Claims that LAME is lame are lame
p2pnet.net News:- Reports that the LAME v3.96 mp3 encoder update is, well, lame are unfounded, says one of the developers, Gabriel Bouvigne.
Interviewed in Afterdawn here, he says ‘Use with confidence’.
Nasty rumours that 3.96 is extremely buggy have been floating around, but …
“Psychoacoustic encoders are not binary things,” Afterdawn quotes Bouvigne as saying. “It is not ‘it works’ or ‘it doesn’t work’. It is perfectly normal to encounter regressions on some samples while there are improvements on other ones. What is important is the global situation.”
And, “Several people are assuming that since 3.96 is quite faster than old versions, we are favoring speed over quality,” states Bouvigne. “This is totally false. We did not simplify the psychoacoustic model at all. All the speed improvements are purely algorithmic improvements. We think that an encoder should also be as fast as possible, and that speed is an important factor regarding encoder choice.
Bouvigne saysa users can expect new versions to be better than 3.90.3 in lower bitrates and, “This is (I think) already the case with the lower VBR settings (”–preset medium”, “-V4″, “-V5″) which seems to be competitive against ABR modes, even if the general opinion is still that for lower bitrates VBR is not as good as ABR.”
You can get the upgrade here.
