I’m currently using MPC2MP3 to transcode for my portable. For this purpose, encoding speed is more important than quality. I’m not even using –alt preset cbr 128, just LAME’s default. On my ancient K6-II 300mhz, LAME’s default setting is usually faster by a minute than –alt preset cbr 128.

I’m now experimenting with Gogo and it is even faster than LAME by another minute. Is there anyway to configure MPC2MP3 to use Gogo instead of LAME?

I'd experiment with LAME settings some more. I know how it is with --ap encode times, but LAME has some good speed without using presets.

The best speddup I got was using -v --vbr-new, from there I added the size/quality controls. Seems --vbr-new will not slow down with a higher quality (the -V switch) but will make bitrates increase notably.

[commandline censored due to risk of attack]

If you want to use the faster vbr-new, I'd suggest just using "--alt-preset fast standard" (unless that falls outside your preferred bitrate range), to maintain the various --alt-preset tweaks. Of course this will still be slower than cbr 128, so if even that's too slow for you, there's not much you can do and still use LAME...