Help with LAME MP3 Encoder Install

[Fabbelle]

all this would make sense if i knew what "at the command line" meant. I'm off to find a tutorial video. Pages and pages of text gives me a headache.

OK this one's not bad. The person who did it sounds like a 12 year old version of Cliff Richard!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UahdmFryRQ

[QDROMAN]

Very frustrated. I am using A 1.2.6. I properly download LAME per instructions. But when I attempt to save, pointing at the file in the C:Lame for Audacity directory and tagging the .dll file, I continually get "Could not open MP3 encoding library"


I see many people had problems with Audacity .7. I tried the Beta .10 version and got same problem. Thought reverting to stable version would help. Not true.

How do I get to save MP3 files?

[steve]

Download the ZIP version (for Windows) from this page: http://lame.buanzo.com.ar
Extract the contents of the zip file into your Audacity folder (which is in "Program Files").
Open up Preferences (from the Edit menu) and on the "File Formats" page, click on the "Find Library" button.

[msd]

Thanks ericman13 -- your solution worked for me

Please fix tihs problem Audacity team -- we shouldn't have to go through this workaround.

Also please change that default set up of recording in mono instead of stereo -- that's stupid.

[steve]

Please fix tihs problem Audacity team -- we shouldn't have to go through this workaround.

Unfortunately the problem is not reproducible for any of the Audacity developers (and I can't reproduce the problem either if that means anything).

Since Lame has been available as a Zip file download I have used the method described in my previous post as I find it quick and convenient. Also, as some of the machines that I've installed on have had other versions of Lame already installed I find it convenient to unzip the Audacity build of Lame into the Audacity program folder so there is no confusion about which Lame version Audacity should be using.

I'm not saying that there is never a problem installing Lame, but out of the millions of Audacity installations worldwide the incidents of problems seems to be pretty small and in recent times users on this forum have solved their problems by using the zip file as described earlier. I feel sure that if the Audacity developers were able to reproduce a problem installing Lame then they would do something about it but how can you fix something that shows no sign of being broken?

Also please change that default set up of recording in mono instead of stereo -- that's stupid.

This is a matter of what you use Audacity for. For many people stereo is a preferred default - it is certainly better for those transfering their vinyl albums to CD.

[eyadnour]

I SPAM

[mgdol]

I had the same problem with using the lame_enc.dll and Audacity. After spending way to
much time on this problem I eventually figured out that there are many versions of the lame_enc,
most of which do not work with Audacity, and to make matters worse the authors of lame_enc made no
attempt to put version labels on them. Only the file sizes give any clue that there is a difference.
Shouldn't the Properties right click option show a version number!

Nor did the authors of Audacity make any attempt to tell the user why a lame_enc.dll is being
rejected when you show Audacity where it is. This is just poor programing practice by both.

In my case I was using Audacity 1.2.4 and found encoders with file sizes of 171 and 672KB were
accepted by Audacity 1.2.4. After Audacity accepted the encoder it identified the version number,
How it does so I don't know because I could find no obvious version id by looking inside the file
with a hex editor.

Perhaps Audacity 1.2.6 will accept more versions, including the ones labeled "Lame_v3.98.2_for_Audacity_on_Windows.exe" which just bounced off my v1.2.4.

An archive of the encoder versions is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/lame/files/.

Depending on which version of Ausacity you have it may be a trial/error to find a encoder ver
that works. You'd think the main Audacity page would have this information obviously
available! And why do they bury this forum so deep, I had a hard time finding it!

[steve]

It is strongly recommended that people use up to date versions of Audacity. Obsolete versions will probably contain bugs and peculiarities that have long since been fixed.
Unlike other MP3 encoders, Lame is still under active development with the constant aim of producing higher quality MP3 files. The Audacity team want to pass on these benefits to Audacity users and so have upgraded Audacity to make use of an up to date code base of Lame. As the Audacity developers have no control over the Lame code, many of the necessary changes are a direct consequence of the Lame code. When dealing with a moving target (changes to the Lame code) and providing cross platform support (Win XP, Vista, Mac, Linux) it has not been possible to provide backward compatibility. Given all that, it has no doubt been a difficult task to get Lame to work reliably on all machines, but the current version, as far as we are aware, succeeds in doing so. I'm sure that any experienced programmers with expertise in cross platform support for Lame would be welcomed by the Audacity developers with open arms.

You'd think the main Audacity page would have this information obviously available!

Following the links from the main Audacity web site provide a lot (full?) information about how to obtain and install the correct version of Lame for current versions of Audacity. Additional volunteers to help complete and improve the documentation are also welcome.

And why do they bury this forum so deep, I had a hard time finding it!

It's academic now since you've found it, but I'm not sure why you had so much trouble - it's listed all over the place:
3rd line down on the main Audacity page: http://audacityteam.org/
In Audacity 1.3.11 it is also listed on the "About Audacity" screen.
Top of the second paragraph on the "Contact" page: http://audacityteam.org/contact/
The Google Search box at the top right of every page on the main web site provides searching of the forum.
Searching any major search engine for "Audacity Forum" should bring up this forum.

[mklassen]

Audacity with Lame encoder was working on my computer, for many months.

I saved the Audacity 1.2.16 installer and the Lame installer that I had used.
Then, I wiped the disk-drive, reinstalled Windows XP SP2, and then installed SP3, and then installed all the post-SP3 fixes.

I reinstalled Audacity, and reinstalled Lame, from those saved .EXE files.

Now, I get the same error-message that the other people have been reporting,
when I try to add-in the MP3 encoder into Audacity.

I've also uninstalled Audacity, uninstalled Lame, and fetched Audacity 1.3.12-beta from SourceForge, and downloaded the Lame encoder, and installed the latest versions of both programs. But, I still get that error-message.

So, now what?

[steve]

Now, I get the same error-message that the other people have been reporting

Rather than expecting people to read through 4 pages of a topic that is a year old, why don't you just describe what problem you are having.

Please include full details about what your operating system is and which version of Audacity you are using now.
As it says in the thread, the recommended version of Audacity is 1.3.12, so you will hopefully be using that, in which case you have posted in the wrong part of the forum - this board is for Audacity 1.2.x

Have you followed the instructions here: http://audacityteam.org/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3 ?