The active cVBRb work remains on the main build page. These official LAME branches have their own archive pages, keeping the historical packages and their measurements clearly separate from current development.
A useful baseline from LAME’s early modern preset era: conservative VBR behaviour, slower encoding, and the mature practical foundation on which later branches developed.
A refined example of the established encoder before the newer VBR path became standard, with compact output in several early-version comparisons but comparatively slow encoding.
The bridge between LAME’s older VBR implementation and the much faster algorithm that defined later releases. In this branch the newer path remained an explicit choice rather than the default.
An exceptionally efficient VBR and ABR branch in the site’s testing, combining fast encoding and compact allocation with a more restrained upper-frequency profile than later releases.
The reference release used throughout this site: strong plain-build speed, a broader and more consistent frequency profile than 3.98.4, and a closely tracked modern VBR allocation pattern.
The final official stable release in this collection. It preserves output behaviour very close to 3.99.5 in the site tests, while the tested plain Windows build shows a substantial speed regression.