converting RA/Ram/Realmedia to MP3

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Have you converted an RA/RAM/realmedia audio file to mp3?

How poorly does it sound?
What software did you use?

― Matt Sab (Matt Sab), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 18:08 (twenty years ago)

I'm on a mac and I use audio hijack pro which allows you to record just about anything the computer can play (in real time) ... sounds great, generally. Sometimes I tweak the sound a bit with plug-ins. I have heard there are similar for PC but it's outside my realm.

I also have found this software great for quick live recording of my own ideas.

― Declan Zimmerman, Tuesday, 23 August 2005 18:18 (twenty years ago)

...sounds great, generally

I should have said: ...sounds as good or poor as the source.

― Declan Zimmerman, Tuesday, 23 August 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

There're these instructions for the command line in OS X, but they'll probably work for Windows if you get the Windows version of MPlayer.

― shanecavanaugh (shanecavanaugh), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 22:39 (twenty years ago)

Better yet, for OS X: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050130184054216

― shanecavanaugh (shanecavanaugh), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 22:44 (twenty years ago)

Audacity is great (and free) for PCs: http://audacity.sourceforge.net

― yr mom (yr mom), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

For a few files here and there (and with a bit of EQing in a sound editor) perhaps it's worth it, but I've had to consider the massive conversion of thousands of hours from Real to mp3 and would advise against it. The sound quality to file size ratio isn't acceptable.

― blunt (blunt), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 00:24 (twenty years ago)

1) Blunt == I don't understand your comment. Advise against the conversion? I have access to the RA files; I want to listen to them on my mp3 player ... is there another solultion?

2) re: Audacity. it does not seem to be able to do this conversion... or can it? ("Note: Audacity does not currently support WMA, AAC, or most other proprietary or restricted file formats.")

3) I was unclear in my question. The realmedia file in question is not a 'stream' (where something like audio hijack would be great), but simply a file.

― Matt Sab (Matt Sab), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:58 (twenty years ago)

Jet Audio is useful on Windows. Cheap and nasty but converts countless things, I usually just install, use it & then uninstall it.

― fandango (fandango), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:08 (twenty years ago)

I just said that it's OK to convert a few files. If you have to convert a massive collection of files (i.e. thousands of hours of audio) it's not really worth it.

― blunt (blunt), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 20:26 (twenty years ago)

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