HELP Audacity/Lame to MP3 Please? It's not working.

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hi anyone/all,

My greetings from upside down in Oz. I have a Mac OSX10.6. I’ve installed Audacity 2. Also Lame
per instructions,so as to record for Librivox and export as to them as mp3, and it doesn’t work for me.
I tried the zip version of Lame also. I’ve followed all instructions muchissimo, until I feel nauseous…what to do?
Brain fatigued… and battered many hours later…you know the story.

Grateful for any helpers

Annapurna

2

Saying it “doesn’t work” doesn’t tell us what’s wrong. Does Audacity say it cannot find the MP3 encoding library?

Were you following http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#maclame ?

Try this:

  1. Make sure you have quit Audacity (Command - Q)
  2. In Finder, Go > Go to Folder and type
~/Library/Application Support/
  1. There should be an “audacity” folder in Application Support. If the “audacity” folder is there, open it, and if “audacity.cfg” is there, trash “audacity.cfg”. If it’s not there, it doesn’t matter.
  2. Put libmp3lame.dylib which you downloaded from http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#maclame inside the same folder that you launch the Audacity application from.
  3. Launch Audacity and try and export as MP3.

You can also export from Audacity as WAV or AIFF then convert it to MP3 in iTunes .


Gale

3

Or you can use iTunes to convert it to Apple’s native compression format AAC

4

Gale and Waxcylinder,

Oh thank you both so very much! I followed like a lamb, and all is well and happy.
One more thing I know how to do.
Annapurna

5

You may find this recommended workflow from the manual useful: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sample_workflow_for_exporting_to_itunes.html

WC

6

BTW the reason for choosing AAC over MP3 is that size-for-size (and bitrate-for-bitrate) AAC is generally reckoned to give better quality than MP3.

If you are a dedicated Apple/iTunes/iPod person then AAC is a good choice.

Choose MP3 if you are likely to migrate to A.N.Other player in the future - or if you want to “share” recordings with friends who use non-iTunes platforms.

WC