A question for anyone with experience: Why don't the binaries I make in Visual Studio or Cygwin encode as fast as the binary at Rarewares?

http://v4.livegate.net/rtfm/command-prompt.html

There's a screenshot of my command prompt after encoding the same track with all 3 compiles. I noticed that the VS copy and the Cygwin copy don't show the MMX, 3DNow!, ASM, SSE etc... features. Are they being used? Is it possible to enable them?

Also, the Cygwin copy will complain unless some of Cygwin's DLLs are in its folder. Is there a way to avoid this dependency?

The RareWares compiles are created using the Intel C Compiler.
Also, IIRC, you will need the processor pack for Visual C++, but I might be wrong. Anyways, the processor pack works only with Visual C++ Service Pack 5.

The cygwin.dll dependancy can not be avoided if you want to use cygwin.
Try MinGW if you want a native Win32 port of GCC.

But: You don't seem to be a programmer, why are you trying to compile software on your own in the first place? Did you fix anything in the sourcecode?

I'm trying to compile software on my own in the first place because I want to know how to do it right, to avoid the hassle and legal snags of pirating binaries, and to get a better appreciation for what codec developers do.

Thank you both for your responses. I've never been to a forum with such fast response times.

AFAIK using LAME is not more legal if you compiled the binary yourself.
The source of the binary is irrelevant, what matters is where you live.

Someone with more legal knowledge could probably elaborate on this.

Well you should check Mp3 Licesing Homepage and if your country listed there mp3 encoding is not legal unless you pay patent fees. But that IANAL.

AFAIK using mp3 software for non-commercial purposes is not illegal, but distributing of such software is.

Your speed problem could come from
*you did not used NASM with your own compile
*you probably built the VS one in debug mode.

Thanks, Gabriel. Just what I wanted to know.