can not open library

[richard mouton]

i have win. xp-sp1- 112 mg ram 34 gig hard drive space. loaded audacity for usb turntable. downloaded off audacity the lame codec to memory stick. went through all the motions on installing this. asked to find this codec. had a saved project of music. as i scrolled down to encode to mp3 ,a popup say's can not open mp3 library. this is frustrating. does any music software come with this already on it ?

[kozikowski]

does any music software come with this already on it ?

Oh yes. Most money-based software does. MP3 is copyrighted and licensed for profit by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. For Audacity to Export an MP3 sound file you have to install the separate "lame" software package.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

And while you're up there, get and install Audacity 1.3. Audacity 1.2 is really old and can be unstable on newer computers.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You are warned against automatically saving all your music in MP3 form. Just because most music on the internet is that way, doesn't mean it's best for you. MP3 is a compressed format and is very efficient and small, but always causes sound damage when used. Archives and production masters should always be in an uncompressed format like WAV or AIFF.

Another more subtle problem with MP3 is the inability to do production and editing later. You can't easily make a second edited MP3 from your MP3 library.

Koz

[richard mouton]

well i am still learning this stuff. will record in wav next go around. will try and download lame again.would be nice to know what good software to buy that is ready to go. one that will work on my win. xp sp-1

[steve]

And while you're up there, get and install Audacity 1.3. Audacity 1.2 is really old and can be unstable on newer computers.

Richard mentioned "win. xp-sp1- 112 mg ram 34 gig hard drive space", so that's going to be a pretty old machine (and has very little RAM), so in this case I think that Audacity 1.2.6 will probably be better than the new 1.3.13. (Audacity 1.2.6 is a bit lighter than 1.3.13)

went through all the motions on installing this. asked to find this codec.

Did you go into the Audacity Preferences > File Formats, then click on the "Find Library" button?

Do you actually need Lame? What are you going to do with your recordings?