How to Download & Make the LAME program work (Audacity Beta)

[fr1zzen]

I had the same problem "Could not open mp3 encoding library!" with this file http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/Lame_v3.98.2_ ... indows.exe.
But the .zip version works for me http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/libmp3lame-win-3.98.2.zip, and the lame_enc.dll file size is different.

[steve]

I'm not sure what the difference is (trying to find out), but if the .exe version does not work, the .zip version appears to fix the problem.

[the shepherd]

Today I downloaded and successfully made a .aup file on my Mac (OS X 10.6.3). The file plays fine on the computer, but I cannot export it as an MP3 file because LAME -- which I downloaded and installed in accordance with all directions on the various Audacity and wiki, etc., sites does not turn up. In particular, Audacity 1.3.12 cannot find the /usr/local/lib/audacity/libmp3lame.dylib file necessary to do the deed. As I said, I have downloaded and carefully installed it three times. The Locate Lame window shows me where the /usr/local/lib/audacity/libmp3lame.dylib file is, but nothing works when I press OK. All I get is a "Message Could not open MP3 encoding library!"

Help!

[Ironside]

I just downloaded audacity 1.3.12 and was having many many problems with getting the lame file to work properly. Followed the directions to a T, still no luck at getting the mp3 files to work. Continued reading around, saw that for some people the zip file was working - so I tried it AND IT WORKED. Just wanted to report this for anyone else having issues, downloaded it from the official page http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/ and the zip is directly under the "donate" icon. Good Luck, and thanks for the developors and everyone else's hard work and of course for the community help around here.

[Gale Andrews]

I'm not sure what the difference is (trying to find out), but if the .exe version does not work, the .zip version appears to fix the problem.

Leland built the 3.98.2 lame_enc.dlls for Windows, but it would seem from his build scripts that one of the differences is that the dll in the zip file contains more exported functions than the one in the .exe. This was supposed if anything to make it less compatible, and I'm not quite convinced the extra functions are what makes the one in the zip be accepted more often. However the 3.98.3 dlls I built a while ago keep that distinction between the zip and exe, so eventually we'll find out.

* http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/Lame_v3.9 ... indows.exe
* http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk//lame_enc-win-3.98.3.zip

To the shepherd: These may or may not be 10.6.3 permissions problems. Have you tried:
1 Exit Audacity
2 move libmp3lame.dylib to somewhere else in your user space (or to anywhere if you are logged in as an administrator)
3 search for and remove any other copies of libmp3lame.dylib
4 open ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/audacity.cfg in a text editor, edit [MP3] MP3LibPath= to point to the new file location, then save the changed .cfg and restart Audacity

Logging in as root "may" make a difference if these are permissions problems, though if you can see the file in the Audacity browse dialogue, I doubt it.

Note you can export from Audacity as AIFF and convert to MP3 in iTunes:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/w/index.ph ... od#convert


Gale