First off, I will admit I use and like iTunes. Apple is the one company that seems to 'get it', when it comes to making it easy for a user to purchase music, organize their collection, burn a CD, and transfer to their portable device with transparency. (I still use Foobar and DbPoweramp for complicated tasks - great programs!).

A serious flaw with iTunes is that their MP3 encoder sucks! While I use Apple Lossless and AAC - sometimes I want to lend my friends a song to sample and they only have MP3/WMA players. Now, one can either: convert the Lossless file to Apple's MP3 in iTunes (yuck!) or go through the laborious process of converting the Lossless file to a WAV in iTunes, then WAV to LAME MP3 APS in a program like Foobar, and re-tag. Way too long.

Has anyone found a way to embed LAME 3.90.3 into iTunes so when one selects 'convert to MP3', it uses LAME 3.90.3 instead of Apple's crappy encoder? If so - directions would be much appreciated!

Without the source to iTunes, this isn't possible. It doesn't use a plugin type of structure for this sort of thing.

It might just be possible to create a plugin for Quicktime that would change it's MP3 encoder to use the LAME code, but it's a hell of a job.

If it were possible to port AppleScript to Windows, there already exists a LAME plugin for iTunes. Obviously, it only works on OS X at the current time, but it's how I convert my ALAC files to mp3 for portable listening. I'm not even sure that iTunes for Windows is scriptable to begin with, though.

I agree with what ezra2323 says, iTunes is a great program but falls down with it's MP3 implementation.
I've tried scouring the internet for a plug-in but can only find ones for mac.

Shame

PS Hi all BTW, first post for a long time lurker.

teach your friends to use foobar 2000 since it comes with AAC/MP4 support out of the box. Short of that, you can still use foobar2k to convert AAC files to MP3 via the command line version of Lame.

Yes, but not Apple Lossless at this time. I don't want to transcode from lossy to lossy. If FB2K were to support Apple Lossless, then the problem is solved.

It would indeed be possible. iTunes-LAME for macs consist of four things:

• a qtaiff utility which appearantly converts QuickTime-readable files to AIFF, for reading by LAME.
• a LAME binary
• an AppleScript for iTunes to call iTunes-LAME
• an application for presenting nice user feedback

Previous versions didn't feature the application, and simply consisted of an AppleScript that extracted the information about the current track from iTunes, encoded it in LAME, added the result to the iTunes library and applied the proper tags. I don't see why the same thing shouldn't be possible using the COM interface to iTunes?

Regarding converting QuickTime files to something LAME can handle, you'll probably find some useful sample code at Apple's QuickTime sample code page.

iTunes for Windows COM interface doesn't provide any way for iTunes to call a script or any other form of program from within the iTunes interface. So while you can write a script to do it, you can't execute that script from within iTunes and you might as well just create a batch file to do it.

Why do you dislike iTunes MP3 Encoder?
I found the search button. Sorry.

Why would you want to use MP3 if you can use AAC ? AAC is so much better than MP3 in so many aspect especially in music clips with strong vocal content.. which, incidentally, is what that makes me choose IPOD over other MP3 based portable hardware players..

Besides, AAC is actually based on MP3 itself with much-much more improvements..

Read his post again.

lol, so much better?
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=21904

yes, it's a bit better, but I would prefer an Iriver H120 over an Ipod.
The Iriver player supports Ogg Vorbis!

I'd say that that testing highlights some significant differences between LAME MP3 at roughly 128 and AAC at 128. In a few (2 or 3) of those samples, LAME performed significantly worse than iTunes AAC while still using a larger bitrate than 128. Now, in the two cases that LAME used a much smaller bitrate, it also performed significantly worse than AAC, but I discount that as due to the bitrate. Nevertheless it does highlight some oddities in the VBR methods used in those samples. In any case, while iTunes AAC and LAME MP3 basically tied overall, iTunes seemed to be a much better performer in about 1/3rd of the cases, and tied in almost all the rest. In both of the test cases where LAME was the clear and obvious winner, it also used a large number of bits to do so.

Qualitywise, they tied. Bitrate-wise and overall testing wise, I would say iTunes AAC had a very slight edge. However, that is my opinion and should be treated as such.

I'd be interested in testing done with AAC160, actually. While sub-128 is more interesting on a technical level, the majority of encoding is upwards of 128. Obviously, at some point you achieve transparency and can no longer make meaningful distinctions, but for an algorithim judgement, it would be nice to see how iTunes AAC compares to itself at 128/160/192 and so on. You could throw Real's encoder into the mix as well, to see how it fares up. And the best of LAME at each average bitrate too.

I've been advocating the same, as I use iTunes AAC 192 but there is little support here for it as most say its transparent at that bit rate making the test too difficult.

That is because ITune is implementing the simplest of all AAC profiles, LC.. Even LC, it is not switching between KB_window and Sin_window.. then.. it is not using LTP/ predictions for some highly tonal / stationary signals.. and then in some rare cases when the encoder is starved of bits.. it didn't switch to Intensity Stereo for the Upper band, resulting in visible artifacts at 128kbps.. Then there is this new Parametric Stereo added to AAC which is a much improvement over the old AAC intensity stereo which is exactly identical to MP3!! I think at this moment.. there are still work added to the MPEG4 AAC specifications..

Try clips with a lot of fast attacks such as the German Speech.. AAC beats MP3 flat in these type of clips because it has the Temporal Noise Shaping Filter to compensate for the failure of block switching!! Clips like that are very common in classical music with strong vocal components..

Whereas MP3 has reach it MAX in tuning.... due to the limitation of the specifications.. AAC is still an infant.. at this stage, with a lot of potential for further improvements..

wkwai