for converting from wav to mp3. thank you for actually being helpful!
That is not what I said.
I said that Audacity does not have an option called “export to MP3”. There was an option called that in Audacity 1.2.6 (way back in 2008).
Audacity 2.x can export in MP3 format if you install Lame, but you need to follow the instructions as detailed in the links that I posted.
I am having the same trouble . The notice I receive is " Could not open MP3 encoding Library ! " I just down loaded my( .exe) version 2 days ago . I believe this is the windows 7 .
As stated above, please follow the instructions to install the optional LAME library:
Audacity Manual .
Gale