LAME is a free software application used to encode audio into the MP3 file format. The name LAME is a recursive acronym for LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder, reflecting LAME's early history when it was not yet a complete encoder in itself.
As of 2004, consensus amongst the audiophile community is that LAME produces the highest-quality MP3 files for bitrates greater or equal to 128 kbit/s when using variable bitrate encoding; in a public listening test early in 2004, LAME MP3 files were the best 128 kbit/s MP3 files compared to the uncompressed original audio when using VBR mode.