--------------------- 32 bits vs. 64 bits --------------------- libaec compiles and runs both in 32 and 64 bits. For encoding and decoding I see a performance degradation with 32 bit binaries of 38% and 33% resp. The main reason for this is that encoding and decoding use a buffer of type uin64_t to align a potentially 32 bit wide sample with the output (encoding) or input (decoding) stream. Avoiding the use of this uin64_t buffer variable would degrade 64 bit performance for a modest gain in 32 bit performance so I decided against it.