Converting ulaw to VBR mp3

[Lars Rasmussen]

I have several files I need to convert from ulaw to VBR mp3.

lame was unable to deal with these ulaw files directly, so I'm making
an intermediary file.

These two commands seem to do what I want, starting with ulaw file 15146282.wav:

mplayer -V 15146282.wav -vo null -vc dummy -ao pcm -aofile temp.wav
lame --r3mix temp.wav 15146282.mp3

Any suggestions to speed up these statements?  I'll batch/cron it out
after I get this part optimized.
-- 
Lars