using lame 3.93.1 , i am not sure about my last version when i encode using alt standard preset, it is giveing me cracked out times, like listing a 4 min song as 23 mins....this used to happen when i encoded in vbr at first and used it with winamp and my empeg, now it is happening with everything, winamp, wmp, itunes, ipod, multiple machines ripping and encoding, they all do this. Is this a bug? So many cd's have already been ripped, is there a simple fix, header fix maybe? Anyone have any idea what this is all about.. thanks a lot, sorry if this was a repost, I did try to search.

-rs

I'm thinking corrupt VBR header or corrupt/no LAME/Xing header.

Try reading these threads:
Lame Header, Tool for recreation
VBR MP3 duration errors
MP3 durations are wrong...
VBR mp3 duration display error in XP

Extra Note: I notice that you are using LAME 3.93.1. Keep in mind that this is _not_ the recommended version of LAME. Read this thread.

I would recommend using 3.93.1 unless you're using the fast presets, unless anyone comes up with a good reason not to. "I've been busy and haven't had time to test, so there might be something wrong with it, even though nobody has found anything wrong with it in the months it's been out" isn't a good reason. So far I've just been hearing a lot of FUD (including in that thread), no actual samples where 3.93.1 fails where 3.90.2 does not.

The recommended version is, well, recommended.
That's it. It is much more tested...

But 3.93.1 shouldn't be worse IMHO.
Anyway, I'd like to know what's the problem with fast presets...

From what I gather, they have bitrate significantly higher than they should (and significantly higher than the non-fast versions) in 3.93.1. Not really a problem in the audio-quality sense, but not ideal either. I don't use the fast presets myself, so haven't tested. Hopefully 3.94 will be out at some point to fix some of this, as it seems some more attention is being paid to the --presets for that release. LAME could really use someone knowledgeable with lots of spare time to work on the tuning though, which hasn't happened much lately (understandably, given that it's nobody's actual paid job to do).

Heh, everyone can't call 3.93.1 'Dibrom's compile' because it has --preset medium in it, thus it's not recommendable?

I remember having what's likely to be a Xing mp3 which shows in Winamp as having 0 duration, and no scrollbar.. it plays fine though, thanks for the tool links

LAME 3.93.1 might still be buggy when using --alt presets. Read what happened here.
Didrom's compile, are both (I might be wrong here) 3.90.2 & 3.90.3. He compiled them personally. He DID NOT compile 3.93.1, so no, it can not be called Didrom's compile.
He compiles them personally to achieve one goal, make --alt presets as efficient as possible. It works. So if you use presets, go for 3.90.?.

Rockstar it's perhaps you encode in mp3 directly from another format. I have the same problem when i encode mpc directly in mp3, but all works good when i decompress mpc to wav and encode wav to mp3.