I've been playing with my little file server and GNUMP3d (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/) and I want to use it's realtime downsampling w/ LAME ability, since my mp3 files are mostly 160-256kbit this pretty much kills my cable line with only 512kbit upload, I'm aiming for something around the 128kbit region so it can atleast handle 3 connections or so without flaking out. The problem with this it the file server doesn't have anything fantastic for processing ability, so instead of bandwidth limitations it might run into cpu limitations.

specs:

2x 200mhz 256kb cache pentium pros
192mb EDO ram
8gig scsi hdd
windows 2000 advanced server.


I heard the LAME 4.xx betas were really fast, personally for encoding I'm using dibrom's 3.90.3 with winlame. Bit of quality loss for speed is alright, but I don't want it sounding like ass for 10 seconds off the encode.

I'd suggest you to give LAME 3.96[.1] with -V5 --vbr-new a try.
In my tests it has been quite speedy and give decent quality for the bitrate you are aiming at (~128kbps).

Warning: There are known problems concerning LAME 3.96 and --vbr-new. These are supposed to be solved in the soon-to-be-released 3.96.1 bugfix release.

You can also use gogo mp3 encoder for fast reencodings. Based on LAME 3.89 but with a different psychoacoustic model.

download: http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/gogo313.zip

Lame VBR is not very fast. Not the "fastest" mode at least. And I'm not sure that VBR is a good thing for internet streaming.
ABR with lame 3.96...7 is faster. And bitrate should stay at around 128 kbps.

the new vbr code is quite fast in LAME. But I agree, for streaming one should use a setting with a more predictable bitrate.

I have loaded Lame 3.96. when I rip a CD using Audio grabber and then play it sound only comes out of the left side of the speaker can anyone help me out with this, yes I have tried this on several stero systems. I believe it is the lame file because if I use the default encoder in audio grabber it works fine. I need serious help please email me at mbaca@netscape.com .
Thanks for any help
Mike B.

Yes, it's really fast, especially if you use "-q 9"!!! Even my lowly PII 300 scores >10x with OK quality.