diff --git a/README b/README
index b8b2c461c38856525cb85262104f9788461e4a17..ac8a7ae00a1fde63e04f873443f3bec416d5e79c 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -19,8 +19,10 @@ Optionally:
 It is recommended to either set -march= in the CFLAGS to an architecture
 with AVX2 support or to add --enable-x86-rtcd to the configure script
 so that AVX2 (or SSE4.1) can at least be used as an option.
-Note that the autogen.sh script will automatically download the model files
-from the Xiph.Org servers, since those are too large to put in Git.
+Note that unless the --no-downoad option is used, the autogen.sh
+script will automatically download and unpack the model files and
+source code from the Xiph.Org servers, since those are too large to
+put in Git, .
 
 While it is meant to be used as a library, a simple command-line tool is
 provided as an example. It operates on RAW 16-bit (machine endian) mono
diff --git a/autogen.sh b/autogen.sh
index dde692acc700abe50c00d864bd11d1cc72adc5c2..1c814f3746eef7deba97bb18062e59145ddf964d 100755
--- a/autogen.sh
+++ b/autogen.sh
@@ -5,7 +5,9 @@ set -e
 srcdir=`dirname $0`
 test -n "$srcdir" && cd "$srcdir"
 
-./download_model.sh
+if [ "x--no-download" != "x$1" ] ; then
+    ./download_model.sh
+fi
 
 echo "Updating build configuration files for rnnoise, please wait...."