DropMP3 is, to the best of my knowledge, the only free MP3 encoder for Mac OS Classic using LAME. Since Classic never featured a command line interface, native command line applications had to work around this limitation - either by placing the command line interface inside a special window (as in BladeMac), or by using a GUI to interface with the encoding library, as is the case here.

It was created around the year 2000 by Philippe Laval. It has all the settings you would expect from a LAME frontend: choice of bitrate (CBR and VBR), stereo coding mode, lowpass flters, resampling, tagging... Besides, encoding can be scriptable using AppleScript.

The LAME library is distributed separately from the GUI, both files are available below. Unfortunately the latest version I could find was 3.70, it seems the author never compiled a newer version (if you feel like firing up CodeWarrior and having a try at the sources and some newer LAME version, please get in touch!).

The web site is surprisingly still available more than two decades later.


Date: 2000-04-15
Version: 1.0.6
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Mac OS Classic PPC
Download: DropMP3_1.0.6.sea.hqx - 212kB

Date: 2000-04-19
Version: 3.70
Interface: Library
Platform: Mac OS Classic PPC
Download: Lame_SharedLib_ALTIVEC.sea.hqx - 190kB