lame(1)

NAME
lame - create mp3 audio files

SYNOPSIS
lame [options] <infile> <outfile>

DESCRIPTION

Lame is a program which can be used to create compressed audio files. (Lame aint MP3 encoder). These audio files can be played back by popular mp3 players such as mpg123. To read from stdin, use "-" for <infile>. To write to stdout, use a "-" for <outfile>.

OPTIONS

-m mode
     (s)tereo, (j)oint, (f)orce or (m)ono (default j) force = force mid/side stereo on all frames.

-b bitrate
    set the bitrate, default 128kbps

-s sample-freq
    frequency of input file (khz) - default 44.1

--resample sfreq
    sampling frequency of output file(kHz)- default=input sfreq

--mp3input
    input file is a MP3 file

--voice
    experimental voice mode

-v  use variable bitrate (VBR)

-V n
    quality setting for VBR. Default n=4, 0=high quality,bigger files. 9=smaller files

-b <bitrate>
    specify minimum allowed bitrate for VBR, default 32kbs

-B <bitrate>
    specify miximum allowed bitrate for VBR, default 256kbs

-t  disable Xing VBR informational tag

--nohist
    disable VBR histogram display

-h  slower, but (maybe) higher quality

-f  fast mode (low quality)

-k  disable sfb=21 cutoff

-d  allow channels to have different blocktypes

--athonly
    only use the ATH for masking

-r  input is raw pcm

-x  force byte-swapping of input

-a  autoconvert from stereo to mono file for mono encoding

-e emp
    de-emphasis n/5/c (default: n)

-p  add CRC error protection (adds additional 16bits per frame to stream)

-c  mark as copyright

-o  mark as non-original (i.e. do not set the original bit)

-S  don't print progress report, VBR histograms

-g  run graphical analysis on <infile>. <infile> can also be a .mp3 file. (This feature is a compile time option. Your binary may for speed reasons be compiled without this.)

EXAMPLES

Recommended way to create a fixed 128kbs mp3 file from a wav file

    lame -h foo.wav foo.mp3

Copy track 7 from a regular audio CD, using cdparanoia

    cdparanoia 7 foo.wav ; lame -h foo.wav foo.mp3

Copy track 7 from a regular audio CD with cdda2wav, where the cdrom device is device /dev/cdrom to an mp3 file foo.mp3

    cdda2wav -O wav -t 7 -D /dev/cdrom - | lame - foo.mp3

Streaming from stereo 44.1kHz raw pcm data, encoding mono at 16kHz. (you may or may not need the -x option):

    cat inputfile | lame -a -x -r -m m -s 44.1 --resample 16 -b 24 - - > output

BUGS

Quality is much better than encoders based on the ISO routines, but still not as good as the FhG encoder.

SEE ALSO
mpg123(1), cdparanoia(1), cdda2wav(1), sox(1)

AUTHORS
LAME originally developed by Mike Cheng and now maintained by
Mark Taylor.  GPSYCHO psycho-acoustic model by Mark Taylor.
(http://www.sulaco.org/mp3).
mpglib by Michael Hipp
Manual page by William Schelter, Nils Faerber