I don't understand why the makers of dBpowerAMP charge for incorporating the LAME MP3 encoder into their product.

AudioGrabber doesn't, nor do any others that I'm aware of.

Can someone explain?

Thanks,

BK

Thomson contacted Spoon and demanded him to pay royalties for including a MP3 encoder within his app.

So the author could have simply opted to support EXTERNAL encoders and not bundled LAME with the software as an INTERNAL encoder, right? Isn't that what the AudioGrabber programmer did?

It's only because he includes the encoder in his distribution that he has to pay?

I mean, for $14 you get a lot of good stuff, but it just struck me as odd, given that LAME is a free project.

Yes, he could have just decided to only support MP3 encoding through external command-line encoders, like EAC and many others also does. This is also why the LAME site dosen't have pre-compiled binaries for download, and also why they are writing things on their site like :

"LAME is an educational tool to be used for learning about MP3 encoding"

Instead of just saying that it's for encoding MP3s for regular playback purposses

Are you familiar with AudioGrabber? That seems to work well externally. They have a good download page that makes it clear:

http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/download.html

They provide the DLL link there.

Someone said that 3.97 lame has been finalized after like a TON of time. Is that right? I have been using the 3.95.1 that is shown on that page. If I want to upgrade to 3.97, do I just copy the DLL file over? (BTW, is 3.95.1 a beta? Or was it a final? I get confused. I've seen 3.97b1 and am not sure if it was 3.97.1 or not.)

Is there any chance that dBpowerAMP is going to be updated any time soon? That thing has been at 11.5 for a long time, right?

Sorry, i have never used AudioGrabber or for that matter DBpowerAMP, as i'm an EAC and foobar2000 kind of guy

I would definetely recommend you to update to LAME v3.97 and exchange the lame_enc.dll file out with the new one, as the old version you where using(v3.95.1) was from January 2004.

Wow - the new one is like 500k and the old was like 150k. Must be goodies in there.

So what do you use to convert your MP3's? I use dBpowerAMP to convert audio book stuff down to 32kbps, 22khz, 16bit, Mono. Music Match doesn't let me specify that level of detail - it goes to 32kbps, 11khz and I think 8 bit, with no option to change it. dBpowerAMP lets me specify it so I can get it just how I want it. Otherwise, I would not use it.

I use Audiograbber because it also lets me rip my audiobook cd's to 32kbps, 22khz, 16 bit Mono. I can specify exactly what I want.

If Music Match would let me specify in that level of detail, I guess I would have just stuck with it instead. Plus, Music Match doesn't convert from very many formats, I guess, while dBpowerAMP does. I wish there was one tool that could do it all, but I'm having trouble finding that.

I used to previously transcode from my EAC ripped WavPack images with embedded cuesheet + logfile to MP3 track files with fb2k. Then i found out about an EAC plugin called REACT, which when been propperly setup, will automate all this with just a single click, so that is what i have been using for a while now. When the plugin first has been setup as per my preferences regarding e.g. the different commandlines and codecs that should be run, then when i start EAC and load a CD and press F10, then the CD will be ripped and then encoded to a WavPack image with embedded cuesheet(with album gain REM entries) and log file + LAME MP3 track files(-V2 --vbr-new). The WavPack image is automatically named as 'Artist - (Year) Album' and moved to my 'D:\Music\WV' folder, and the MP3 track files copied to a folder named 'Artist - (Year) Album' and moved to my 'D:\Music\MP3' folder.

Dude - that sounds pretty darn impressive. Nice setup - totally.

Hey - sort of off topic - but one of the things I like about iTunes on OS X is that if you change the artist or album or track info in the TAG info, it also changes the folder structure on the hard drive as well. No manually going back and moving stuff around or what not. I really dig that.