lameenc

The purpose of this library is to wrap around LAME for Python. There are many ways of doing this currently, but none have a binary distribution on pypi. The idea is to automatically build and push to pypi for Linux, macOS and Windows. This is possible as of April 2017 due to the patents on MP3 having expired.

Build

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

On Windows, use the Visual Studio generator instead of make. For Windows ARM64, install the ARM64 Python matching the version you want to build and the Visual Studio C++ ARM64 build tools, then run the commands below. Replace 3.12 with another supported Python version if needed.

python3.12 -m pip install --upgrade build
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A ARM64 "-DPYTHON_VERSIONS=3.12" ..
cmake --build . --config Release

The wheel will be written to build/.

Usage

To use the library you need to have raw PCM data in 16-bit interleaved format. Among the options for this encoder is mono or stereo, i.e. 1 or 2 channels. You can set the sample rate of input PCM data.

Usage is fairly simple in Python:

import lameenc
encoder = lameenc.Encoder()
encoder.set_bit_rate(128)
encoder.set_in_sample_rate(16000)
encoder.set_channels(2)
encoder.set_quality(2)  # 2-highest, 7-fastest
# Can call this in a loop
mp3_data = encoder.encode(interleaved_pcm_data)
# Flush when finished encoding the entire stream
mp3_data += encoder.flush()

If LAME is being chatty to stdout and you don't like that, then you can call encoder.silence() and it should shut up.