MAZ (not only) MP3 ENCODERs PAGE

last updated 27-Jul-2002

NOTE: This page will not be updated anymore, see you at the new website www.maz-sound.com!




Here are two commercial MP3 codecs:

Program Price Demo? features
Dialog Medien MP3-OCX Encoder/Decoder
(for use in your own products)		 $199
$229
$189		 yes
yes
yes		 Mp3Play.OCX ( mpeg audio player )
Mp3Enc.OCX ( mpeg audio encoder )
ACD ( digital Audio CD reader )
Fraunhofer Institut MPEG 3 codec $250 yes MP3 encoder + decoder,
unbeaten #1 in quality


Note: this page features REAL encoders, not frontends.




non-MP3 Audio Compressors


        MPEGplus 1.79c  TOP!

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
MPEGplus 1.79c (78 KB)
< 1 minute
Win9x/NT/2000
Buschel
26-Nov-2001
freeware, lossy audio encoder similar to mp3, just better :-), mp+ files are playable by Winamp via mp+ Winamp plugin, for more players/plugins and batch encoders see authors download section
comes with 4 default presets: thumb (very low bitrate), radio (mid range bitrate), standard (very high quality, default), xtreme (even higher quality, for extraordinary hearings only) and insane (for those who prefer full frequency response)
I tested mp+ vs. mp3 (latest FHG as well as LAME) vs. ogg vs. aac vs. vqf vs. wma vs. ra(atrac), and for "near-CD-quality" mp+ is clearly my favourite, the -standard setting ends up at around 160 kbps usually, with a near-perfect quality usually - very clear treble and no audible pre-echoes nor weird flanging
what should I say, I switched from mp3 to mp+ for encoding my own audio-CD's and stuff
NEW: optimized the filterbank and debugged the coding of digital silence


        Ogg Vorbis 1.0  TOP!

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
Ogg Vorbis 1.0 (243 KB)
2 minutes
Win9x/NT/2000
xiph.org
27-Jul-2002
freeware, lossy audio encoder similar to mp3, but better audio quality, open source, 100% patent- and royalty-free, for any private *and* commercial use
the pack contains the drag'n'drop version of the encoder, a commandline encoder is available at the Vorbis site
the encoders, decoders, plugins at vorbis.com are under the GPL (GNU Public License) and the libraries are under the business-friendly BSD license
Winamp, Sonique, Windows MediaPlayer and almost every other player support OGG either natively or by a plugin, check the Vorbis download page
OggVorbis plugins for Winamp by Peter Pawlovski: decoder / encoder, and he has a OggVorbis filter for Cool Edit too
all Ogg Vorbis tools are available for Windows, Linux/BSD, Solaris, MacOS, BeOS ... and even OS/2 :-)
Maxx of kolabore wrote a nice Ogg Vorbis intro
NEW: after years of betas and RC's the long awaited 1.0 release version - bye bye MP3 :-)


        Monkey’s Audio 3.80f  TOP!

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
Monkey’s Audio 3.80f (2791 KB)
14 minutes
Win9x/NT/2000
Matthew T. Ashland
28-Nov-2000
freeware, the #1 lossless(!) WAV packer, perfect for archiving samples and HD-recording sessions/projects (important: read last sentence in my description!)
audio files packed with Monkey's Audio (.ape) can be played back by Winamp and Media Jukebox by plugins (included)
supports 8, 16 and 24 bit WAV's, mono/stereo, every bitrate
the compression is better than everything else I tested, incl. WinRAR (-mm), LPAC, RKAU, Sonarc, usually better than 50%
you think it's slow as hell? wrong! it's fast as hell! (can process most albums in under 3 minutes on a 500 Celeron)
Tagging support (ID3 tags used on MP3’s)
external encoder support - you can use Monkey's Audio as a front-end for all of your encoding needs
one negative note though: the previous version 2.71 encoded crap sometimes, I got a CRC error on depacking - although this didn't happen with the new version (tested the same WAV's), I'd recommended to use the included VERIFY function



MP3 Encoders


        MP3 Stream Recorder 2.2        

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
MP3 Stream Recorder 2.2 (1141 KB)
6 minutes
Win95/98
Greg Colley
14-Apr-2000
ad-supported freeware, allows you to record live mp3 streams from servers all over the Internet, so you can listen to the (former ;)) live feed whenever you like
to record a server stream enter the server address, select a filename to save this stream to - and press the RECORD button
you can specify the amount of the max allowed stream filesize that you may want to record (recording options)


        LAME 3.92  TOP!

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
LAME 3.92 (552 KB)
3 minutes
Win9x/NT/2000
Open Source Community
24-Apr-2002
freeware (GNU) MPEG Layer 3 encoder, "LAME" stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder", based on the ISO source but greatly improved with an own psy-model, quantization and bit allocation, since version 3.81 all ISO code has been removed
my package is the Intel compiler build with MMX & 3DNow! optimizations
works via commandline switches, has been developed by the Linux crowd, there are binaries for several platforms available
LAME and SCMPX are the reason why I removed all TOP symbols from the other MP3 encoders and even kicked some to black hole, please read the test of SCMPX here, the stuff said there is true for LAME too!
good resampling routine (if you encode at a different kHz rate compared to the source), uses a 19 point FIR filter with Blackman window
the cd-audio grabber "CDex" uses the LAME.DLL for instant encoding to MP3's
Vorbis support, both encoding and decoding
my personal recommended LAME encoder frontend is RazorLame, it's open source and additionally to the more common features it also allows to setup the filter cutoff and bandwith for instance
NEW: added ACM wrapper (MS-Windows codec), minor fixes, check the included history.html for details


        GOGO-no-coda 2.39c        

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
GOGO-no-coda 2.39c (567 KB)
3 minutes
Win9x/NT/2000
PEN@MarineCat, Keiichi SAKAI, URURI, kei and shigeo
20-Jan-2001
freeware MP3 encoder, development stopped, it's based on an older LAME version (3.29 + a part of 3.5x) and optimized for maximum speed on x86 CPU (incl. MMX, 3D Now, SSE and multi-CPU support!)
GOGO is clearly the #1 choice for speed freaks, especially for those with multi-processor systems
please do NOT use GOGO if your main concern is quality, there are significant differences to the latest original LAME versions
GOGO as win GUI version supports japanese, english and german language
GOGO is available for many platforms, such as Windows (GUI and console version), BeOS, OS/2 and, of course, Linux
NEW: no clue, my japanese isn't good enough, obviously they decided to drop the english webpage and all english texts, the program itself is still multi-language


        SCMPX 1.51e  TOP!

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
SCMPX 1.51e (344 KB)
2 minutes
Win9x/NT/2000
Shinji Chiba
07-Nov-1999
freeware MPEG (Layers 1,2,3) player, encoder & converter, comes with it's own decoder and encoder, you don't need to have Windows ACM (codec) installed
SCMPX does playback, decoding (MPx -> WAV), encoding (WAV -> MPx), MPEG SPLIT (MPG video -> MPA audio) and high quality re-sampling (WAV -> WAV)
comes with a very good help file
SCMPX and LAME are the reason why I removed all TOP symbols from the other MP3 encoders and even kicked some to black hole, please read the full test and conclusion here
encoder works on single files or in batch on multiple files
thanx a lot to Elias for telling me about SCMPX!


        AudioCatalyst 2.1t        

downloadat 28.8 it takesprogram runs underauthorupdated
AudioCatalyst 2.1t (2923 KB)
14 minutes
Win9x/NT/2000
Xing
04-Nov-1999
30$ shareware, Xing and AudioGrabber teamed up and the result is, guess what, a very straight and fast all-in-one cd-audio ripper / MP3 encoder
the trial version has two limitations: you can't encode external WAVs into MP3, you can only encode a randomly selected set of CD tracks
variable bit rate encoding may be a good idea, but the overall quality of Xing still can't compare with other encoders
the tech dates of the CD-ripper part are identical with the separate "AudioGrabber"
together with the CDDB support the complete package is just unbeatable in simplicity and speed (2x speed incl. ripping and encoding at my P200MMX!)
the XING encoder is really faaaaast, the audio quality is OK considering the speed of the encoder
NEW: improved support for CDDB access, 31 new genres added to ID3 tag editor, new file and folder naming format