Mac BladeEncX

For those of you who can't stand iTunes (I guess that means just me?), this is a port of Tord Jansson's venerable BladeEnc MPEG-1 Layer 3 "MP3" encoder to Mac OS X. Unlike previous ports which were strictly Terminal-only, this one includes an Aqua-based interface to its options (BladeEncX), along with a "droplet" for doing repeated batch conversions once you've chosen and saved options (BladeEncRunner). That sure beats firing up iTunes just to tweak a song. BladeEnc offers multiple bitrates and compatibility with AIFF and WAV (PCM and ADPCM) files.

Here is a screenshot of BladeEncX in action.

BladeEncX is the "spiritual" descendent of Petteri Kamppuri's superb BladeEnc for Mac, which is intended for OS 7.5.3-9.x and works very well in Classic. Although I used BladeEnc for Mac for many years, Petteri has sadly had to stop supporting it; hence, this OS X native version.

Like BladeEnc itself, BladeEncX is released as open-source freeware under the GNU Public License. Source code and ancillary files and resources are included along with my small patches against BladeEnc 0.94.2 for cosmetic purposes. You will need Sveinbjorn Thordarson's Platypus to build your own application, and if you do not wish to use my PPC executable, you will need to download the bladeenc distribution and compile it yourself with the aforementioned patch. Carsten Blüm's Pashua is also strongly recommended, although the framework is included. Please read the README.rtf file first.

BladeEncX's component applications (BladeEncX and BladeEncRunner) are PowerPC applications, but should run under emulation on Intel Macintoshes. BladeEncX requires Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2.8 or higher, and has been tested on 10.4.6 as well.

MacBladeEncX.dmg.gz (900K)

Send comments to ckaiser@floodgap.com.

Cameron Kaiser