Is it really necessary to re-encode everything to the latest LAME vers Options

[SonicBooom!]

The title says it all. I have tons of FLACs and every one of them has a copy in MP3 encoded in LAME 3.98.4 and some are in 3.99.3. 3.99.5 is the new latest version now, should this mean I have to re-encode those FLACs to 3.99.5? I would gladly want to hear opinions of others.

[greynol]

Personally I find such usage of electricity wasteful.

Regarding artwork, am I not able to embed a >128kb to my 3.98.4 Lame-encoded mp3 with a program like mp3tag?

This post has been edited by greynol: Apr 9 2012, 00:00

[JJZolx]

Regarding artwork, am I not able to embed a >128kb to my 3.98.4 Lame-encoded mp3 with a program like mp3tag?

I'm sure you can. When transcoding a library from FLAC to MP3, though, the process (for me) needs to be totally hands-off. With LAME 3.98.4 I think my script was using metamp3 or a similar utility in addition to LAME. Version 3.99 makes things both a little easier and a little faster, since the file doesn't have to be rewritten to add the artwork tag.

An additional usability issue that remains for me is that I'd like the ability to write ReplayGain frames directly to the ID3v2 tag instead of (or in addition to) the LAME header. It's still not clear to me why anyone would bother adding the ability to compute RG values and then store them where few applications will see them. I don't need album RG, so LAME's RG calculations work well for my purposes.

And one more: The ability to copy a timestamp from the input file. When keeping a mirror library, it helps a lot if the resulting MP3 file has the same timestamp as the original. This would make it easier than having to call in a 'touch' utility to alter the MP3 file's mod time after the encoding process.