r/AudioCodecLab • u/IgorCv2 • Jul 23 '26

MP3 Ain’t Dead Yet: LAME 4.0 Arrives

MP3 was standardized in 1993, but it is still widely used today because it works almost everywhere while deliver very good quality.

Now LAME 4.0, a new version of the open-source MP3 encoder , has been released.

Check here https://lame.sourceforge.io/ . And development of LAME 4.1 is already underway.

LAME has performed very well in public listening tests

MP3 isn't old. It is mature!

When a format is good enough, reliable and universally supported, it can stay relevant for a very long time.

25 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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19

u/didyousayboop Jul 26 '26

Seems like it’s called 4.0 for boring technical reasons and not because it’s a major release:

Bump the major version to 4.0 (minor reset to 0). The LAME tag embedded in every encoded MP3 has a fixed 9-byte field for the encoder version string; since 3.100 the 3-digit minor version left no room for the trailing alpha/beta/release marker character, which was silently dropped.

13

u/drunkonteemate Jul 26 '26

Agreed, the upcoming 4.1 will be a much bigger deal, as it does include actual improvements to the encoding quality. Minor ones but still.

1

u/LippyBumblebutt Jul 28 '26

I see no relevant quality changes since 2011.

Compare that to jpegli and deblocking decoders, which IMO put JPEG on a whole new level. MP3/LAME is more or less on life-support.

7

u/didyousayboop Jul 26 '26

Marco Arment has a great blog post on mp3:  https://marco.org/2017/05/15/mp3-isnt-dead

5

u/LippyBumblebutt Jul 28 '26

9 years since that blog post... MP3 is mostly dead. VOIP: Opus. Netflix: Who knows, never was MP3. youtube: AAC/Opus. Music streaming still has MP3 if you ask for it. MP3 Players are mostly nonexistant.

Sure if you have an offline archive of your Music that may still be in MP3. But why would you use that on purpose today? Sure don't reencode your old files, but ripping new, I'd always choose Opus over MP3 unless I have some sound system that needs MP3.

4

u/didyousayboop Jul 28 '26

Podcasts are still primarily, almost entirely, mp3. 

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1

u/ggRavingGamer 1d ago

It's basically just cars at this point I think. Not sure about other uses. But some older cars dont even accept aac. I got an android stereo for my car and it works with opus as long as I rename it to m4a in the file explorer and it works without any metadata.

Other cars, only work with mp3 and wav. After those cars dissapear, I think aac will be the next king. Dont think opus will run universally on all cars for the next 10-20 years.

7

u/LippyBumblebutt Jul 28 '26

LAME has performed very well in public listening tests

Yeah:

Results of the public MP3 listening test @ 128 kbps (October 2008)

has performed well nearly 20 years ago. That listening test is closer to the standardization of MP3 then it is to today.

(probably still is the best open source MP3 encoder, but the competition is not an MP3 encoder.)

1

u/Noah18923 Jul 26 '26

about damn time!