January 1, 2006 Lars 0.99beta1 released. Fixed a lot of problems with version 0.98 including:

1) ID3 tags could crash 0.98
2) MP3's with weird chars wouldn't work
3) Incompatibility with Linux 2.6.x
4) The normalize function didn't work on stereo wav's

For the final 0.99 release I plan to change the normalize function so it will run faster (right now it takes about 13 minutes for a 5 minute song) and change it so instead of looking for 20,000 dirty peaks per wave file, it searches also based on the length of the wave file.

I'm also tempted to make it so Lars can copy normal CD's and run the normalize function. It seems to make really old CD's sound a lot more "modern".

July 8, 2002 Lars 0.98 released. Fixed bugs in the normalize routines. Should be perfect now :). If you make a cd and you get "Clip Warnings" in it, please let me know so I can fix them. Also fixed a bug that caused Lars not to work if directories had spaces in them.

July 4, 2002 Lars 0.97 released. This version changes the "dirty" or louder normalization algorithm to get rid of any popping sounds when normalizing.

June 29, 2002 Lars 0.96 released. This version introduces the ability to do normalization. Normalization means that if an mp3 is not at it's strongest volume it will be digitally processed to make it louder. The clean algorithm should never clip (make snap, crackle, or pops). The "loud" or "dirty" algorithm will check for "peaking" and if there aren't that many of them it will raise the volume a little higher until it thinks it's done enough. This could cause clicking noises in your audio cd's. And then again, it might just make it louder.

So what is that good for? Well, my friend Steve (or Styven as his British father calls him), was complaining that some of his mp3's are louder than others, so I added normalization to try and even out all the mp3's. This still wasn't good enough for him so I added the dirty version too.

I have some new features coming soon. I might even GPL it, not sure yet tho. Lars would be proud :).

June 7, 2002 Lars 0.95 released. I changed the way Lars works. Before Lars would automatically continue when the CD drive door closes (thus eliminating the need for a computer monitor), but this made it very system dependant. The new version of Lars should now work on other operating systems other than Linux now. Also, I wrote routines to read the mp3 ID tag to display the correct song name and group in the "songlist.txt" file. Version 0.97 of Lars (which I plan to write this weekend) will also have the option to write the song name onto the CD so if you play the burned CD's in a compatible player, it will display the song name there also.

Also, I got my Playstation 2 Linux kit last week, so I will put up PS/2 Linux RPM's. I'm not sure if any of the USB CD writers work on it, but I think it would be neat to have a version for Playstation :).

May 19, 2002 Lars 0.90 released. I fixed a bug that the older version wouldn't see my cd drive. Seems to work fine now. If you have a problem let me know and I'll see what I can do.