iTunes-LAME for intel OS X

Download it here.

Audiophiles rejoice! 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.

My recommended flags for iTunes-Lame are: