LAME development started around mid-1998. Mike Cheng started
it as a patch against the 8hz-MP3 encoder sources. After
some quality concerns raised by others, he decided to start
from scratch based on the dist10 sources. His goal was only
to speed up the dist10 sources, and leave its quality
untouched. That branch (a patch against the reference
sources) became Lame 2.0, and only on Lame 3.81 did we
replaced of all dist10 code, making LAME no more only a
patch. The project quickly became a team project. Mike
Cheng eventually left leadership and started working on
tooLame, an MP2 encoder. Mark Taylor became leader and
started pursuing increased quality in addition to better
speed. He can be considered the initiator of the LAME
project in its current form. He released version 3.0
featuring gpsycho, a new psychoacoustic model he
developed. In early 2003 Mark left project leadership, and
since then the project has been lead through the cooperation
of the active developers.