LameFE is a powerfull frontend for the lame encoder. You can encode CD digital audio and nearly any audio file format to mp3. LameFE has a straight forward GUI and supports all features of the lame encoding engine (lame_enc.dll). On the input side, lameFE understands CDRip.dll the powerfull CD Ripping library from CDEx, and own input plugins (currently plugins for wave/aiif/au and Monkey Lossless Audio Format are available).
On the output side lameFE is also extendable through plugins now. Plugins for Wave Audio, Monkeys Lossles Audio Format and Ogg/Vorbis are available.

Here is a short list of the lameFE features:

Supported Audio Formats: CD Digital Audio, Wave Audio, APE
Supported Encoders: LAME, Ogg/Vorbis, Monkeys Audio, WAVE
Query freeDB server to access file / and album information of CDs
CDText and CDPlayer.ini support
Write id3 version 2 frames
Id3 tag editor
User defined filename format
Play converted files / create play lists
more...

1.2 System Requirements

Minimum System requirements:

Windows 98/ME or Windows NT 4.51 / 2000 / XP
Pentium processor or compatible*
(Adaptec) ASPI driver to access CD drives
Internet connection to access freeDB server

* The MP3 compression consumes a lot of computation time, actually, the lame encoder that's used by lameFE is relatively fast compared to other MP3 encoders (with comparable sound quality, listen the output of the Xing 'fast' encoder, and you know what I mean). With a Pentium 166-MMX, with 32 Mb of SD-RAM, a one minute song, takes about 2 minutes to rip and encode.

1.3 Installation

There are no special installation requirements. To install lameFE, start the installer and follow the instructions. Before installing remove any previous version of lameFE from your system.

On some systems you will need to install a ASPI driver. lameFE needs it to access the CD-ROM drivers. On Windows XP lameFE should work with the native ASPI driver of Windows XP. Before installing an ASPI driver check whether there is a file winaspi.sys in your %windir%\system32 directory (whereas %windir% stands for your windows directory). Upgrading ASPI drivers may prevent CD-Burning programs to work properly.

You can download an ASPI driver at http://lamefe.nauta-clarus-media.de/download/fa_117.zip

http://lamefe.nauta-clarus-media.de/download/nt_wnaspi32.zip (NT/2000/XP only)

2 Using lameFE

2.1 Encoder Settings

The Main part of lameFE is the lame Encoder. It “converts” the CD-Digital Audio / Wave files into Mp3 files. You can make several changes on the quality and speed the lame encoder converts the files. In the Main Programs dialog chose L.A.M.E. Settings from the "Settings" menu or click on the settings button on the right side of the encoder dropdown listfield.

For most users the default settings for the encoder should work fine but some people prefer higher higher or lower quality settings:

Bitrate. The bitrate of an MPEG I/II Layer 3 Audio file specifies how detailed the audio data is stored. It is comparable to the resulution of a picture. The higher your resulution and dpi, the better the picture looks - same with the bitrate.
You can use a constant bitrate (CBR) or a variable bitrate (VBR).

**Table 1.1:** Bitrate versus sound quality
Bitrate	Bandwidth	Quality comparable to or better than
16 kbps	4.5 kHz	shortwave radio
32 kbps	7.5 kHz	AM radio
96 kbps	11 kHz	FM radio
128 kbps	16 kHz	near CD
160-180 kbps (variable bitrate)	20 kHz	perceptual transparency
256 kbps	22 kHz	studio

If you want to use predefined lame quality presets chose one from the dropdown list, but note that other values than "Normal (default)" will override some of the other settings you specified in this dialog

You may also select the number of channels the MP3 File will have: Stereo / Mono / Joint Stereo (lower quality, smaller size), and Dual channel are offered by the lame encoder.

Checksum will write a crc checksum to the file.

2.2 Ripping Audio CDs / 2.2.1 Select CD drive

The Programs Main Window
The lameFE main programs dialog.

Extracting Digital Audio Tracks from an Audio CDs is really simple with lameFE. Load the Audio CD in one of your CD drives and select the drive in the LameFEÆs ôConvert fromö dropdown list. The tracks on CD will show up in the tracklist. Select the tracks you want to extract from the list.

Select the CD drive your Audio CD is loaded in as the input source.

In the next step you have to select the output format from the second dropdown list in the mainwindow. This will be MPEG I/II Layer 3 (MP3) in most ocasions, but you can also extract audio CDs to OGG/Vorbis, MonkeyÆs Lossless Audio Format or Wave Audio. You can configure the encoder you have selected by clicking on the small settings button on the right side of the dropdown list.

In the next step you might want to adjust album the information of the CD to your needs (The album information will be stored as an ID3 Tag for MP3 files in example, it is also used for the output filename). Do that by selecting one of the commands from the ID3 Tag Menu. For CD you normally do a freeDB query to access the Album Information for the CD from a server in the internet. This is the easiest and comfortablest way to access the information. Some CDs and CD drives support CD Text, where the information is stored directly on the CD. If your CD has the CD Text logo you can read out this information by selecting ôRead CD Textö from the ôID3 Tagsö menu. For more information on ID3 Tags read the ID3 Tag section of this help file.

After that you are ready to start the extraction of the Audio tracks. Click on the ôStart Encodingö button in the toolbar and the encoding process will start emmidiatly.

2.2.2 CD Drive / Reader settings

To change the settings for a CD drive select “CD-Reader” from the “Setting” Menu in the programs main dialog. You will see the dialog above.

“CD ROM Type” and “Ripping Method” should only be changed by expert users or when there are problems with the “Generic” and “Standard” selection (when you rip an Audio CD and there is only silence adjust these settings to the one that match your drive). In Paranoia mode lameFE will verify the ripped Audio Data bit per bit with the original data on CD.

“Lock CD Drive during extraction” will lock when lameFE accesses it. It can’t be opened in that time. This is saver and will prevent errors when the drive is opened during extraction.

“Eject CD when done” – Well I think there is no explanation needed

“Swap channels” – Well I think there is no explanation needed

“Use native NT SCSI Library” will force lameFE to use the SCSI Library of NT instead of the Adaptec ASPI driver or any other installed ASPI driver. Use this setting only if an ASPI driver doesn’t work for you. You will need to restart lameFE to take this setting into effect.

“CD Speed” is the maximum speed your CD Drive is capable for digital reading of audio CDs. Note this is not the maximum CD drive speed. Look in your users manual of the CD ROM drive for the correct value. 32 is default value and will work for most CD drives, even when they can read digital audio only at lower speeds.

“Spin up time“ specifies the time, your CD drive needs to spin up to the maximum speed.

2.3 Converting multimedia files to MP3

Converting multimedia audio files with lameFE is most likeley as easy as extracting Audio CDs. Just select ôAudiofile (plugin)ö from the ôConvert fromö dropdown list in the mainwindow and add the file(s) you want to convert by klicking the ôAdd file(s)ö button in the toolbar. Then follow the steps as desribed in the CD Ripping section of this helpfile.

FreeDB Query, CDPlayer.ini support and Read CD Text wonÆt work for Audio files of course. To adjust and create ID3 Tags select ôID3 Tag Editorö from the ôID3 Tagsö menu.

By default LameFE supports rading of Wave Audio (wav, riff, aiff, au) Monkey Lossless Audio Format (APE). Take a look at the LameFEÆs download page. May be there is a plugin for other audio formats released there. If you are a developer and are interested in developing a plugin for a fileformat you are inerested in get the Plugin API Documentation from the Download page and contact me.

2.3.3 Plugins

LameFE supports input and output plugins since version 2.1. You can get information of the installed plugins if you select ôPluginsö from the ôSettings menuö. Here you can see which plugins are installed and configure them.

You can also configure the plugins directly from the LameFEÆs main program window. Click on the buttons that are on the right side of each dropdown list and configuration dialog of the selected plugin will open.

2.4 Id3 Tags

Many multimedia file formats like MPEG I/II Layer 3 or Monkeys Lossless Audio Format support to store Album specific data such as Artis, Songname, Albumname, Genre and so on in the file. LameFE supports ID3v2 Tags for MP3 files and passes Album information to output plugins too. Some output plugins support writng these Album Information to the file (APE_out or OGG_out i.e.).

2.4.1 Query freeDB Servers

FreeDB is a service that offers CD Album information on servers in the internet. For nearly every Audio CD the album name, artist and songs on this CD are available from this service (For further information visit http://www.freedb.org)

To query the album information for your CD, just click on the freeDB button or choose “Read remote CDdb” from the “CDDB∓mp;id3Tag” menu. Sometimes there are double ore more entries for one CD in the server. In this case choose the entry that you like best and click on ”Continue”.

freedb

The information gathered from freeDB will be automatically written to the id3 tags of each file. You can edit these manually by clicking “Edit id3 Tags”.

2.4.2 Manual Editing of Id3 Ttags

If you are encoding Wave files or you want to manually edit id3 tags received from freeDB servers, you may do so by using the id3 tag editor of lameFE. Choose “Edit id3-Tags” from the “CDDB∓mp;id3-Tag” menu or click on “Edit id3 Tags” button.

For each file / track you can adjust the id3 tag information. When finished click on done. To write only the tags you need to the file uncheck the Checkbox of the value. If you want lameFE to use a value for all files activate the “all files” check box for that value.

lameFE allows you to store each file in an user defined file format (i.e. like the “Napster” style as artist – song.mp3 (See section 2.5.2 of this document for details). To deactivate this behavior for on file uncheck Use format string for this file. The filename will be same as the original filename but with the correct ending (mp3).

2.5 Customizing lameFE

lameFE is highly customizable. Most default behavior can be changed.

2.5.1 Basic lameFE settings

To adjust the program settings to your needs select “lameFE settings” from the “Preferences” menu or hit F5.

Set Base Output path: To tell lameFE where to store the converted / ripped files click on “Output path” and select the directory you want lameFE to store the files in. The default is C:\Program Files\lameFE\Output (assuming you have installed lameFE to C:\Program Files\lameFE).

Settings

With “External Player” you can select the Audio Player you want lameFE to use to playback files when finished.

If you want lameFE to overwrite existing files during the conversion, check “Always overwrite existing files”. The default behavior is to asked for each file.

All other settings in this dialog need no explanation.

2.5.2 User defined filename format

To store files i.e. Napster style ore store each file in the directory structure as “Artist\Album”, select “tagWriter Settings” from the “Preferences” menu, check “Rename files to format:” and define the format string (as known from the Winamp.

%a\%m\%a -%t for example will store each file in the directory Artist\Album in the format Artist – Song.mp3 in your base output path. Non existing directories will be created. You may also add any other characters (that are allowed for filenames) to the format string. A complex example is %a\%m\%a - %t Track %n

%1 = Song title

%2 = Artist

%3 = Album / CD title

%4 = year

%5 = genre

%a = Track number on the CD

The default is %a\%m\%a -%t.mp3

3. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: With the mp3's I rip and then view file info in Winamp it says Header found at: xxx bytes and not zero, why?
A: Winamp reports the location of the first MPEG header in the MPEG stream data. If you have enabled the ID3V2 tags, it will place the ID3V2 header before the MPEG stream, the first MPEG header will be shifted with the size of the ID3V2 header.

Q: When I extract MP3 files from a CD, I would like lameFE to create 'Napster Style' file names ([artist]-[title].mp3) instead storing tracks as track_1.mp3, how can I do that?
A: Select Preferences/tagWriter Settings and activate "Rename to format" and specify a format string.

Q: At home, I can access the CDDB database, but when I use lameFE at my work place it does not work.
A: At your work you are almost certainly behind a firewall, therefore you have to select the Use Proxy option in the CDDB options dialog box (Preferences/CDDB Setup). In addition you have to fill in the proxy address in the edit field next to the Use Proxy selection box (which should be enabled when you've selected the Use Proxy option, and maybe have to change the Proxy Port). A tip: take a look at the proxy settings of your Web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape) to determine the proxy address and proxy port.

Q: When I try to access the CDDB database, I get an Invalid E-mail Address message
A: You have to fill in the E-mail Address field in the CDDB options dialog box (Preferences/CDDB Setup).

Q: When I try to start lameFE, it complains that it can’t find the CDRip.dll, tagWriter.dll file(s) or Lame_enc.dll.
A: Make sure that you unzip all the files (using for example WinZip) in the lameFE installation directory Furthermore, make sure if you have created a desktop short-cut that the START-IN field points to the directory where the lameFE.exe and its DLLs reside (this is the folder in which you have extracted the files that were in the ZIP)

Q: Will lameFE work with Windows 2000
A: Many people have problems running lameFE with the Windows 2000 operation system. However, you have to make sure that you have installed the proper ASPI drivers that are supported under Win2K. You might try to install the aspi package offered in the download section. Some people have successfully used it in conjunction with lameFE.

Q: Where can I obtain the proper ASPI drivers
A: If you have Software or Hardware from Adaptec, you can obtain the drivers from the Adaptec site. If you have not any of that, you can use a utility (both for Windows NT and Window 98) named ASPI_ME, although it is officially banned by Adaptec, it is still available from some WEB sites (take a look at this site, and search for aspi_me). However, there is a time lock in this utility, so you need to set back your system clock to somewhere in 1998 when starting ASPI_ME. Afterwards, you can set back your system clock to the current data. Furthermore, you can look at one of the following resources:

Q: When I extract file there is no music at all, just dead silence, what's wrong?
A: This problem might be a couple of things:
1.Make sure that you have installed the proper ASPI drivers. This link http://w3.westnet.gr/mp3/rippers/aspi.htm has information how to install the proper ASPI drivers (version Adaptec's ASPI version 4.54 or 4.57 should work)
2) Make sure your drive does support CDDA (see http://www.mp3.com/cdrom.html to determine if your drive does support CDDA
3) Go to Preferences/CD-Reader Settings and try out some other settings for CD-ROM type and Ripping method. See your CD-ROM drive handbook for more information. "Generic" and "Standard" should work with every CD drive. I'll include an auto detection method in one of the next versions.

Q: When I convert/rip MP3 file, it takes a very long time, is there something wrong?
A: The MP3 compression consumes a lot of computation time, actually, the lame encoder that's used by lameFE is relatively fast compared to other MP3 encoders (with comparable sound quality, listen the output of the Xing 'fast' encoder and you know what I mean). The ripping process can be slow when you have Pentium 166-MMX, with 32 Mb of SD-RAM, a one minute song, takes about 2 minutes to rip and encode.
With certain CD-ROM drives you might get better performance when you set the CD-SPEED to 32, but this might increase the change of jitter errors.

4. Reporting Bugs / Participate in Development

Bugs, undefined behavior etc. and suggestions can be forwarded to the author (Thees Winkler). If you have a question, make sure that you`xh=⌠