LAME is a high quality MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) encoder licensed under the
LGPL.
Latest LAME release: v3.100
(October 2017)
LAME development started around mid-1998. Mike Cheng started it as a patch
against the 8hz-MP3 encoder sources. After some quality concerns raised by
others, he decided to start from scratch based on the dist10 sources. His
goal was only to speed up the dist10 sources, and leave its quality untouched.
That branch (a patch against the reference sources) became Lame 2.0, and with
Lame 3.81 all of dist10 code was replaced, making LAME no more only a
patch.
The project quickly became a team project. Mike Cheng eventually left
leadership and started working on tooLame, an MP2 encoder. Mark Taylor became
leader and started pursuing better quality in addition to increased speed. He
can be considered the initiator of the LAME project in its current form. He
released version 3.0 featuring gpsycho, a new psychoacoustic model he
developed.
In early 2003 Mark left project leadership, and since then the project has
been lead through the cooperation of the active developers (currently three
individuals).
Today, LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at
VBR, mostly thanks to the dedicated work of its developers and the open
source licensing model that allowed the project to tap into engineering
resources from all around the world. Both quality and speed improvements are
still happening, probably making LAME the only MP3 encoder still being
actively developed.
Quick Links
Contact - to get in touch with LAME developers,
with other LAME users, or to submit bug reports.
Download - to obtain the latest LAME source
code.
Links - to get to know about software using LAME,
obtain precompiled LAME binaries from external sites, and discover more
information about MP3.
Developers - the people behind the LAME project.
History/ChangeLog
- what has been happening lately.
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