dBpoweramp Music Converter        { Help Index   >   MP3 (Lame) Encoder } Lame went through much refinement to become the highest quality MP3 encoder. Illustrate are also one of the few companies who have made a sizeable donation to the Lame development project.

Compression Options

Lame offers 4 types of encoding:

• Variable Bit Rate (VBR) files are made up of small audio chunks, called frames. The VBR encoder decides which bit rate to use for each frame. Bit rates can drop down to lower values when it is warranted (if there is not much sound complexity) and switch up to a higher bit rate when required. VBR files are the preferred method of MP3 encoding,
• Average Bit Rate (ABR) is like VBR except constraints are placed on Bit Rate so that over time it averages out to the desired value,
• Constant Bit Rate (CBR) a fixed bit rate is used throughout the encoding process, want the highest quality MP3, choose 320kbps CBR.
• Free Format extends the constant bit rate to much higher values (such as 640 kbps), has limited player support.

Clicking Advanced:

Frequency - number of samples per second to be encoded, [as source] allows the output frequency to match the input frequency (recommended).

Channels:

[auto] matches the channels to the source, for 2 channels Joint Stereo is used.

Mono a recording with only a single channel of information.

Joint Stereo - luckily for stereo compression sound on the left channel is very similar to sound on the right channel, Joint Stereo takes advantage of this similarity to use the savings on the 2nd channel to give higher quality compression.

Forced Joint Stereo - forces separate encoding of left and right channels, only recommended when high bitrates are used.

Quality specifies how much effort goes into compression, this mode is applicable to all types of encoding.

Copyright marks the MP3 file as containing copyright material.

Original marks the MP3 file as an original file (not a copy).

CRC Error Protection adds a checksum to each frame, a decoder is able to verify each frame has not corrupted, however very few decoders use checksums.

Force ISO Compatibility should be used if your player is having trouble playing MP3 files created by Lame.

Preserve all frequencies normally lame will reduce the upper frequency if the bitrate is below 300kbps, this allocates bit rate to the parts you can hear. This option forces lame to preserve all frequencies.

LAME Version allows selection of a specific version of LAME

Codec Background

LAME is open source developed under the LGPL, the name is an acronym for Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder in terms of quality, LAME is the top MP3 encoder.

Further details: [https://lame.sourceforge.net]

ID Tag Details

MP3 files can store 3 different ID Tag types: ID3v2, APEv2 and ID3v1 (old standard):

ID3v2 (recommended and default) able to store fields of any name and any length, Unicode compatible, can store album art & ratings.

APEv2 able to store fields of any name and any length, fully Unicode compatible. APEv2 Tags can store album art. Limited player support.

ID3v1 limited to fixed fields of around 30 characters each: Artist, Album, Title, Comment and special numerical fields: Track Number, Genre, Year. ID3v1 tags are not Unicode compatible.

Terminology Encoding:  compress and write audio track,
Decoding:  uncompress and read the track,
ID Tags:  meta data such as artist & album are embedded inside the audio file,
Lossless:  compression without audio quality loss,
Lossy:  audio quality is sacrificed (how much depends on bitrate and codec used) to achieve smaller files,
Gapless:  allows the decoder to decode audio stream without gaps (silence).

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