WaveLab does not use a command line version of lame, there is no -t switch for instance that WaveLab is using. IOW, there is not necessarily an easy way to achieve you request. I might have a look, though.
Thank you PG, I’d really appreciate it. The LAME header is visible in MP3Diags. The delay, padding, accurate length info is visible in Foobar 2000. I did find one other program doing it the same as Wavelab today, Goldwave. But it’s the only one I’ve found.
PG, all of the programs I’ve looked at use a dll, like Wavelab, not the exe. Yet they all turn out files that look EXACTLY like my screenshots: LAME header and gapless/exact length info. So it must be a common thing to do with the dll. Mac, I don’t know, but XLD on Mac does exactly the same thing.
And that correlates with the command line exe default behavior with no switches: You get exactly what you see in my screenshots.
I experimented a bit with the xing header in lame, but unfortunately, it does not work properly when embedding certain metadata (eg. picture), in which case lame fails.
I must say this is not enough a priority for me to spend more time on this now.
Thanks for checking it out PG. When there’s time I really think it should be fixed. It will fix the OP’s LAME inaccurate time problem in other programs using LAME (but probably not in Wavelab if Fraunhofer is decoding in Wavelab).
I’ve tried using the latest LAME 3.1 lame_enc.dll on Rarewares in Wavelab but it makes no difference. It works, but Wavelab is still not adding the lame header/delay/pad/accurate. It really seems there’s something in Wavelab (and Goldwave) dealing with the dll strangely, because you can copy the libmp3lame.dll from Reaper and Acoustica, put it in Wavelab, rename it to lame_enc.dll, and Wavelab will be ok with it. But in Wavelab it still doesn’t add the LAME Header or delay/pad/accurate, while Reaper and Acoustica do add those using the exact same dll.
Like I said the Fraunhofer gapless is ok but it’s extremely limited in it’s usefulness if most players and DAWs are not going to decode it as gapless, which really seems like it might be the case.
It really seems like Wavelab should be able to create the LAME like nearly every other program, with the LAME Header, etc. That would cover a lot more players and DAWs.
Do you know another application that can embed a picture at the front of the mp3 file (where iTunes needs to find them), while still having the lame header? (the right name being the ‘xing’ header).
This is where I failed when I tried.
Foobar 2000.
I think there are probably more.
PG, the weird thing about this is that all of the programs add EXACTLY the same 4 items (plus the header), as if it’s just one command that gets you there. In the LAME command line program it is one command, the -t switch, which suppresses the header and 3 of the 4 info lines (delay, padding, and accurate length). Without any switches, all of those, including the header, are there by default.
However I found out today that Foobar uses the LAME exe. But I’ll look at the programs using a dll and see what the situation is.
Acoustica 7 can do it, and they use a LAME dll. Acoustica and Reaper use exactly the same dll, libmp3lame.dll v3.99.2.5. I don’t know where they got it but their dll’s are identical. And the dll works in Wavelab if renamed, but like I said the header is not added in Wavelab. I’ll post screenshots later.
I guess this is the problem. The header (and tail) need to be added by WaveLab because of the enhanced meta-data support of WaveLab. Therefore, this can’t work out of the box and some special processing would need to be implemented.
Thanks PG. I appreciate that Wavelab has to cover a lot of metadata cases on Windows and Mac with various filetypes, but I really hope this can be implemented, because I had a run-in with accurate length myself a few days ago. All of the programs using LAME that are capable of adding cover art use an xing header and LAME INFO tag and have this solved for iTunes. Amazon is still using LAME and I don’t foresee that changing, and they make more MP3 files than anybody. Ideally Wavelab would decode LAME files with LAME, because LAME and Fraunhofer really don’t appear to be very compatible when it comes to accurate length and gapless decoding each other. If that was done, Wavelab would be back and forth accurate length compatible with other DAWs like Reaper that use LAME. iTunes seems to be one of the only programs that can handle decoding both, but it has it’s own special routines for dealing with gapless and accurate length.
Ideally Wavelab would decode LAME
Lame does not included a decoder. But it is sometimes associated with one called mpg123.
Don’t forget that Fraunhofer created the mp3 format. On another hand, lame is not a well maintained project. For example, last version I tried 3.1 did not build successfully on Mac.
Putting some effort to support some non-official version which is not well maintained either, is difficult.
Now, I know this Lame version is popular, because of historical reasons (availability), therefore I don’t discard your POV.