If you are a registered user of Jamroom, the Jamroom Bonus Pack contains a useful feature called the “LoFi Creator”. It’s a plugin for your Artist Menu that allows an artist to create a new lofi song file out of an uploaded hifi song file. It requires the “LAME” mp3 encoder/decoder binary to be installed on your system though, and only works with MP3 files. Here are instructions on installing LAME, and setting up the Jamroom LoFi Creator.

• First, make sure you have downloaded the LAME SOURCE code from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=290.
• Note: If you do not have access to your server to compile LAME for yourself, you can try using a pre-compiled version of LAME found at the "notlame" page: http://users.rsise.anu.edu.au/~conrad/not_lame/ .  You'll need to download the version that is for the correct server architecture your Jamroom runs on, then simply follow the "Configuring Jamroom" section below.
• Next, upload the downloaded package to your server and put it in your home directory. Use an FTP program (make sure it is transferring in binary mode) to upload it.
• Now, log into your server using SSH or telnet (you must be able to log into your server and get a shell window to do the install), and run the following command.

tar zxvf lame-3.93.1.tar.gz

This will create a new directory within your current directory called “lame-3.93.1”

• Change directories into the new directory:

cd lame-3.93.1

• Now type the following command:

./configure

This will run for a bit as it tests your system to ensure it has all the necessary utilities and libraries in place for the actual code compilation. When that finishes (without error), go to the next step.

• Now type:

make

This will start the actual compilation of the LAME binary on your system. Be patient, as this may take a little while if you have a slower system. When it has finished go to the next step.

• Now a new directory has been created within the lame-3.93.1 directory called “frontend”. Change directories into that directory:

cd frontend

• You will see a file in this directory called “lame” - copy this file to your Jamroom master directory:

cp lame /var/www/html/jamroom

Make sure and use the correct path to your Jamroom directory if it is different then /var/www/html/jamroom.

That’s it for the LAME install (you can safely delete the lame-3.93.1 directory now that was created earlier). Now you will just need to setup and configure the decoder.php script within Jamroom.

• Log in to your Jamroom as the Master Admin, and go to the Admin Menu.
• Click on "Create Button" from the menu on your left.  There are 3 values that will need to be filled in on this page in order to create the "LoFi Creator" button. Place the following values in their corresponding fields:

• Button Label → lofi creator (or whatever you wold like to call it)
  
• Button URL → decoder.php?mode=menu&band_id={BAND_ID}
• Note: beginning with Jamroom Bonus Pack 2.67 and higher, alternate decoder config files can be added to the URL here, and they will be used in place of the "default" decoder.cfg.php.  This allows you to (for example) offer different decoders at different bit rates, simply by creating an alternate config file.  For more information see "Alternate Config Files" below.
  
• Button Quota → choose the Jamroom Quota you want this option to be available to (or select "shown to all quotas" for everyone to be able to use the LoFi Creator).

• Click on the "Create Button" form submit button and your Custom Button has been created!
  

Now that you have created the new LoFi Creator, here are some tips on it’s use:

• The faster the processor in your server, the quicker the conversion process will be. Note that while LAME is doing the actual conversion of the HiFi file to a LoFi file, it will eat up a significant amount of your CPU time, so it’s recommended that servers with fast processors utilize the LoFi Creator. On my Pentium II 400 development system (very slow by today’s standards) it takes well over 1 minute to convert a 5 megabyte MP3 file. On a Pentium 4 2400 Mhz system, it takes about 25 seconds. On a Dual Xeon server, it takes about 10 seconds.
• Note that your users will not have any choices in the LoFi Creator if they have not uploaded any HiFi song files.
• If you get an error that Jamroom is unable to find the LAME binary, ensure that the LAME binary (called “lame”) is located in your Jamroom directory (i.e. jamroom/lame) and is executable (permissions of 555 at least) by the web user.

If you have any more questions about the LoFi Creator, visit the Jamroom Forums and post your issue. Thanks!