which frontend to use with lame? a matter of taste.
where to get them? here!
I started this thread so that people can take a look at the masses of frontends, and maybe pick one out of the bunch.
Although I'm pretty new to this forum, I still hope it's gonna be useful. Of course, this is is just a collection of the good frontends I know of, more frontends and links are welcome...
I will take RazorLame as a start (as it is my favorite), then briefly describe the others.

- RazorLame
this frontend has been around for some time now, made by Holger Dors. It's considered to be a stable, easy to use, nice looking gui (at least in my view )
features: encode, decode, commandline, histogram for abr and vbr, free chooseable settings for abr, free configurable low- and highpassfilter, easy present loading, ...it has just one failure: you can't tag your files.
get it here: http://www.dors.de/razorlame/index.php

there is even a better 'version' of this frontend:
-EasyLame
basically, it is the same frontend, but compiled with lame 3.90.3, and has integrated alt standard presents, just chose the one you are familiar with (prob. aps).
recommended above the original RazorLame.
get it here: http://easylame.audiohq.de/ (down)

-then there's WinLame.
a nice frontend for both mp3 and ogg. easy to use, step by step, chose from different well tested presents.
get it here: http://winlame.sourceforge.net/

-LameBatch is also still around.
quite old, development has stopped, but still pretty good.
and you can eeaasily tag your files. no major disadvantages here. good frontend.
get it here: http://www.uic.nnov.ru/~loea/

- All2Lame is pretty straight forward, it's simple and has all major needs. No mistake to give it a try.
get it here: http://members.home.nl/w.speek/all2lame.htm

Last but not least,
- LameDropXP. an ogg-like frontend, with roughly the same features.
get it here: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html (generally a good place to look for anything concerning encoding/decoding etc)


there are also some nice multi frontends available (that can use more encoders than just LAME):
UniversalFront
Frontah
Speek's Multi Frontend
Speek's Batchenc


then there are some good audio players out there that are able to encode to LAME:
- foobar2000. a very versatile audio player with loads of useful plugins. it allows to rip and encode to many codecs, including LAME MP3.
- newer versions of WinAmp (Pro) can also rip and encode to LAME MP3.


it's of course also possible to encode while ripping an audio-CD with any good ripper.
e.g. EAC, CDex, dMC or PlexTools


well that's it for now. I trust people are going to add some frontends here, as this is only my small world of frontends I consider worthy of posting here B)
don't take this as a full list, there are prob. many other frontends out there that deserve a try!

happy encoding,

Digga.

edit 2: corrected links

iTunes-LAME fontend for Mac iTunes users
http://www.blacktree.com/apps/

UniversalFront by Boereck (author of 'tagger'): http://unifront.boereck.de/index.html

Frontah by madah.

Speek - if you're out there, is there anyway you can add the option to "delete input files" after encoding to All2Lame? That seems to be the one feature missing from All2Lame that will get me to switch over from RazorLame. I usually don't need the wav files anymore after encoding my MP3's. It would be nice to have All2Lame automatically delete them. You have it in the FLAC frontend which I use all the time. Thanks!

Daffy

P.S. Sorry if this is not the right place to post this request. Just seemed on-topic enough to give it a shot. Good job Digga and others for bringing all the front-ends together in one thread.

winLAME rc3 ... not bad, quite neat.

(http://winlame.sourceforge.net)

Speek's Multi Frontend for many programs, also for Lame. I don't need any other Frontend (except Tag Frontend by Speek ).

For doing my --alt-preset insane encoding, I use dBpowerAMP Music Converter. I like it because I can just right click a file to encode or start the application to get a folder selection dialog. dMC then pops up with a window where I can select any of the Lame --alt-presets, or any of the -fast preset variants, or some other "pre-configured" selections. The downside is that you can't edit the command line, but for using the basic --alt-presets, dMC is easy and flexible. You can also plug in any version of Lame encoder you want to use. You can also get encoders for most other formats as well to use with it. I've encoded to MPC, FLAC, Ogg, MP3 and WAV so far with it. No automatic tagging, but it will preserve/transfer existing tags upon encoding. (The dMC Audio CD Input ripping tool does have support for downloading tag info from freedb.org, however).

For doing "lame -h" (128kbps cbr) encoding for my portables, I use RazorLame (which already has a link in the first post of this thread). I can drag-and-drop files or folders to it, and specify any command line option I want to use. No automatic tagging, though.

For encoding at the time of ripping, I use Exact Audio Copy as my Lame front-end. I can point to any version of Lame encoder I want, and also edit the command line to add any specific options. EAC will automatically run up to four encoding sesions in the background after ripping each track. Plus, if you get ahead of the encoder and EAC finishes ripping a disc, it will manage the background encoding processes while you switch discs and start ripping another one. New encoding session requests are added to the process queue automatically. EAC uses freedb.org for batch download of tag info which is added at the time of encoding. Just press alt-G after the CD is loaded to get tag info, then either F5 to rip or shift-F5 to rip and encode.

The above link for easylame dosnt work for me.... says forbidden. Is there another place to get it from? My Google search gave me 4 others places but they all use the same location to download it from :/

it realy seems to be dead...
anyway, you could try it here for the german version.

does anyone have a copy of the latest easylame in english?

I still use razorlame.
straight forward. does the job well.

I got hooked on Universalfront when I was playing with mp3 transcoding

Does Lamedrop support the same Tagging system from oggdrop? Oggdrop's tagging is so great!

Not yet, it's something I've been looking at doing when I can give it the necessary time and concentration!!

Will any of these programs work with LAME 3.97b2?

Daffy,
If you use Speek's Multifrontend, you get exactly the same functionality as All2Lame, but with "Delete source files" as an option!
Everything else is, as far as I can tell, identical to All2Lame.
What I would like to see added is a check box to "Clear input list after successful encoding".

The one thing Multi Frontend is missing that ALL2LAME has, is support for LAME's gapless mode.

Oh, ok... wasn't aware of that one.

yes.

e.g. RazorLame 1.1.5a

You can also get a Lame 3.97b2 update for WinLame from RareWares.
http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

LAME doesn't have a gapless mode anymore... its always enabled. Those old gapless flags are for disabling the VBR header and stuff - don't use them!

Like Jebus said, don't use the gapless argument anymore.
I've tried it both in CLI and using ALL2LAME, both files are 'corrupted' around 1-2 secs. or less with noticable click(s) in the beginning.