A great MP3 encoder

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: A great MP3 encoder
started by: longship

Posted by longship on Dec. 12 2004,02:45

The "lame" encoder, and its brother "notlame" encoder, produce very high quality MP3 files.

A binary tarball that works "out-of-the-box" with DSL 0.9.x is available on the
NotLame site:

http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Personal/csanders/not_lame/

Scroll down.
Under Stable release 0.96.1 (the latest at this writing) find:
Red Hat Linux 9 and SuSE 9
"Pentium II+: RPM | .TAR.GZ"

Select the TAR.GZ and save to your hard drive (200K).

The following kind of presumes a HD install:

Become root
$ sudo su
Go to local bin directory
# cd /usr/local/bin
Untar the archive
# tar xvzf ~dsl/notlame-3.96.1.tar.gz
Link the binary into /usr/local/bin
# ln -s notlame notlame-3.96.1/notlame
If you want to also access the program as "lame"
# ln -s notlame lame

That's it.

HTML-based documentation is in
/usr/local/bin/notlame-3.96.1/documentation/

This thing makes awesome MP3's.

Regards,
Arne

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 12 2004,03:14

Cool.

Roll it up into a nice tar.gz with all the paths (/opt, /home, etc) set up and submit it to Ke4nt to go in the extension area!

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 12 2004,03:38

hmmm....
I'd originally put lame into the cdparanoia extension, but after some research it seems that mp3 is one of those patent-encumbered thingies, which may pose a legal problem as a redistributed application. Besides, Ogg kicks mp3's scrawny butt.

..and I don't want to hear anything about my patent flippy-floppiness. :angry:

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 12 2004,03:59

True ogg kicks mp3 up one side and down the other, and thankfully, more and more players, both software and hardware are suporting it. (Most notably newer Rio players and iRiver's entire line)

But mp3 is still more widely known, and since the guys who made lame had no access to the code for the mp3 spec, it should be okay.

Posted by adraker on Dec. 12 2004,10:54

You forgot to mention Mikshaws patent
flippy-floppiness.
Sorry.
Couldn't help myself.
But seriously, "I don't want to launch a mp3 v Ogg/Vorbis
war", I ask merely out of interest- what's the advantages of Ogg?
I had a short snuffle through it a while ago, didn't see any file size
advantage, and stuck with mp3 when I found mp3gain-
a normalizer I can run under Linux.I had the impression that it is
very difficult to normalize Ogg files without converting to wav
first, and that sounds kinda messy.
But maybe there are other compelling advantages to Ogg ...

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 12 2004,15:12

As for the normalization, a compressed audio file of any type is going to be lame-- err, bad-- when converted from another compressed audio format, even if it is first converted to an uncompressed format. Anything you do to a compressed sound will affect its quality, so it's always better to start with an uncompressed file and normalize before it's encoded.

I'm not trying to start a debate, I just personally prefer open formats when possible. It's not the software which is the problem (lame is GPL) but rather the mp3 format itself is patented. You can write all the source code you want, but the actual process of creating an mp3 is somehow owned by people who request payment for the use of anything (distributed) which encodes mp3s.
This is why you often have to download a separate codec/plugin when you want to use mp3 in your audio/video software, because the developers of these softwares don't want the legal or financial hassles associated with such a patent.

Posted by adraker on Dec. 12 2004,19:12

Point taken on "Open-Sourcedness".
Re: Paragraph 1 - thats the thing about
mp3gain- it acts on the "gain field" in
the file, no format conversion.
I didn't even know there was one.
You can even have a graphical version
for winders!

Posted by ke4nt1 on Dec. 12 2004,20:41

You folks may want to take a look at the grip extension.
Could be just what your lookin for...

73
ke4nt

Posted by longship on Dec. 13 2004,03:55

I have a lot of experience with Lame, producing high quality
MPEGs for my personal use. I have a huge investment in
using MPEG already. I'm not interested in hearing about
how wonderful Ogg is. And I don't give a tinker's cuss
about the patents. Feeling that there might be others in
the same situation I thought I'd share this info with other
DSL users.

Regards,
Arne

"I didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition."
Monty Python

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 13 2004,06:20

Easy there, young one.

We are very interested in the possible legal reprocussions of the mp3 format, basically because none of us want to go to jail.

Which is where, if all the software patent people have their way, will be where most free software people end up.

As for which format is better, the only thing that's nicer about ogg, is the variable bitrate encoding. Means that silence in an audio file takes up less space than heavy action rocking. Also means that you can encode to a higher max bitrate in ogg than mp3 and it will fit into the same space. For example, I can fit a 192kbps ogg into the same 3mb that I can fit a 128kbps mp3 because the silent and quiet parts of the song take up less space.

And it sounds better, because ogg uses floating point math encoding compared to mp3's integer math. Means more precise harmonics and pitches. Wav format also uses floating point math.

Just a little info from the technical side. ^_^

-J.P.

Posted by adraker on Dec. 13 2004,07:35

That, I didn't know!
Thanks J.P. for your reply given in the
spirit of open information exchange and
friendly banter.
I knew about the VBR, but didn't realise
the implicatations.Didn't know about the
floating point versus integer calculations.
I can see technical advantages.
It seems that to take advantage of all this
you need to go straight from source to
Ogg.Or at least have a collection of Oggs
produced that way, and not having been
subjected to a conversion process first.
And who has their favorite band locked
away in the garage (now that kidnaping
and deprivation of liberty have become
criminal offences)?
That last bit was actually a joke.
I probably need to point that out in some
cases.
Thanks again for the advice- that was very
informative!

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 13 2004,08:23

Heh no prob. ^_^

Yeah, to reap the benefits of ogg, you need to encode them from a high bitrate source, like a .wav file.

Just converting an mp3 won't make any difference in sound quality at all.

-J.P.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Dec. 13 2004,08:31

Lame also offers VBR encoding...

But I LOVE the look on co-workers faces when I mention "OGG"
( lost-in-space )

73
ke4nt

Posted by adraker on Dec. 13 2004,21:06

Hey, you're a Recording Industry
Pro- what do the commercial people
use?

:laugh:

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 13 2004,21:41

Ahh, young Ogg Vorbis was a Norse Pirate.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Dec. 13 2004,22:28

adraker:

Everything I master is done in a 96KHz - 24 bit environment,
and "compression" is a dirty word, unless your peak-limiting
and normalizing selections for radio or TV broadcast..

Many other styles of music also "favor" or prefer
peak-limiting and normaliizing for album releases and demos..

Most of the "archiving/restorations" I work on are as
dynamic and unaltered as possible..

Older works, like from 78's, older 10" 33 1/3's,
or some type of early tape devices require "treatment"
to restore some intelligibility and fidelity..

If I am recording , rather than restoring, it is quite different.
Many times the "player" is mechanical,
like a "Regina Music Box" , which is simply a large
music box. ( think ballerina and wind-up )
About the size of a console radio from the 40's.
A large metal disc is rotating from a wound-up spring,
under "tines" which vibrate thru a soundboard ( like a piano )
and are heard thruout a room. Using high-quality condensor
mikes in an X-Y stereo pattern captures the subtle warmth of
the machine.

Once captured and recorded ,
very little is done in the way of "treatment"
to create a finished master recording.

Most of the pieces I am requested to convert into a
"web friendly" format are the usual WMA or RA files
that are so common with web designers.
Ending with very low bitrates,
and consequently, very poor quality.
Many times this is intentional to protect the material
from being copied or distributed.

I also frequently "enhance" recordings for use by
law enforcement agencies, law firms, and suspicious husbands/wives.
These are usually micro-cassettes,
or digital voice recorders, and of the worst quality.
Intelligibility is the key here, limiting the bandwidth and noise
to extract the most "vocal" elements out of the recording.
I have many tools to aid in reducing noise and enhancing speech.

73
ke4nt

Posted by adraker on Dec. 14 2004,04:21

Thanks Kent, its just very very
interesting.You cover it all by the
looks.I sympathize about the micro
cassettes/dictaphones.
The only worse thing could be magnetic
wire recorders.
Or Bob Geldoff.I joke again.
But one last question,when you say 96k
24bit,is that to wav, pcm or similar?

Regards,
Draker