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Blade Encoder comes to mind.
MPlayer is at stake as well.

First of all, for playback, and since we are talking about a dedicated system, give the mp3 player task maximum priority (e.g.: -20). All other tasks must run with low priority (e.g.: 19). This way you ensure the kernel will attend your mp3 player task more often than everything else.

Second, for audio extraction and encoding you can use cdda2wav that also extracts to pipes suitable for use with the Blade Encoder.

For playback, mpg321 shall be enough.

I shouldn't probably say this, but too many people commit this mistake and then complain about Linux's performance: remember to enable DMA for your HDD and CD-ROM drives, doing so will make your IDE transfers 10 times faster (at least) and free your processor for other, more important things, such as encoding / decoding audio instead of transferring data.

Blade is an MP3 encoder.

IMHO around 128 kbps with lame is where it gets diffcult to tell the difference in an ABX test.

I use OGG a lot, too. It is pretty good.

CDex uses LAME. LAME's site links here . The answer seems to be a big fat maybe. Also, try here, and click on News. Notice BladeEnc was discontinued for reasons including legal hassles. Also, note that RedHat wussed out and pulled MP3 support from RedHat Linux 8.

I have only used bladeenc. Is there much of a difference?

I haven't been keeping track, but I doubt that this is the first time someone has dropped their own project because they don't think it's good enough. Most of the time they just fall into obscurity.

I agree that to some degree this is a good thing. I wish the GNOME and KDE people would do it. ;-) But seriously, these types of "bad" projects are really a good thing--it gives the inexperienced a chance to practice the craft. These sorts of projects only cause problems when they are over-hyped and/or many other projects start to require using stuff from these lame and bloated projects.

I did think BladeEnc was fairly good, however I stopped using it myself. Why? I had two problems with it it:

1. I like to record stuff at all sorts of sample rates from 8kHz all the way to 44.1kHz. As I remember, BladeEnc only worked with 44.1 kHz and therefore didn't really support low output bitrates.
2. The patent issues for mp3. Ogg Vorbis is a godsend.

I say good luck to Tord Jansson, and I hope to see more open source projects from him. On his homepage, it appears he is trying to start his own company. Good show!

actually if you have time to waiste Tords Homepage (the guy who came up with blade encode - mp3) has quite a bit of interesting information scattered about his page concerning closed formats. Noteably, he also believes Ogg Vorbis to be the next best audio format.

There is a lot of prior art as in MP3 files, but not as in MP3 players and encoders.

Have you noticed the incredible lack of free (both as in Freedom and as in Price) MP3 encoders out there? Do you ever wonder why?

Just take a look at the Ogg Vorbis FAQ. A few years ago, the owners of the MP3 patent came down upon all the "unsanctionned" mp3 encoders out there. This desimated quite a few of the projects since the developers could not pay the licensing fees. Those that have survived have done so only because of legal loopholes, geographic local (sometimes tentitave), or chance.

So the patent holders have done more than "veiled threats"... they've destroyed quite a few projects.

This extends not just to MP3 encoders, but to MP3 decoding libraries. For example, I am an Open-Source/Free-Software "edutainment" developer. In an upcoming title I am working on, I need higher quality audio with smaller file sizes (i.e., something like MP3 or Ogg Vorbis). However, this project would be in jeopardy if I did decide to use MP3 over Ogg Vorbis simply because the patent holders of the MP3 format could step in at any time and kill the MP3 libraries I use, kill the MP3 files I use, or even kill my project for using MP3s altogether.

I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame, BladeEnc, and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, why should we worry about the RIAA?

Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.

The Mpeg Layer 3 format is freely usable by anyone.

No it can't; there's a USD 2.50 royalty per unit on encoders with a USD 15,000 per year minimum. For example, THOMSON multimedia already got BladeEnc to remove encoder binaries. And I heard they're going after LAME next.

http://bladeenc.mp3.no/binar ies/BladeDLL-091-intel.zip

And while I appreciate Tord's efforts, Blade is simply way behind the others out there. First, there's no VBR. Second, it seriously lags behind LAME and Fraunhofer in terms of quality (I've been forewarned of Xing and therefore haven't even bothered with it). I got serious high frequency artifacts, and sharp sounds (the sound of two drumsticks striking each other, for example) get badly smoothed out even at 256kbps. Third, it's pretty slow compared to Fraunhofer. On a P2-400, Fraunhofer encodes at 5x, Blade at 1.2x and LAME is around 0.8x.

Regardless, it's too bad this happened, but considering Sweden doesn't allow patents on algorithms, then this really should be an open and shut case. A patent in one country is unenforcable in other countries, so only the Swedish law should apply (I got this info from a recent lecture at my University by an alumnus patent and copyright lawyer).

The one silver lining here is that Sweden, where Tord lives, doesn't recognize patents on algorithms, so he may should be able to defend himself legally.

Meanwhile, this is kind of old news - the binaries were pulled on February 24th.

I assumed that I had just missed this from a while ago!

You (and SlashDot) did. The news page has this in the 2000-02-23 update:

You might wonder why I haven't put up any binaries for 0.92.0. The reason is that I'm still having trouble with Fraunhofer/Thomson and things are starting to heat up. Since their complaint is that I'm distributing products using their patented technology and they now are threatening to take me to court if I don't stop, I've decided to remove the binaries from my homepage.

I will remove the binaries tomorrow, but you can rest assure that this is not the end of BladeEnc. I will place all the necessary details on these pages in a few days, so please don't mail me asking for details yet, I'll be busy writing together a lengthy piece explaining the situation, what I plan to do and what you can do to help.

There was a lot there about how good LAME is, but I didn't see BladeEnc in the comparison.

They said you need 256kbits for CD quality. From BladeEnc site: [BladeEnc] Supports the following bitrates: 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256 and 320 kBit/s.

But music differs from source code in one aspect. It can be performed

I'd consider a MIDI file (MIDI can now store lyrics) the source code, Timidity the compiler, .wav an object file, BladeEnc a linker (even though it may be illegal), and the MP3 file the compiled executable that runs on a machine called Diamond Rio, I mean, Diamond Rio.

Games can be publicly performed for pay too. Have you been to a video arcade?

-Rob

Excuse my brevity, but... BladeENC does use Fraunhofer IP, but it is the opinion of the BladeENC author that he is not subject to the patent under Swedish law. Details are here, excuse the long page.

I don't have time to look into Xing, but it's my impression that it's a commercial product. How do you know they don't pay a license fee to Fraunhofer?

Again, I'm not saying that Fraunhofer has a moral right to control MP3, and I'm not even sure they have a legal right. But it seems like they have a credible case.

In the words of Babelfish, "These programs are legal usually however not, since royalties exhaust their programmer only rarely to the institute for Fraunhofer."