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Ask Slashdot: Can you Convert RealAudio to MP3? 61

Posted by Cliff from the converting-da-streams dept.
Michael McDonnell asks: "I just purchased a Diamond Rio. I love having portable uploadable sound but I have absolutely no use for 99% of the MP3 content available. I spend more time watching and listening to RealMedia content each week than I do watching TV. I'd like to be able to copy RealMedia events to hard disk, convert it to MP3, and then enjoy it on my Rio." There must be a way to do this. Any ideas?
"The best idea that I have come up with is to setup a full duplex sound card in my system, attach a patch cord from line-in to line-out and then record on 'line-in' while I'm playing RealMedia to 'line-out'. Then convert to MP3. I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better way to do this in software. Under Linux it MUST be possible... it might even be easy. Any ideas? Perhaps I should just lobby the makers of Real to come out with a '.rm' to '.mp3' file converter?"

The line-in-to-line-out idea would work, but that is something you should reserve unless there are no other alternatives due to quality degredation. I agree that there should be a way to do it in software, but that depends on the ability to, at the very least, decode RealAudio files into something intermediate that CAN be converted into MP3 format. Direct stream conversion would be better, but more complicated. How open IS the RealAudio format, anyways? I don't use it, so I don't keep up with it.

I doubt that RealNetworks would be willing to write a conversion utility for a competing format. Also, with the rash of software related cases in the courts these days, what's the likelyhood of RealNetworks suing over alleged IP violations?
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Ask Slashdot: Can you Convert RealAudio to MP3? More

Ask Slashdot: Can you Convert RealAudio to MP3?

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  • ...and get a MiniDisc recorder. This is one of the things that MiniDisc is really good for.

    I've extolled the virtues of MD many times here, especially when the Rio comes up. In short, the sound quality will be far better, and you'll be able to stuff way more music in your pocket.

    Check out http://www.minidisc.org/ [minidisc.org]
  • Since there are no devices specifically for playing portable RA and the idea of being able to convert RA->MP3 is a fairly simple one, I'd call his expectation reasonable.

    If he were wanting to return the Rio because it wouldn't play RAs, _that_ would be unreasonable.
  • Posted by jbharvey:

    Say, why are you bothering with RA? What's so important that you need to have it in RA content? If you can at all help it, just go mp3 all the way, it's far superior.
  • .... unless the PC soundcard had a digital audio output (coax or optical), since most minidisc recorders support that...
  • The original poster wants to convert *from* RealAudio. If all you do is listen to music then MP3 is probably all you need, but RealAudio gives you access to a whole planetfull of content. How else could i listen to i listen to Deutsche Welle Swahili programming, BBC news in English, Radio Canada International in Arabic, exerpts from the Prairie Home Companion, Radio Warsaw in Esperanto... all in my own living room? (I often do each of those things!) Only by using RealAudio! I only wish there were a little net appliance to let me listen to all of that RA content while i'm working in the kitchen.

    I've got a page up on RA multilingual content:

    http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/leston/ audilink.html
  • But you have to use intermediate programs that capture the stream going to /dev/audio (or the sound card device of choice under Windows), have a program convert the raw to a wav, then encode that wav.

    Example (might work, might not. Just illustrates)...

    ln /home/you/file.raw /dev/audio

    sox (or whatever) whatever -whatever

    bladeenc
  • I dunno. I've never written a line of C in my life (other than the obligatory "Hm.. I'll try C" Hello World program). Someone else mentions a kernel module that does a similar thing...

    I can do it under Windows with minimal effort (some Windows programs can record output directed to sound cards to a file), but I'm assuming that's not an option. And I haven't done it in quite some time, so...
  • Did you even READ the post?

    He's trying to convert a media stream to MP3.

  • Dearie, I suspect the nice man is asking how to convert RealAudio to MP3 is because he CAN'T GET IT IN MP3.

    Now run along and grow some brain cells.

    Here's a nice plastic bag to play with.

  • I highly doubt the compression methods are the same, but your best bet would be to NOT use Real Audio at all. I'm not sure what you listen to, but if it's streaming music, Shoutcast is your best bet. I believe X11Amp supports it, but you're prolly a WinAmp user in windoze. At any rate, decoding the .ra into a plain ole wav file and then compressing it into mp3 is just about the best thing to do.
  • unfortunately its only win95,98,NT program.
  • the shareware program is win95/nt compatible. decodes ra files and ra media files and outputs them in .wav format.

    its at www.2bsys.com/ra2wav [2bsys.com]

  • There's a program for windows called Xfileget. It pretends to be realaudio, and downloads the streams (without loss) to a local file. My guess is that it would be easier to convert once you had the file local? Does anything like xfileget exist for linux (without doing raw tcpdumps? :) )
  • I've gotten a few MP3's made from RA files (tori amos ones).... so I'm sure that there's a windows app that'll do it. I know that the quality gets REALLY bad, tho.
  • Because at low bitrates, it encodes speech better than MP3. (Use the "Voice-only" 16Kbps setting to test this if you don't believe me.)

    MP3 kicks the ass of just about everything else, of course, but Real does a better job with modem-bitrate voice.
  • I remember hearing about a realaudio > wav converter. And it's simple to convert waves to mp3s. Beyond that, I haven't a clue.

    ~Matt
  • I work with digital (speech) audio, and believe me, decoding to PCM (.wav) and then compressing it again will not sound nearly as good as the original .ra. You won't escape this by looping the line-in to the line-out, because all you are doing there is adding error introduced by the D/A and then A/D codecs on top of the errors introduced by the encode engines, not to mention line noise.

    This process is similar to editting a jpeg and then saving it again in jpeg format. The end product may be very useable (and artifacts almost unnoticeable), but keep in mind that it still isn't the ideal situation.

    Of course, anyone coming up with a direct .ra to .mp3 convertor that cuts down on the mathematical errors probably has some research money waiting for them at the college of their choice.
  • Find it at http://source.syr.edu/~jdimpson/proj/

    paudio (or /proc/audio)
    This is a loadable kernel modules and kernel patch that allows you to read and save a copy of the data currently being played by the soundcard. This allows you to save any data being played, regardless of what software is used to play it, or what format the data is in.

    Some audio streaming software doesn't allow audio data to be saved to disk, and some use formats whose specifications are not publically available. This is a way around these problems. Check out the announcement and LSM entry.

    This is useful also for anyone interested in how the /proc filesystem works, how some of the soundcard works, or how loadable modules work
  • Read the original article. The original dilemma was that the user wanted to capture the sound from an already existing RealMedia file, convert it to MP3, then send it to his Rio.

    Other people have made comments much the same about RealMedia files and their horrible quality; no one disagrees with that. However, some people encode things in RA to begin with, and the end-user who wants to make NPR audio segments or something portable (e.g., in MP3 format) is left with no outlet. The problem is not how bad RA sounds; it's in how poorly it translates to other formats.

    s#
  • the next tinghy is SHOUTcast

    www.shoutcast.com (from the makers of WinAmp)

    i don't know if there are any linux-players however that support this live-mp3 format...
  • I found a nice little program called total recorder on the download.com website. It only records 40sec. at a time until you register it, but it basically installs itself as a windows sound system device. When you're not recording, it simply changes its pointers to send it to your soundcard like normal, but when you have total recorder open, it takes the data to disk in real time while redirecting it to the speakers as well. Excellent program.

    Asmodean
  • Lots of good ideas here for avoiding A/D D/A conversion losses, but what about the issues with recompressing compressed audio? Is there anyone out there with a smart way to minimize these effects?
  • Ok, I know that one possible and most easiest way to convert your RA files to MP3, would be to somehow save the Real Media content, Get a RA plugin for Winamp, then using the Disk Writer Plugin, make a wave file, then encode it into mp3, and poof! You've got one that you can put on your RIO. Hope that helps! David Reichert

  • BF,BI (Score:1)

    by zunger ( 17731 )
    There's one really BFBI method thanks to the oddities of UNIX - delete /dev/dsp (or better, rename it and create a link so you don't have to muck around with mknod later) and rvplayer will mindlessly dump its output into a file where /dev/dsp was. Or if you want to be really snazzy, write a bit of code that creates a socket at /dev/dsp and real-time pipes it to your card...

    Or better yet, why bother? Is there anything in RA that you really need to archive and play at high efficiency?

  • why? (Score:1)

    by geezus ( 17744 )
    why did you purchase an mp3 player that costs so much if you dont even want to listen to mp3 files. ra sucks. if you want to hear ra then hear it for free on your free ra player. if you want portable mp3 then buy the player from diamond. i could understand this if ra sounded almost decent
  • define decent. my 20 dollar walkman can play am better than a way-too-high bitrate ra file. the 200 dollar price for the rio is too high to listen to an ra file. i just bought a cd player for 50 bucks and it plays cd's at cd quality.

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