iTunes LAME help

From searching the boards I decided to give LAME a go. While it's nice and there's a bit of an increase quality-wise from the iTunes MP3 encoder it's dreadfully slow! (--alt -preset -standard setting) I've noticed a lot of people mentioning encoding speeds upwards of 8 to 13x but I'm only seeing 1.7 to 2.2x. Is there anything I need to set to get my rips going a bit faster?

Thanks again.

I personally haven't used the iTunes LAME encoder, only the standalone LAME encoder on a win machine.

In my experience it is quite slow, but the results are better...
However, the ease of use that the built-in iTunes encoders provide have persuaded me to switch to using 160Kb AAC files. They sound as good as my 192Kb LAME encoded MP3's and the file size is the same (Important when you only have a 10GB iPod!)

Yeah, AAC encodes 10x faster than lame and it sounds better, too. Unless you REALLY need mp3s for some reason, just go with AAC, it sounds better and encodes faster.

So the AAC encoder is built into iTunes then? Please forgive my ignorance, still extremely new to iTunes and Macs in general.
Now as far as the AAC file format is concerned, will I still be able to play them on my PC (only of course until I pick up a G5 )? Will I need the PC version of iTunes to play them? You know, got the network going and may want to listen to some music on another computer.

Thanks again guys.

Oh, and another thing. To remove the few CDs I've encoded w/ lame and re-encode them in AAC, do I just drag them all to the trash from the Finder window? Delete them from My Library in iTunes?

Thanks again.

Oh, and another if you don't mind. How would I uninstall LAME since I wont be using it anymore? Ahhh, so new!!!

to delete the tracks from your computer, just select them in itunes under library, and hit delete. this will delete them from your library and your computer. yes, you will need itunes for windows in order to play aac files on your pc. to get to the aac encoder in itunes, go to preferences>importing, and select aac encoder, and then you can pick whatever bitrate you want. i find that 160kbps sounds really good in aac.

I ended up deleting them in Finder but they would come back in my iTunes library and would even play! I just ended up deleting themin iTunes. As far as LAME goes, I dragged it to my waste recepticle but I still have the option to import with LAME. How do I get rid of that as well?
Yes, AAC @ a bitrate of 160 does sound pretty good, and imports fast as well. I'm very satisfied!

Thanks again.

Go to Home->library->iTunes and then LAME should either be in the plug-ins folder or in the scripts folder.

Trash any lame related files there.

Have fun archiving your CD's!

Thanks again for all the help! I'll definitely enjoy archiving my CDs now that it moves much much faster and at a better quality!