GENERAL:   [welcome]   [SHOP]   [what's new]   [older news]   [search]
SONGS:   [trackers]   [players]   [MP3 encoders]
SAMPLES:   [soft synths]   [free instruments / CD]   [sample editors]
SOUNDCARDS:   [GUS PnP]   [AWE 32/64]   [EWS 64 XL]
TOOLS:   [cd grabbers]   [file rippers]   [file converters]   [misc tools]
PERSONAL:   [bookmarks]   [friends]   [own songs]   [contact]

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 (78 KBytes) by Buschel

  • 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 (243 KBytes) by xiph.org

  • 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 (2791 KBytes) by Matthew T. Ashland

  • 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 (1141 KBytes) by Greg Colley

  • 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 (552 KBytes) by Open Source Community

  • 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 (567 KBytes) by PEN@MarineCat, Keiichi SAKAI, URURI, kei and shigeo

  • 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 (344 KBytes) by Shinji Chiba

  • 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 (2923 KBytes) by Xing

  • 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