LAME 4.0 - 5 times faster?

Lasse Penttinen
9 May 2003 9:48

Ready to start compressing MP3s with turbo boost? Take a look at LAME developer Takehiro Tominaga's alpha release 4.0a6.

This is compiled from Takehiro's experimental branch so, BEWARE!! I've only made this available for people to try for fun, it's not ready for general consumption. It sounds reasonable, but it's main claim to fame is that it is about 4 - 5 times faster than the current encoder!

Accroding to the discussions at the source, the speed improvements are very real. Actually one user reports over 7x speed improvements.
CAUTION: This is very experimental piece of software

The main development branch of LAME is currently 3.94, which still is in experimental alpha stage. This 4.0a6 is from Takehiro’s own experimental branch, and definitely not suitable for normal usage.
Go to Hydrogen Audio for LAME 4.0 alpha 6
Download LAME 3.94 alpha from HERE
Download latest stable LAME from HERE (Recommended!)