Recently there has been an unexpected boost in the development pace of LAME MP3 encoder. Recently Gabriel Bouvigne, one of the main developers, introduced a new 3.96 beta version for testing. According to him, there are several bug fixes and a stable version might be available at the end of March.
Experimental beta build is available at Rarewares.org and some discussion about the build can be found at Hydrogenaudio.org.
