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[David_1cog]

MC reports 'MP3 Encoder VBR' plugin as version 2.0.60.  MP3 LAME stable is at 3.96.  Is MC out of date?  Can we manually upgrade LAME encoder by installing:

http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

Same question for Monkey's Audio:

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/versionhistory.html

Thanks.

[JimH]

The 2.0.60 is our plug-in version, not the version of Lame.

The version of Lame we use is always what we believe to be the "last known good".

Same for APE.

[GHammer]

You can look in the JRiver directory for the lame files used by MC. I replaced mine with the latest and have had no adverse effects.

APE you can't do in that manner as far as I know, but since Matt is both Monkey and MC I hope the APE system in MC is always the latest.

[David_1cog]

Jim, why are the MC plugins so far behind the stable releases for LAME + Monkey?

LAME: MC plugin = 3.93.1 (December 2002); latest stable = 3.96 (April 2004)

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/lame/lame/doc/html/history.html?rev=1.70

Monkey: MC plugin = 3.97b (August 2002); latest stable = 3.99 (April 2004)

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/versionhistory.html


There appears to be many improvements and bug fixes for both.

[David_1cog]

You can look in the JRiver directory for the lame files used by MC. I replaced mine with the latest and have had no adverse effects.

Yeah, I've done the same, replacing just the lame.exe with 3.96 at:

http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

Jim, could you please confirm that this is OK?  Also, are we able to update Monkey if we want - if so, how?

[GHammer]

Actually if you read the beta release notes, you'll find somewhere in the 130s that APE was update to the newest.

That has been in the past week or 10 days I think.

[David_1cog]

I got version info from http://accessories.musicex.com/mediacenter/accessories.php (Encoder Plug-ins page).  Guess these are not up to date?

[Matt]

There was a discussion some time ago, and people recommended 3.93 instead of 3.96 for LAME.  Feel free to start a new thread to talk about it if you disagree.  MC will use whatever LAME.exe you place in the MC\Plugins directory.

MC 10 builds always contain the latest APE support (currently 3.99 Update 4), so there's no need to use the plugin download page for APE.

[David_1cog]

Thanks, Matt.

I searched but couldn't find any discussion on 3.93 / 3.96 in the past year.

I know next to nothing about audio encoding but the changelog for LAME seems to be a compelling reason for MC to include the latest build... unless there is a problem with 3.96 when used with MC?  I've ripped a few albums and it appears to work fine.

I guess if people have an opinion they can use this thread - it's on-topic?

[Alex B]

Actually there are at least two different scholars of the LAME developers and enthusiasts.

One scholar believes in the rather old and very rigorously ABX tested LAME version 3.90.3 (not 3.93). You can found many of them at hydrogenaudio forums: www.hydrogenaudio.org. Especially you should read the MP3 part of their FAQ page www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=7516&.

Others are developing the LAME series 3.91, 3.92, 3.93, 3.94, 3.95 and the 3.96, which is the latest "stable" at the moment.

I don't think there is much difference in the audio quality, which is not improved after 3.90.3. The biggest difference is that 3.96 is much faster when encoding VBR files. Some people say that this has sacrificed audio quality in some difficult cases.

I have always used an external MP3 encoder with MC. Currently I use the both LAME versions. My old standard is the 3.90.3. I use it when I like to be sure that the audio quality is the best possible.

When I am in a hurry and I have many CDs to rip and if those CDs are not the best audiophile ones I use v. 3.96, because it is twice as fast.

Today I ripped Queen's Made In Heaven CD. I used the 3.96 because I want to get through my CD collection someday.

After ripping I noticed that high trebles were somewhat distorted. (I think that was intermodulation distortion what I heard). The rip was made with the "--preset extreme --noreplaygain" custom VBR setting. I thought that it was encoder's fault and re-ripped with the 3.90.3 and with the setting "--alt-preset insane" (best 320 kbits CBR). The distortion was still there. So I did third rip to the APE files and noticed that the distortion is actually in the original CD.

So, which version stays on my HD? I have not decided yet. I tried to compare those three versions and it was very difficult to hear any differences. So I probably keep the smallest 3.96 VBR, because I can always re-rip if needed. The album is not one of my favorites anyway.

I my opinion JRiver could safely update the internal encoder to the version 3.96. It is probably the fastest one yet and there are many small improvements and fixes. V. 3.94 and 3.95 were not so good.