November Learning Communities

1. Download the required lame_enc.dll
2. Do not open this file, but save it to your computer. As you will be using this .dll file directly for encoding it is recommended to save it into your Audacity installation folder. This is normally at C:\Program Files\Audacity. Once lame_enc.dll is saved to your computer:
3. Launch Audacity, click Edit > Preferences and go to the File Formats tab. If you are using Audacity 1.2.x and this tab is not visible, click on the left-pointing arrow top right of the window. Note: in Audacity 1.3.4 this tab is called Audio Files.
4. In the bottom of the window there is a section called MP3 Export Setup.
5. Click on the "Find Library" button
6. In Audacity 1.2.6 this will ask you if you want to locate the LAME encoder. Click "Yes". In Audacity 1.3.3 or later, click the "Browse" button
7. In the dialogue box, go to the folder where you put lame_enc.dll earlier, and select it.
8. Click Open, then OK.

In the same "MP3 Export Setup" section, you can then in Audacity 1.2.6 set the bit rate of the exported MP3 by clicking on the downward pointing arrow in the "Bit Rate" dropdown. In Audacity 1.3.3 or later (Beta), the MP3 bit rate is chosen when you click File > Export and choose MP3 Files" in the "'Save as type" dropdown; you can then click the "Options" button to choose the MP3 bit rate in the "Quality" dropdown. The default bit rate is 128 kbps in both versions of Audacity. A higher bit rate gives you higher quality at the expense of a larger file size, and vice-versa. A 128 kbps bit rate takes up about 1 MB of space per minute.