LAME 3.98.3 Universal for Mac OSX 10.5

This post is pretty much only for other Mac owners out there Googling for a super-fat Universal binary of LAME 3.98.3 for Mac OSX 10.5 and greater. What do I mean by super-fat? I mean that I compiled it for PPC, PPC64, i386 and X86_64 architectures. None of the previous versions of any LAME binaries that I've come across seemed to have 64 bit versions in there, so for those of you want it, this version has it.

For those not familiar with the LAME MP3 encoder, you can get a pretty good idea of what it is over at Wikipedia.

Why did I bother compiling and posting this? Because about a month ago when the LAME project released the latest version of their encoder, it only came out as source. Now, typically, someone else out there is kind enough to compile a Universal binary of both the command line executable and the dynamic library for each version that comes out. This time though, it has been about a month since the release and I haven't been able to find one online yet, so I decided I'd bake one myself. I also happened to need a PPC version of it for my aging 12 inch G4 laptop, and I didn't really see any easier way of getting that.

Here's the link to obtain it:

lame-3.98.3_universal_mac_os_x_10.5_plus_64bit.zip

Who can use this? Any Mac user running OSX 10.5 or greater who wants the latest version of the "lame" command line program, or the dynamically linked shared library "libmp3lame.dylib" based on the LAME 3.98.3 source, released on 2010-02-27.

How does one make use of either one these files?

• Users of iTunes-LAME can right click on that program and show it's package contents, navigate to the "Resources" folder and replace the "lame" executable in there with the one that I've compiled.
• Users of Audacity can use "libmp3lame.dylib" to enable Audacity to export MP3s by going to their Preferences, going to the "Libraries" tab and using the "locate" button to select this version of the file.
• Users of other applications that require the dylib will be able to take advantage of this new version of LAME by copying the file to "/usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.dylib" and chmodding it to 755.
• One can learn how to use the command line version of the "lame" program by simply dragging it's icon to an open Terminal window and typing "--help" at the end of that line and hitting return.

I'd like to make a quick shout out to Gee over at his blog, and thank him for the excellent post he made explaining how to use the Mac OSX command line to cross compile for other processor architectures. I'd not have been able to figure that out nearly as quickly without finding that post.

In case anyone's interested, here are the command line arguments I used to configure the LAME 3.98.3 source and compile a super-fat Universal binary version of it.

I promised myself that I'd never make a post on Nuclear Pixel 5 without at least some kind of pretty looking imagery in it, I created the above candyfied version of the LAME MP3 encoder logo. In the spirit of open source and awesomeness, anyone interested in playing with the photoshop document I used to create this version of the logo can download it here. (Original logo source: Wikipedia)

Enjoy!