LAME is a software encoder that converts digital audio into the MP3 audio coding format. LAME is a

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

project that was first released in 1998 and has incorporated many improvements since then, including an improved

psychoacoustic Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of the perception of sound by the human auditory system. It is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound including noise, speech, ...

model. The LAME encoder outperforms early encoders like

L3enc Fraunhofer l3enc was the first public software able to encode pulse-code modulation (PCM) .wav files to the MP3 format. The first public version was released on July 13, 1994. This command-line tool was shareware and limited to 112 kbit/s. ...

and possibly the "gold standard encoder" MP3enc, both marketed by Fraunhofer. LAME was required by some programs released as free software in which LAME was linked for MP3 support. This avoided including LAME itself, which used patented techniques, and so required patent licenses in some countries. All relevant patents have since expired, and LAME is now bundled with Audacity.

History

The name LAME is a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hofs ...

for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder". Around mid-1998, Mike Cheng created LAME 1.0 as a set of modifications against the 8Hz-MP3 encoder source code. After some quality concerns were raised by others, he decided to start again from scratch based on the dist10 MPEG reference software 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. The project quickly became a team project. Mike Cheng eventually left leadership and started working on tooLAME (an MP2 encoder). Mark Taylor then started pursuing increased quality in addition to better speed, and released version 3.0 featuring gpsycho, a new

psychoacoustic model Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of the perception of sound by the human auditory system. It is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound including noise, speech, ...

he developed. A few key improvements since LAME 3.x, in chronological order: * May 1999 (LAME 3.0): a new psychoacoustic model (GPSYCHO) is released. * June 1999 (LAME 3.11): The first

variable bitrate Variable bitrate (VBR) is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. As opposed to constant bitrate (CBR), VBR files vary the amount of output data per time segment. VBR allows ...

(VBR) implementation is released. Soon after this, LAME also became able to target lower sampling frequencies from MPEG-2. (LAME 3.99 also supports the technologically simpler

average bitrate In telecommunications, average bitrate (ABR) refers to the average amount of data transferred per unit of time, usually measured per second, commonly for digital music or Digital video, video. An MP3 file, for example, that has an average bit rate ...

(ABR), but it is unclear whether it was added before or with VBR.) * November 1999 (LAME 3.52): LAME switches from a GPL license to an LGPL license, which allows using it with closed-source applications. * May 2000 (LAME 3.81): the last pieces of the original ISO demonstration code are removed. LAME is not a patch anymore, but a full encoder. * December 2003 (LAME 3.94): substantial improvement to default settings, along with improved speed. LAME no longer requires users to enter complicated parameters to produce good results. * May 2007 (LAME 3.98): default variable bitrate encoding speed is vastly improved.

Patents and legal issues

Like all MP3 encoders, LAME implemented techniques covered by

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s owned by the

Fraunhofer Society The Fraunhofer Society () is a German publicly-owned research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science (as opposed to the Max Planck Society, which works primarily on Basic re ...

and others. The developers of LAME did not license the technology described by these patents. Distributing compiled binaries of LAME, its libraries, or programs that derive from LAME in countries where those patents have been granted may have constituted infringement, but since 23 April 2017, all of these patents have expired. The LAME developers stated that, since their code was only released in source code form, it should only be considered as an educational description of an MP3 encoder, and thus did not infringe any patent in itself. They also advised users to obtain relevant patent licenses before including a compiled version of the encoder in a product. Some software was released using this strategy: companies used the LAME library, but obtained patent licenses. In the course of the 2005 Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal, there were reports that the

Extended Copy Protection Extended Copy Protection (XCP) is a software package developed by the British company First 4 Internet (which on 20 November 2006, changed its name to Fortium Technologies Ltd) and sold as a copy protection or digital rights management (DRM) sch ...

rootkit A rootkit is a collection of computer software, typically malicious, designed to enable access to a computer or an area of its software that is not otherwise allowed (for example, to an unauthorized user) and often masks its existence or the exist ...

included on some

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

s had portions of the LAME library without complying with the terms of the

LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

References

External links

*
LAME binaries
- RareWares
LAME binaries for Audacity
- recommended for the Audacity free and

GPL The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first c ...

audio editor
LAME Wiki
- HydrogenAudio (audiophile information)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lame 1998 software Audio compression Cross-platform software Free audio codecs MP3

History

Patents and legal issues

See also

References

External links