LAME Package Question

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 647, Issue 9, Message: 5
On Sun, 30 Oct 2016 02:42:54 +0200 Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
 > On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 19:28:14 -0500, Brandon J. Wandersee wrote:
 > > 
 > > Polytropon writes:
 > > 
 > > > On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 16:46:24 -0700, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:
 > > >> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Brandon J. Wandersee <
 > > >> brandon.wandersee at gmail.com> wrote:
 > > >> 
 > > >> >
 > > >> > Polytropon writes:
 > > >> >
 > > >> > > There might be alternatives: "toolame" and "twolame" are present
 > > >> > > in the ports collection. They probably have packages available.
 > > >> > > Maybe you can use one of them to replace "lame"?
 > > >> >
 > > >> > Those are both MP2 encoders, while LAME is an MP3 encoder.
 > > >> >
 > > >> [...]
 > > >> I can not say anything about why MP3 is needed , but considering the
 > > >> following page may deduce that there are free and usable licensed
 > > >> alternatives ( some intermediary steps may be used : for example  : Convert
 > > >> MP3 to WAV , Play WAV ) ( Please consider other links in that page ) :
 > > >> 
 > > >> 
 > > >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_for_audio
 > > >> ( Comparison of free software for audio )
 > > >
 > > > The "lame" _encoder_ is utilized by many other programs. Its
 > > > absence might cause problems for example for the following
 > > > construct: youtube-dl -> ffmpeg -> lame. So if there is a
 > > > way to switch from "lame" to a different encoder which can
 > > > be installed via "pkg install", the installing & updating
 > > > problem could be solved.
 > > 
 > > Also, LAME is itself open-source and is widely considered *the* standard
 > > MP3 audio encoder, while MP3 is widely considered *the* standard digital
 > > audio format.
 > 
 > I think that is the main reason why "lame" is in use for
 > so many cases, as stand-alone program and as dependency
 > or library (e. g. libmp3lame <- ffmpeg <- youtube-dl).

Not to mention that it's been rock-solid for many years on both FreeBSD 
and Linux systems.  We use it to both log (at 32k mono) and stream (at 
VBR quality=3, ~192kbps stereo) our local radio station 24/7, with very 
few encoding failures over ~7 years, maybe 3 or 4 per 8760 (~hrs/year)

Following your earlier suggestion, I upgraded lame on my X200 yesterday:

# portsnap fetch upgrade
# cd /usr/ports/audio/lame
# make deinstall
# make reinstall

which upgraded 3.99.5_1 from about 3 years ago to 3.99.5_3

root at x200:/usr/ports/audio/lame # pkg info -r lame
lame-3.99.5_3:
        sox-14.3.2_6
root at x200:/usr/ports/audio/lame # pkg info -d lame
lame-3.99.5_3:
        libiconv-1.14_1
root at x200:/usr/ports/audio/lame # ldd `which lame`
/usr/local/bin/lame:
        libncurses.so.8 => /lib/libncurses.so.8 (0x800865000)
        libiconv.so.3 => /usr/local/lib/libiconv.so.3 (0x800ab3000)
        libm.so.5 => /lib/libm.so.5 (0x800daf000)
        libc.so.7 => /lib/libc.so.7 (0x800fd0000)

I.e. here only sox depends on it, and it only depends on libiconv, which 
didn't need updating; likely the OP can safely upgrade from source too.

 > > As a side note, transcoding MP3 to WAV---or any other lossy format to
 > > any other loss-less format---isn't really a good idea.
 > 
 > Except you want to create audio CDs from MP3 files (to play
 > them in a device that doesn't read MP3 data CDs). :-)

Urgh :)  Try using sox' spectrogram effect to visually compare original 
.wav files to those converted back from even highest-quality .mp3s ..

cheers, Ian