@Alex
Just trying to figure out, what is so special on your report. Can you please run a single instance of LAME from the command line and see how encoding times compare there?
I created a consolidated wave file from the same 25 wave tracks that I used in the previous tests and tested the encoders in a cmd window.
Apparently my quad-core Phenom II doesn't produce very repeatable results when it is not fully stressed. When a single encoder runs in a cmd window the results vary greatly. I have the Asus E-PU 4-Engine "power saving engine" running. It was set to "High Performance" during the tests, but either it or the power features that are enabled in BIOS make the results rather unreliable.
For example, I could now have posted these results and made 3.99 look even slower than it is:
3.99: 21.624x
3.84: 32.890x
-- but after running several test runs I think the following results are quite correct (they are about average from all runs):
LAME 3.99
C:\Soft\LAME\399>lame -V2 --noreplaygain "S:\Test\Testfile.wav" "F:\Test\HA\399s
peed\lame399.mp3"
LAME 3.99 32bits (http://lame.sf.net)
CPU features: MMX (ASM used), 3DNow! (ASM used), SSE (ASM used), SSE2
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding S:\Test\Testfile.wav to F:\Test\HA\399speed\lame399.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III VBR(q=2)
Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA
210463/210463(100%)| 3:33/ 3:33| 3:33/ 3:33| 25.715x| 0:00
32 [ 862] %
40 [ 9] %
48 [ 20] %
56 [ 29] %
64 [ 78] %
80 [ 84] %
96 [ 71] %
112 [ 219] %
128 [ 3292] %**
160 [ 53858] %%%%%%%%%%****************************
192 [ 94613] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%*********************************
224 [ 29853] %%%%%%%%%%%**********
256 [ 18511] %%%%%%%******
320 [ 8964] %%%%%**
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kbps LR MS % long switch short %
197.5 43.8 56.2 87.6 6.4 6.0
Writing LAME Tag...done
LAME 3.98.4
C:\Soft\LAME\3984>lame -V2 --noreplaygain "S:\Test\Testfile.wav" "F:\Test\HA\399
speed\lame3984.mp3"
LAME 3.98.4 32bits (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
CPU features: MMX (ASM used), 3DNow! (ASM used), SSE (ASM used), SSE2
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding S:\Test\Testfile.wav to F:\Test\HA\399speed\lame3984.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III VBR(q=2)
Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA
210463/210463(100%)| 3:16/ 3:16| 3:16/ 3:16| 27.952x| 0:00
32 [ 884] %
40 [ 4] %
48 [ 5] %
56 [ 12] %
64 [ 24] %
80 [ 33] %
96 [ 160] %
112 [ 951] %
128 [ 5223] %****
160 [ 53089] %%%%%%%%************************************
192 [ 80140] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%*******************************************
224 [ 36470] %%%%%%%%%%*********************
256 [ 18169] %%%%%%*********
320 [ 15299] %%%%%%%******
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kbps LR MS % long switch short %
201.6 29.5 70.5 87.6 6.4 6.0
Writing LAME Tag...done
A bit surprisingly 3.99 creates quite a bit more LR frames than 3.98.4. Is this an intended change?