Both quality and speed improvements are still happening, probably making LAME the only MP3 encoder still being actively developed. Today, LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR, mostly thanks to the dedicated work of its developers and the open-source licensing model that allowed the project to tap into engineering resources from all around the world. In early 2003 Mark left project leadership, and since then the project has been lead through the cooperation of the active developers (currently three individuals). He released version 3.0 featuring gpsycho, a new psychoacoustic model he developed. He can be considered the initiator of the LAME project in its current form. Mark Taylor became a leader and started pursuing better quality in addition to increased speed. Mike Cheng eventually left leadership and started working on tooLame, an MP2 encoder. The project quickly became a team project. That branch (a patch against the reference sources) became Lame 2.0, and with Lame 3.81 all of dist10 code was replaced, making LAME no more only a patch. His goal was only to speed up the dist10 sources and leave its quality untouched.

After some quality concerns raised by others, he decided to start from scratch based on the dist10 sources. Mike Cheng started it as a patch against the 8hz-MP3 encoder sources. LAME development started around mid-1998. All software from the LAME project can be found in the project's file area. For binaries and GUI based programs which can use LAME (or include fully licensed versions of LAME), check the LAME related links. LAME is only distribued in source code form. LAME is a high quality MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) encoder licensed under the LGPL.

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