TooLAME is a
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...
MPEG-1 Layer II
MPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II (MP2, sometimes incorrectly called Musicam or MUSICAM) is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3). While MP3 i ...
(MP2) audio encoder written primarily by Mike Cheng. While there are many MP2 encoders, TooLAME is well-known and widely used for its particularly high audio quality. It has been unmaintained since 2003, but is directly succeeded by the TwoLAME
code fork (the latest version, TwoLAME 0.4.0, was released October 11, 2019). The name TooLAME is a play on ''
LAME'' and ''Layer II''.
History
After leaving leadership of the
LAME project, Mike Cheng decided to redirect his efforts towards the MP2 format. This was in part due to concern with looming legal threats to those distributing software for the widespread
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...
format, due to patents held by
Fraunhofer and
Thomson, while use of MP2 audio was basically unrestricted. For more, see:
LAME#Patents and legal issues.
The first release of TooLAME (v0.1) was November 7, 1998.
[TooLAME HISTORY]
/ref>
He originally based his work on ''mpegaudio.tar''. In October 1999, he started over from scratch, instead basing TooLAME on the more capable ISO Dist10 reference implementation,[TooLAME README]
/ref> Achieving high performance, "About 4 times faster than ISO code."
TooLAME was mainly a standalone audio encoder, accepting PCM files in RAW/AIFF/WAV format. However, in the final TooLAME release from Cheng (TooLAME 0.2 m beta 8), support for use as a library
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
was included. Cheng repeatedly resisted the addition of features like libsndfile integration for support of a much wider variety of input formats.
TwoLAME
Nicholas Humfrey made significant modifications to tooLAME, and released it publicly. At Mike Cheng's request he renamed it to TwoLAME to avoid confusion.
Technical details
TooLAME utilizes the highly tuned psychoacoustic model developed for LAME, but applied to MP2 audio encoding, instead.
Includes a rather complex, rarely used, and poorly supported (by MP2 players) variable bitrate (VBR) mode.[TooLAME VBR README]
/ref>
Frame CRCs, and Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) output was added for Digital Audio Broadcasting
Digital radio is the use of digital technology to transmit or receive across the radio spectrum. Digital transmission by radio waves includes digital broadcasting, and especially digital audio radio services.
Types
In digital broadcasting syst ...
(DAB) use.
Popularity
MJPEGTools documentation recommends the use of TooLAME instead of their included mp2enc.
MPlayer
MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for ...
/ Mencoder includes support for TooLAME (and TwoLAME) audio encoding.MPlayer The Movie Player
(man page)
Code forks
TwoLAME: Mainly code clean-up, API change, performance improvements: http://www.twolame.org/
MCTooLAME: TooLAME fork with MPEG Multichannel 5.1-channel surround sound encoding: http://mctoolame.sourceforge.net/
Windows DLLs: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=BB6FAF8F.40CB%25steve%40prx.org&forum_name=toolame-devel http://www.fmjsoft.com/addons.html
Toolame-DAB: Integration with the open-source Digital Audio Broadcasting
Digital radio is the use of digital technology to transmit or receive across the radio spectrum. Digital transmission by radio waves includes digital broadcasting, and especially digital audio radio services.
Types
In digital broadcasting syst ...
toolchain ODR-mmbTools: http://www.opendigitalradio.org/mmbtools
See also
*MPEG-1 Layer II
MPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II (MP2, sometimes incorrectly called Musicam or MUSICAM) is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3). While MP3 i ...
*MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...
* LAME
*MPEG-1
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, mak ...
*Digital Audio Broadcasting
Digital radio is the use of digital technology to transmit or receive across the radio spectrum. Digital transmission by radio waves includes digital broadcasting, and especially digital audio radio services.
Types
In digital broadcasting syst ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Toolame
Free audio codecs
1998 software