NAudio.Lame

Description

Wrapper for libmp3lame.dll to add MP3 encoding support to NAudio 2.0 on Windows.

IMPORTANT: Because this wraps Windows native DLLs it will not work on any other operating system. It may function with Windows emulation layers but I have never tested this.

Includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows native libmp3lame.dll (named libmp3lame.32.dll and libmp3lame.64.dll respectively), both of which will be copied to the output folder on build. If you are compiling for a specific CPU target - x86 or x64 - then you only need to distribute the appropriate version.

The LameDLLWrap project is the interface to both 32-bit and 64-bit version of the native DLLs, and is compiled for both targets. Both versions are compiled into resources in NAudio.Lame.dll. At runtime the version for the current process bit width is loaded from resources, which then references the appropriate native library.

Please note that native library loading will fail if for any reason the application's binary path is not in the current search path. This will happen for example in ASP.NET projects.

Usage

The LameMP3FileWriter class implements a Stream that encodes data written to it, writing the encoded MP3 data to either a file or a stream you provide.

Sample Code

Here is a very simple codec class to convert a WAV file to and from MP3:

using System.IO;
using NAudio.Wave;
using NAudio.Lame;

public static class Codec
{
    // Convert WAV to MP3 using libmp3lame library
    public static void WaveToMP3(string waveFileName, string mp3FileName, int bitRate = 128)
    {
        using (var reader = new AudioFileReader(waveFileName))
        using (var writer = new LameMP3FileWriter(mp3FileName, reader.WaveFormat, bitRate))
            reader.CopyTo(writer);
    }

    // Convert MP3 file to WAV using NAudio classes only
    public static void MP3ToWave(string mp3FileName, string waveFileName)
    {
        using (var reader = new Mp3FileReader(mp3FileName))
        using (var writer = new WaveFileWriter(waveFileName, reader.WaveFormat))
            reader.CopyTo(writer);
    }
}

Native DLL Loading

The new NAudio.Lame.LameDLL.LoadNativeDLL(...) method in v1.1.3 allows you to specify a set of root folders to search for the native DLLs and load the correct version for the current architecture. This is useful in ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core to resolve the native DLL in paths outside of the current directory and the system PATH.

For ASP.NET (Framework version):

public static void LoadLameDLL()
{
    LameDLL.LoadNativeDLL(Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "bin"));
}

For ASP.NET Core, from a PageModel or Controller:

public class IndexModel : PageModel
{
    public IndexModel(IWebHostEnvironment hostEnvironment)
    {
        LameDLL.LoadNativeDLL(hostEnvironment.ContentRootPath);
    }
}

When the native DLL is loaded this way the handle is preserved and repeated calls to the method will return true without attempting to load the DLL again.

The method is called during LameDLLWrap assembly loading the first time a method that uses the NAudio.Lame classes is called. On ASP.NET (Framework or Core) it is important to load the native DLL before it is needed.

ID3 tag support

The LameMP3FileWriter class now accepts an ID3TagData parameter, allowing you to supply some information that will be set as the ID3 tag on the MP3 file.

The ID3TagData class is pretty simple right now, with only basic information support. There are a lot of other bits of information that can potentially be stored in the ID3 tag, with all sorts of interesting ways of encoding the data. I'll have to play with it some more.

And yes, you can add a cover image, in JPG, PNG or GIF format. LAME can't directly support ID3v2 tags greater than 32KB in size due to internal buffer size constraints, it does allow you to write your own ID3 tags. The solution to the limit is to write the ID3 tags directly if they are too large for LAME to handle. Probably a good idea to keep the size reasonable.

Sample Code

using NAudio.Wave;
using NAudio.Lame;
using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        ID3TagData tag = new ID3TagData 
        {
            Title = "A Test File",
            Artist = "Microsoft",
            Album = "Windows 7",
            Year = "2009",
            Comment = "Test only.",
            Genre = LameMP3FileWriter.Genres[1],
            Subtitle = "From the Calligraphy theme"
        };

        using (var reader = new AudioFileReader(@"test.wav"))
        using (var writer = new LameMP3FileWriter(@"test.mp3", reader.WaveFormat, 128, tag))
        {
            reader.CopyTo(writer);
        }
    }
}

Progress Events

As of v1.0.4 there is now an event (MP3FileWriter.OnProgress)that you can use to get progress information during the encoding process. After each call to the LAME encoder the number of bytes in and out are sent to whatever event handler you've attached. At the end of the process when the encoder is closing it will send the final numbers along with a flag to indicate that the encoding is complete.

Since blocks are encoded very frequently I've added a very simple rate limiter that will skip progress notifications if one has happened within a certain time, except for the final progress event which is always raised. By default the progress time limit is 100ms, so you should get no more than 10 progress updates per second. You can raise or lower this by changing the MP3FileWriter.MinProgressTime property. Timing is approximate as it uses DateTime to store the last progress timestamp. Resolution may vary, but expect 15ms to be a fairly common minimum. Setting MinProgressTime to 0 will disable the delay and send you updates for every encoder call.

Sample Code

using NAudio.Wave;
using NAudio.Lame;
using System;

class Program
{
    // For calculation of progress percentage, total bytes to be input
    static long input_length = 0;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        using (var reader = new NAudio.Wave.AudioFileReader(@"C:\Temp\TestWave.wav"))
        using (var writer = new NAudio.Lame.LameMP3FileWriter(@"C:\Temp\Encoded.mp3", reader.WaveFormat, NAudio.Lame.LAMEPreset.V3))
        {
            writer.MinProgressTime = 250;
            input_length = reader.Length;
            writer.OnProgress += writer_OnProgress;
            reader.CopyTo(writer);
        }
    }

    static void writer_OnProgress(object writer, long inputBytes, long outputBytes, bool finished)
    {
        string msg = string.Format("Progress: {0:0.0}%, Output: {1:#,0} bytes, Ratio: 1:{2:0.0}",
            (inputBytes * 100.0) / input_length,
            outputBytes,
            ((double)inputBytes) / Math.Max(1, outputBytes));

        Console.Write("\r{0," + (Console.BufferWidth - 1).ToString() + "}\r{1}", "", msg);
        if (finished)
            Console.WriteLine();
    }
}

Encoder Configuration

From v1.1.1 there is a new LameConfig class which has a variety of settings that will alter the encoder's operation. This allows you to set the Copyright flag on encoded frames, etc.

While there are many more settings available I don't have a clear picture of who wants what. If you're desperate for the quantization or filtering settings let me know.

Relase Notes

Version 2.1.0

Released to NuGet 30-May-2023

Changes:

• Improved handling of unicode characters in ID3v2 tags.
• Binding to NAudio 2.1.0

Version 2.0.1

Released to NuGet 18-Jan-2022

Changes:

• Fix exception when NAudio.Lame loaded as memory assembly.

Version 2.0.0

Released to NuGet 10-Feb-2021

Changes:

• Binding and support for NAudio 2.0.0.

Version 1.1.6

Released to NuGet 6-Sep-2020

Changes:

• Added more VBR encoding options and some basic tests for them.

Version 1.1.5

Released to NuGet 29-Jun-2020

Changes:

• Added OutputSampleRate to LameConfig.

Version 1.1.4

Released to NuGet 22-Jul-2020

Changes:

• Added VBR to LameConfig to control VBR mode.
• Added public VBRMode enumeration, mirroring from LameDLLWrap.
• When using presets V0-V9 VBR is automatically enabled.

Version 1.1.3

Released to NuGet 14-Jul-2020

Changes:

• Added LameDLL.LoadNativeDLL(...) method to load correct version of the DLL to memory.

  Note: This is very Windows-specific. There is a guard against attempting to load on non-windows OS.

• Call LoadNativeDLL() when wrapper assembly loaded to load Native DLL from default paths.

Version 1.1.2

Releasted to NuGet 25-May-2020

Changes:

• Fixed missing sample rate and channel count initialisation (#43, #39).
• Fixed init crash when ID3v1 tag was generated instead of ID3v2 (#42).
• Fixed MPEGMode configuration being unavailable outside library (#37).

Version 1.1.1

Released to NuGet 6-Apr-2020.

New Features:

• Links to NAudio v1.10.0.
• Added a LameConfig class to allow more control over encoder initialization.

LameConfig has a short list of settings for the encoder. More may be added in future.

Version 1.1.0

Released to NuGet 25-Dec-2019.

New Features:

• Is now a fully .NET Standard 2.0 build. Still only runs on Windows with native DLLs.
• Uses Fody to initialize library, removing .NET Framework dependence or manual initialization.

Version 1.1.0-pre3

Replaced static constructor initialization with ModuleInit.Fody module initializer to properly initialize the Resource Assembly Loader.

Version 1.1.0-pre2

Rebuilt as .NET Standard 2.0 to attempt to make this fully compatible with .NET Core on Windows.

Made Resource Assembly Loader (Loader) public to allow manual initialization on .NET Core as static constructors don't cut it anymore.

Version 1.1.0-pre1

Initial attempt to add .NET Standard support using multi-targetted compilation.

Version 1.0.9

Since working on the Unicode stuff I decided I should add some tests. While working on the initial tests themselves I found a couple of bugs and some ideas for new features.

Released to NuGet 29-Jan-2019.

New Features:

• Added Unicode comment support.
• Started changing bool returns in DLL wrapper to capture actual return value to improve availability of error information.
• Deprecated ID3TagData.UserDefinedTags and replaced with Dictionary<>-backed ID3TagData.UserDefinedText property instead.
• Added unit testing for basic functionality.
• Use Debug or Relase version of the LameDLLWrap libraries during build, making debugging and testing simpler than just using Release build everywhere.

Bugs Squashed:

• Fixed a UCS-2 decode error in the Unicode support.

Version 1.0.8

In response to PR #23 I got to looking through the LAME source a lot more. Took a little more work than I'd like, but Unicode is now partially supported.

While I was at it I fixed a couple of other things.

Released to NuGet 27-Jan-2019.

New Features:

• Added support for Unicode in User-Defined Text frames.
• Added a quick-n-nasty decoder for ID3v2 tags.

Bugs Squashed:

• Changed the way the NuGet package deploys native DLLs, removing powershell script reliance. Should resolve #25 and #27 and allow the package to work outside of Visual Studio.

To Do List (indefinitely postponed):

• Create a nuget package
• Add support for decoding via libmp3lame
• Add IMp3FrameDecompressor implementation for pluggable MP3 decoding