Audio, IT@Cork, Podcast, Podcasting, PodLeaders, Technology

Exporting to mp3 from Audacity on an Intel Mac

I upgraded to a shiny new Intel based MacBook Pro recently and I love it.

One problem that I hadn’t anticipated was that the Audacity plugin for exporting to mp3 is not available for the Intel Mac. I use Audacity all the time for editing my podcasts and for creating the mp3’s which I publish on PodLeaders.com and on the it@cork blog.

I kinda cheated in finding a way around this – I downloaded the Windows version of Audacity and installed it on my Windows XP installation on Parallels on my Mac. This version of Audacity can export to mp3 no problem.

So now, I am editing all my podcasts (and exporting to mp3) using Windows on the Mac – (yeuch!). I’ve no doubt there is a more straightforward way to do this but this is the hack I came up with being a blogger of very little brain!

15 thoughts on “Exporting to mp3 from Audacity on an Intel Mac”

  1. I’m using Audacity and exporting with MP3 on an Intel Mac. I use it for my Podcasts.

    I can’t remember exactly how I got it working but I think this will help – http://audacityteam.org/forum/post/7725

    Save you using Windows. Interested how you got Parallels working. It does nothing but crash my machine when I try to boot from an XP CD.

  3. Arseblogger, thanks for that. I have tried the various links on that page and still cann’t get the LAME MP3 encoder found/working on the Mac.

    Stephen, thanks for the link and the kind words. The problem I have is that with the change of architecture to Intel based Macs, the old LAME plugin instructions you pointed to no longer work 🙁

  5. arseblogger, I have tried that installer in the past and it doesn’t work with the Intel version of Audacity. When you get asked for the LameLib file, it doesn’t recognise the lib file.

    Strangely, it does appear to work with the Audacity Beta 1.3 version for some reason! I’m not overjoyed about using beta software in a production environment but I guess, them’s the breaks!

  7. James, thanks for that. I downloaded the plugin for Intel Macs but for some reason it won’t work with my version of Audacity (1.2.5) – it doesn’t recognise it.

  8. Hm, that’s not good. I had a similar problem on just my iMac G5 (not my Powerbook, nor anyone else’s computer) with Audacity 1.2.4 and the PPC LAME encoder. After upgrading to 1.2.5, the library was recognized and I was able to select it. Have you tried it with Audacity 1.3.2 (beta)?

  9. I tried the Audacity 1.3.2 beta version which is good except one problem did occur which was that when i downloaded it, it said it might trash my computer though it didnt trash mine, but it trashed my friends.

  10. This is ridiculous. Audacity is decent sound software, but c’mon guys–no export to MP3 for my INtel Mac?

    I’ve read all the nonsense–go here, download that, change Preferences.

    NONE OF THE CURRENT INSTRUCTIONS ARE ACCURATE.

    1.2.5 want ONLY a file with the .dylib extension. the Intel LAME file available DOES NOT HAVE THAT EXTENSION.

    so, to avoid the 2-300 posts about a single issue–how about you track down a solution and tell us how to SPECIFICALLY SETUP AUDACITY TO SUCCESSFULLY EXPORT MP3s?

    -a PAYING customer

  11. Hi there,

    I had the same problem today in the middle of giving a workshop, simple workaround i used was to export to wav then convert it using switch a free mp3 convertor, probably easier than using parallels

  12. Finally a working solution!

    Hope this helps everyone frustrated by this..helped me!

    http://www.soft32.com/Download/Free/LAME/4-192570-1.html

    was skeptical bout this but gave it a shot anyway and it WORKED! downloaded and installed the package..(had no idea where it was installed though!) but opened up audacity and once i clicked on export to mp3 and asked me to find the .dylib extention.. clicked yes and tada! it was right there…

    This worked for audacity 1.2.5 on my macbook, but im sure itll work for the beta version as well.

    good luck to the rest of ya’ll

  13. I found the best solution was to dump Audacity, which was rather buggy, and use Sound Studio instead which is far better (although not free).

  14. thanks to jack, i exported to wav then used easyWMA to change the file to an mp3. took quite a while to figure all this out and I think I would have rather been out looking at girls

  15. Audacity Forums make a few notes:
    SHORT VERSION: Audacity 1.3.5d with LAME 3.97 works on Intel Mac.

    Cheers

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