Download iTunes LAME 2.0.8 Intel

Although Apple iTunes can encode music to the MP3 format, opinions are divided on the quality of the converted music tracks. That’s why the folks at Blacktree have iTunes-LAME developed to combine – according to the developers – the ease of use of iTunes with the sound quality of Lame. However, iTunes LAME has been compiled for Macintosh computers with a PowerPC processor on board, so Rosetta required to run the program on Intel-based Macs. In turn, some Stimuli developers have reworked the source code of iTunes-LAME and baked a version for Intel-based Macs. This Intel-specific build is named iTunes-LAME: LAME MP3 encoder for OS X and can be downloaded from this server be downloaded. Stimuli informs us of the following:

This is a script for iTunes on intel Macs. Decompress, and put it in your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts folder (create that folder if you don’t have it!).

This will create a menu in iTunes that allows you to import MP3s using the awesome LAME encoder, for top-quality MP3 encoding. This software differs from the original in that it is mostly made of intel-native binaries, offering a massive performance increase and better memory usage over running iTunes-LAME via Rosetta.

The actual iTunes-LAME app is still compiled for PPC; however, the LAME and AIFF-to-Quicktime binaries are now optimized for intel’s Core architecture.

If you are wondering why anyone would bother with iTunes-LAME, the answer is:

• iTunes’ MP3 encoder is focused on speed rather than sound quality
• LAME is as good as it gets in terms of sound quality; LAME is state of the art, and very fast on Intel Core processors.

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