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| TooLAME | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Mike Cheng |
| Stable release | 0.2L / March 1, 2003; 22 years ago (2003-03-01) |
| Preview release | 0.2 m beta 8 |
| Type | Codec |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License |
| Website | toolame |
TooLAME is afree softwareMPEG-1 Layer II (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 TwoLAMEcode fork (the latest version, TwoLAME 0.4.0, was released October 11, 2019). The name TooLAME is a play onLAME andLayer II.
After leaving leadership of theLAME 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 widespreadMP3 format, due to patents held byFraunhofer andThomson, while use of MP2 audio appeared to be unrestricted. For more, see:LAME#Patents and legal issues.
The first release of TooLAME (v0.1) was November 7, 1998.[1]
He originally based his work onmpegaudio.tar. In October 1999, he started over from scratch, instead basing TooLAME on the more capable ISO Dist10 reference implementation,[1] and substantial code from LAME. He aimed for higher audio quality and improved encoding performance.[2] Achieving high performance, "About 4 times faster than ISO code."[3]
TooLAME was mainly a standalone audio encoder, acceptingPCM files inRAW/AIFF/WAV format. However, in the final TooLAME release from Cheng (TooLAME 0.2 m beta 8), support for use as alibrary was included. Cheng repeatedly resisted the addition of features likelibsndfile integration for support of a much wider variety of input formats.
Nicholas Humfrey made significant modifications to tooLAME, and released it publicly. At Mike Cheng's request he renamed it to TwoLAME to avoid confusion.[4]
TooLAME utilizes the highly tunedpsychoacoustic model developed forLAME, but applied to MP2 audio encoding, instead. It includes a rather complex and rarely used (by MP2 players)variable bitrate (VBR) mode.[5] FrameCRCs, andBroadcast Wave Format (BWF) output was added forDigital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) use.
MJPEGTools documentation recommends the use of TooLAME instead of their included mp2enc.[6]MPlayer andMencoder includes support for TooLAME (and TwoLAME) audio encoding.[7]