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Here’s what’s new in this version:

• If you previous installed a preview version of 0.6.0, you should delete your preferences file BEFORE running 0.6.0 final. It should be <your home directory>:Library:Preferences:LameBrain 0.6 Prefs
• All main encoding windows (single file/batch/cd ripper) have been combined into a single window. Stats have been moved to the LAME settings window under the Stats tab. Size of LAME settings window has been reduced. Appropriate changes have been made to the Preferences window
• ID3v1.1 tag viewing and editing is enabled using id3ed. Only v1.1 tags are currently supported
• FreeDB server preference can now be selected from a dropdown menu. You can add or remove servers by editing the data/freedb_mirrors.txt file
• LAME executable has been moved to bin/ subdirectory
• Profiles have been moved into “Profiles” subdirectory. You will need to move your custom profiles into this folder for them to be usable
• Extended ASCII chars are now converted to “_” in output filenames
• Added debug logging functionality. Debug info is logged to file in “logs/” subdir, and can be turned on or off in Preferences. Logging can slow LB down and the file can get quite large, so this should only be used if you’re having problems
• Added ability to view TOC.plist file of currently selected CD. Useful for debugging purposes
• New, fancier About window. Woo!
• Eject button removed since preview versions; will reappear soon
• Experimental: LameBrain will try to copy the ID3 tags from an input mp3 file to the re-encoded version
• Fancy new icons for the control bar by Ken Holewczynski
• Clip player will now show artist and title if ID3 info is present
• Fixed bug where LameBrain would crash if it found a mounted DVD
• Fixed bugs with double-quotes in ID3 tags when CD ripping
• Fixed bug where Year info was not retrieved from FreeDB
• fixed issue where colons in CD info tags were causing Nil Object Exceptions when the .m3u file was written

Download now

I did some tests last night using —alt-preset standard on 3.90.2, 3.93.1, and a new compile of 3.93.1 I did with several compiler optimization settings:

-faltivec -mcpu=7450 -mdynamic-no-pic -funroll-loops -ffast-math -fstrict-aliasing -O3

Here are the results of the tests I did. I wouldn’t call them scientific, but I did use the same file for each, and didn’t do anything else while it was encoding.

3.90.2 (download):

[Funktanium-Powerbook:~]coj% lame --nohist --alt-preset standard ~/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav
LAME version 3.90.2  (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
Using polyphase lowpass  filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding /Users/coj/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav
     to /Users/coj/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz VBR(q=2) j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (ca. 7.3x) qval=2
   Frame          |  CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU |    ETA
12471/12474 (100%)|    0:26/    0:26|    5:20/    5:20|   12.345x|    0:00
average: 232.3 kbps   LR: 4079 (32.70%)   MS: 8395 (67.30%)

Writing LAME Tag...done

3.93.1:

[Funktanium-Powerbook:~]coj% ~/Documents/RealBasic/LameBrain/bin/lame --nohist --alt-preset standard ~/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav
LAME version 3.93  (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
Using polyphase lowpass  filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding /Users/coj/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav
     to /Users/coj/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz VBR(q=2) j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (ca. 7.3x) qval=2
   Frame          |  CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU |    ETA
12471/12474 (100%)|    0:24/    0:24|    4:59/    4:59|   13.254x|    0:00
average: 231.8 kbps   LR: 4075 (32.67%)   MS: 8399 (67.33%)

Writing LAME Tag...done

3.93.1 with optimizations (download):

[Funktanium-Powerbook:~]coj% /usr/local/lame_optimized/bin/lame --nohist --alt-preset standard ~/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav
LAME version 3.93  (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
Using polyphase lowpass  filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding /Users/coj/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav
     to /Users/coj/Desktop/machine_deadagent.wav.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz VBR(q=2) j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (ca. 7.3x) qval=2
   Frame          |  CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU |    ETA
12471/12474 (100%)|    0:16/    0:16|    4:32/    4:32|   19.578x|    0:00
average: 231.8 kbps   LR: 4075 (32.67%)   MS: 8399 (67.33%)

Writing LAME Tag...done

Note that I did NOT do any listening tests — this is just comparing speed. It looks to me that the plain 3.93.1 is faster than 3.90.2, and the optimized 3.93.1 is significantly faster than 3.93.1 standard. The optimizations I did might keep the binary from working on G3s and older G4s (< 500Mhz, I think), so I want to run some tests on it before including it as standard in LameBrain. If you are willing to give it a shot, please download the binary and let me know the results.

I’ve set up a mailing list for discussing LameBrain. Feature requests, bug reports, and general discussion of mp3 encoding on the Mac are all game. I’ll also make announcements of new versions on this list, including “private” beta and debug builds. To subscribe, just send a blank message to:

• lamebrain-discuss-subscribe@funkatron.com

Finally! Here are the goods:

• Documentation is complete
• Fixed problem with single-file encoder and dropped files that had hidden extensions
• Fixed bug where .m3u playlists were not generated according to customized naming schemes
• Dragging and dropping a folder on the batch encoder will optionally recurse through all subfolders as well
• Batch encoder will only accept files with user-defined valid extentions. Default valid extensions are “mp3”, “wav”, and “aiff”

Get your freak on.

Update: Whoops! Uploaded the wrong file. Fixed now.

So in the past couple days we’ve gotten two new browser releases for OS X: Camino (ex-Chimera) 0.7, and Safari 1.0 b64.

Camino 0.7 doesn’t make any groundbreaking improvements, but it does seem to be a little faster. It has a kinda swank download manager, but I’ve almost always found those things a waste of time. It apparently can do auto-discovery of local web and ftp servers via Rendezvous, but I haven’t actually seen it work yet (I’m probably missing something though). And I still can’t seem to do type ahead find with it, which I take advantage of with Phoenix on Win32. Still, Camino remains my main browser.

Safari 1.0 b64 isn’t a public release, so no linking to it will be done here (I’m purely a leech), but if you look around on message boards you’ll find it without too much trouble. The major new thing is tabbed browsing, which first appeared in b62 (also not a public release), and has been refined a bit here. Tabs were really the main reason I wasn’t using Safari, and their appearance here makes it much more competitive with Camino. Plus, I have to admit that I’m something of a brushed metal whore.

Personally, I would like to see Camino focus more on new and cool features, kind of the way Opera brings a lot of unique features to the platforms it supports. It seems unlikely that Camino will overcome Safari in terms of market share, and the features that initially brought it popularity — looking and feeling like a true Aqua app, having a very solid rendering engine, etc — are being duplicated or improved upon in Safari. But if it offers some features that appeal to power/niche users — ones that Apple is less likely to explore because they don’t appeal to Joe Switcher — it’s likely to shore up a dedicated user base.