RealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks. It is especially designed to conform to low bandwidths, and it can be used as a streaming audio format. The main disadvantage of the RealAudio format is his almost total incompatibility with the portable audio players like the Apple Ipod or the Rio that all allow to play music or radio shows in the mp3 format. Converting form the RealAudio (.ra, .rm) format to wav or mp3 is possible like it's going to be explained in this article. I will concentrate on the windows OS for simplicity but some of the approaches I describe can work under Linux or Mac OS

Commercial solutions :
There are several commercial products that pretend to be able to convert from RealAudio to another format, most of them have a trial option so you can try them on your RealAudio files before purchasing it but I have not been able to find one that works on all the different RealAudio format internal variations except streambox ripper (http://www.sonicspot.com/streamboxripper/streamboxripper.html). Unfortunately RealNetworks has sued the company that was producing streambox ripper to force them to remove the conversion from RealAudio format and they eventually discontinued to distribute the application (http://www.streambox.com/Products/ripper_index.asp). You can find older copy floating around the net by I would not recommend you using them because they would be obviously illegal.

Free Solutions :
1) Using DBpoweramp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) + real alternative (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm)
DBPoweramp is a freeware windows audio converter that can convert most of the RealAudio format to any other audio format, it has a very nice ui and a batch mode that allow you to convert all the files from a folder in one operation. You can add the support for RealAudio decoding by downloading the direct show codes and installing Real Alternative following the instructions from this page : http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-ra.htm.The only problem with that solution is it does not work with the most recent RealAudio format.

2) Using Winamp (www.winamp.com) + direct show filters + real alternative (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm)
Winamp is a freely available audio player for windows with a very flexible plugin system and you can use it to play and convert RealAudio to mp3 following this guide : http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=6123 Like the previous one, that solution does not work with all the RealAudio files.

3) Using MPlayer + Lame
MPlayer is a Linux versatile multimedia player that has been ported to windows and that can convert RealAudio files in Wave file. To convert from Wave to mp3 you can just use the Lame opensource mp3 encoder. The advantage of that solution is it working with all RealAudio format I have tried so far but it's also does not provide any gui and is intended to be used by advanced user. A complete guide explaining how to setup the conversion is available here : www.digital-atheist.com/ra2mp3.html robots


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Fabrice Armisen is a custom software developper Fabrice Armisen is a custom software developper