Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Cakewalk's LAME encoder is built in. We don't redist a dll. You must have something you manually installed.

Thanks Noel...
 
Does this mean that if I have previously purchased the cakewalk encoder and I am running Foxboro, when I use the mp3 export it is now using 3.99?
 
Keni
 

Hi Keni:
 
If you paid for the Cakewalk MP3 Encoder activation, check your Cakewalk store account for the link to download the Activation file, if you're using SONAR X64, you may have to contact Cakewalk for the x64 Activation download link. The one in the store account used to be for the 32bit version of SONAR. I just keep the Activation file for both 32bit and 64bit, so I never had to download it again.
 
When you use the Cakewalk MP3 Encoder in Platinum (latest version) it uses Lame 3.99. Sometime during the SONAR 2015 release, Cakewalk, finally :), updated the Encoder to use Lame 3.99.

Also, Keni:
 
You shouldn't have to use any command line stuff with Lame. Just get Aaron's SONAR MP3 patch via the link to SONAR Utilities in Mudgel's signature. With Aaron's patch all you need to do is run the patch and select "Add All Mp3 Options," and select the bit rate you want via a dropdown menu in SONAR's Export Audio dialog. For example, in the "Files of type" dropdown menu of the Export Audio dialog, just choose something like "MP3 256 kbps-keep wav file or "MP3 256 kbps-discard wav file."
 
Or use the Cakewalk MP3 Encoder. :)
 
Hope that helps.
 

Mudgel:
 
Aaron's Patch wont interfere with the use of the Cakewalk Mp3 encoder when a user uses it to encode mp3 files. Cakewalk's encoder references the TTSLame.dll in the SONAR root directory, and Arron's Patch makes bit rate selections available in the "Files of type" drop down menu of SONAR's Export Audio dialog which, when/if any are selected, reference the LAME encoder that is installed in the location Aaron's patch is installed to.
 
But if one has Cakewalk's Encoder activated, there is no need to use Aaron's Patch method for encoding Mp3 files. In that case, just use the Cakewalk Encoder. :)

The only way I know to uninstall Cakewalk's Encoder is to remove the TTSLame.dll, and if you do that, SONAR wont even startup!
 
And if using the SONAR External Encoder, just get a copy of Lame and place all the files in a isolated location and folder that will just be used by the External Encoder, and set the Path of the Cakewalk External Audio Encoder Setup dialog to that particular isolated folder, and it will not interfere with any other Lame installations you have. The External Encoder will just reference the Lame library you have in that particular folder.
 
 

Yes that's right apparently.

Previously that may have been useful as Cakewalk used an older version of Lame. With Sonar 2015 Cambridge, several MP3 enhancements were added including the update of TTSLAME.dll to using Lame v. 3.99

Mudgel:
 
When you select "MP3" using the "Files of Type" dropdown menu, you are selecting the Cakewalk MP3 Encoder to do the encoding. You select Arron's encoder when you select one of the files with the long names, such as "MP3 256 kbps-keep wav file," "MP3 256 kbps-discard wav file," "Mp3 Variable Bit Rate-quality 8 of 10," etc..

Well, There are 3 popular and useful ways to encode mp3 files when using SONAR, to me.
 
1) The easiest is to use the Cakewalk MP3 Encoder (with comprehensive ID3 support), and it's convenient to use it, since you can stay within SONAR, but that's if a user pays for the Activator. And the GUI could use some eye candy attention. :) Cake could make it look sharp like other GUIs they make, like the sharp ones they make for VSTs/Pro Channel modules, for example. Make it look Professional with a good eye candy appearance.
 
2) Using Aaron's MP3 Patch is the next easiest way (How to use that method is, basically, explained in my post #96 of this thread), but that method has limited ID3 Info encoding options, just 3 fields, Namely: Author, Title of track, and Copyright year.
 
3) The Cakewalk External Encoder Configuration Utility. That's the hardest of the 3 to use, as a user has to figure out how to use those Lame command line variables. I flee from that command line stuff, so I can't be much help there. But I mention part of what to do in my post #100 of this thread.
 
If you have it in mind to make some tutorial for users, that's a decent thing to do. If I can be of any assistance, let me know. It's the least I can do, since I was of no use to you during your SONAR X1 trials. :) (When you were having serious issues running X1).

I sympathize with the effort to make MP3 encoding as simple and as painless as possible, but I also think it's pretty important to understand the encoding process and what it is doing to your sound. The reality is that MP3 encoding will have some level of impact on the quality of the sound, period. Given that, it doesn't make any sense to me that a guy that would spend hours and hours monkeying with various compressor plug-ins and settings, judging the subtle qualities of each tiny change would then blindly mash the final product through a meat-grinder MP3 conversion process where any such subtleties are utterly lost.
 
Another thing to consider is that there are different contexts for your output. Maybe you're producing stuff for your band to listen to only and don't really care about file sizes and want just the highest quality you can get. Or maybe you're deploying to a site like Reverb Nation where keeping the file size under the free-service limit while ensuring decent qualit is important. Or maybe you're producing downloads for sale and you need to leverage ID3 tags so that end users get the fullest experience possible.
 
So yeah, let's leverage tools that helps make encoding easy to use but it makes a lot of sense to me to invest a little time in understanding what's happening when you encode. That's why I applaud mudgel's efforts to shed some light on this subject.
 
One thing I often do is use Sonar to render everything to a WAV file and do MP3 conversions later outside of Sonar. I do this because some encoding scenarios require different bitrates because of file size limitations, or because I want to encode groups of files for an album-style distribution using ID3 tags for track ID's and to assure similar quality settings across tracks. Achieving this level of flexibility is certainly possible with all of the options presented in this thread but for me it's just much  easier to open up a command window and do it the old-fashioned way. However you choose to do it, understanding the quality settings are important.
 
So for those of you who want better control of the encoding process, this is a short summary of the recommendations for the LAME encoder that I pulled from the help docs and massaged a bit to make it somewhat less geeky:
 
There are three basic ways to encode an MP3 file with LAME:
 
• Constant Bitrate: CBR encoding is the basic encoding mode of MP3. The bitrate is kept constant across the entire file, which means the same number of bits is allocated to encode each second of audio, resulting in a predictable file size for a given duration. CBR is useful for people who are concerned about maintaining maximum compatibility, especially with certain streaming applications and some hardware-based decoders that don't reliably support VBR.
 
• Variable Bitrate (VBR mode): The user chooses a desired quality level instead of a bitrate. The encoder will change the bitrate to a higher or lower one whenever the audio file is more or less complex. The main advantage of using VBR is that the encoder will use the smallest amount of bytes needed to keep the asked quality. The inconvenience is that the file size is quite unpredictable, and can change from file to file in more than 50kbps.
 
• Variable Bitrate (ABR mode): ABR is a mix between CBR and VBR. ABR encoding is desirable for users who want the general benefits of VBR (an optimum bitrate from frame to frame) but with a relatively predictable file size like they would get with constant bitrate (CBR), and a greater preference for bitrates that are near a desired target.  
 
Recommendations for quality:
 
Best quality, "archiving": CBR 320 is the strongest setting for MP3, with the lowest risk of artifacts. Sample Sonar External Encoder Utility command line:
 
lame -b320 %I %O
 
However, with the exception of a few situations, quality is rarely better than the highest VBR quality profiles described below.
 
• High quality, HiFi, home or quiet listening : -V0 (avg. 245 kbps) or -V1 (avg. 225 kbps) or -V2 (avg. 190 kbps) or  -V3 (avg. 175 kbps).   These settings are considered to produce transparent encoding (transparent = most people can't distinguish the MP3 from the original in an ABX blind test). Audible differences between these presets exist, but are rare.
 
• Portable, background noise and low bitrate requirement, small sizes : -V4 (avg. 160 kbps) or -V5 (avg. 130 kbps) or  -V6 (avg. 115 kbps) -V6 produces an "acceptable" quality, while -V4 should be close to perceptual transparency.
 
• Very low bitrate, small sizes, eg. for voice, radio, mono encoding : --abr 80 (stereo) or --abr 56 -m m (mono) For very low bitrates, up to 100kbps, ABR is most often the best solution.
 
Sample Sonar External Encoder Utility command line:
 
lame -V0 %I %O
 
Sorry to be so verbose and I hope someone finds this useful.
 
 
 

Feel free, I 'm largely paraphrasing the help docs anyway. Let me know if you'd like to farm out some of the work.

FYI - If you own/owned PA9, contact support and they'll hook you up.
 
 

Sounds fantastic, thanks for the great effort!

I'll be honest im not the smartest person and i'm really struggling with this peoples. i'd welcome any suggestions. I dont see why my mp3 encoder has been working up until now, i've only been using this program a few months? i paid for the cd etc but now im going to have buy purchase the lame encoder? it didnt even tell me it had "ran out?" in the first place so its a bit confusing to be fair. ive tried the creating a new one as adam had suggested, i have the lame decoder, i found the file so it was in my things.... but how on earth do you then activate it?
thanks in advance :-)