Hi,
I'm unfamiliar with mp3 compression; plz bear with me (I'm a simple .flac guy).

Within these forums and HA wikis, I've been pointed to a couple of sites; I'll start with http://www.rarewares.org/. There, I find two (stable) versions of LAME 3.98.2, one compiled with "Intel Compiler 10.1", the other with "Intel Compiler 9.1, intended for older OSs".

I run WinXP, sp3, on an Intel P4, and natch want to run the latest (stable) version that I can. Which one should I install?!? Is mine "an older OS" in this context?

And there's a third option that really grabs my attention: "LAME 3.98.2 using libsndfile 1.0.18pre22a". But for a (literal) handful of CDs, my entire collection has been ripped to flac. Is this what I might best use with "Multi frontend" to get .flac to .mp3 (along with tags!!!), or what? Or could you suggest other paths to do this?

I'm keen to check out any and all relevant suggestions. Oh, target hardware is auto CD players and, hopefully, an iPod that is just sitting around, packed with.wav files.

Many, many TIA

ps - unlike a similar post I just read, that had but one terse response, I really HAVE been looking like crazy to figure this out, to no avail. Again, thanks.

The one created with Intel Compiler 10.1 will be fine. I have Windows XP SP3 on my netbook and have encoded multiple files using that version of Lame 3.98.2. You will use the Lame.exe file in there with a program such as foobar2000 to convert your FLAC files to mp3.

Thanks! That crosses out one option.

Do you have any idea as to relative merit of "LAME 3.98.2 using libsndfile 1.0.18pre22a" listed on the HA-recommended site? What does it integrate with? The site's author leaves things a tad opaque from my end of things. I am NOT looking for a cookie-cutter approach, but rather a set of flexible tools and procedures that I might meld together; though I no longer use it, my second OS was Unix, if that gives a sense of where I am coming from interface-wise, so to speak (er, write).

Again, many thanks.
Dave

From a Unix background, you might wish to use command line or batch files, so the libsndfile version will let you decompress FLAC input files on the fly, converting them directly to MP3.

Personally, I use foobar2000 to manage all my conversions from FLAC or similar to MP3, where it will decode the FLAC, can then apply any ReplayGain adjustment or DSP (such as foo_dsp_vlevel) I choose, then send the output at a bit depth of up to 24-bits to the standard LAME compile and, perhaps most helpfully, copy the existing tags to the MP3. It can also split my image/CUE lossless (FLAC or similar) files into track-per-file MP3 files and tag them properly. Thus, I've never bothered with a libsndfile compile, though I guess it would do no harm as a foobar2000 helper app and would only add additional input format functionality to command-line LAME.

[edit:typo]

Yo "Dynamic",
Thank you SO much for the ideas. I find foobar2000 a very comfortable place to accomplish (and play!!!) stuff, though the features you mention are (as yet) outside my ken. I've questions on some of what you wrote, which I'll post in a more appropriate forum.

Regards, Dave