I have recently built myself a pretty slick studio machine (quad core, 4GB RAM, 64 bit operating system).  So recently in fact I haven’t even recorded anything using this new machine.

The only recording software I currently have installed is Reaper (64 bit beta version).

I was in the field the other day (28 December) recording my friends’ band (Killing the Masses) down at Studio 7.  (Read about my field recording device here.)  Since I have Reaper installed I was able to cut the pre and post music bits out.  Then I figured out how to do the fades (a bit tricky, but if you hover your mouse around the point long enough you’ll see the curved box which is the fade cursor).  Great.  Finally I saved the trimmed and faded track as a wave file.  Ok, so how about making an mp3 for Ralph (my neighbor, the drummer of the band)?

Well, this was a bit of trouble.  Reaper let me know, in no uncertain terms, that “I need lame_enc.dll to encode MP3!”.

Error

Off to Google.

In the end it was a simple matter of tracking down the dll and putting it in the right folder location.  There are those who recommend putting this in your system folder under Windows, but I went ahead and put it into the “Reaper (x64)” folder (under Program Files).  It would make more sense to put this plugin into the Plugins folder, but that won’t work so don’t bother.  It has to go into the same folder where the reaper.exe is located.

I had some extra trouble tracking down the 64 bit dll (as the 32 bit dll will not work if you are running 64 bit Reaper).  Fear not.  You can benefit from my troubles.  If you want the 32 bit dll go here, and if you want the 64 bit dll you can find it zipped up here.

Happy hunting.