LAME X2

YES! That's what I shouted when I made a breakthrough with LAME that improved its performance (retrospectively named X1) by a whopping 2 to 5 times. The new version of LAME, LAME X2, will come to ZPE throughout the year. The theoretical improvement comes from compiler optimisations that improve LAME performance so much by reducing the number of iterations needed on a mathematical or logical expression.

In LAME X1, mathematical expressions were processed up to four times before the result was generated. With LAME X2, a mathematical expression needs to be processed precisely once. Assume you have k expressions within that expression; version X1 must process all expressions up to four times, leading to a worst-case computational time of O(4k + 1). LAME X1 is fast, but LAME X2 is faster.

With LAME X2, the worst-case scenario with k expressions is O(k + 1). 

Another improvement coming this year is the Zenith Parsing Engine version 1.5. 1.5 will bring some performance improvements, although I am not quite sure how substantial these will be yet.