[Davie]

Is it legal to convert downloaded realaudio format files to mp3 for personal use. If so, does anyone know of any Windows software to do this, especially at faster than real time playback speeds?

Thanks.

 

[Cyclone]

download dbpoweramp music converter then install the Real music codec in their codec central area.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm here first
then here

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-ra.htm

that might work but mabey not. in wich case i have no idea. good luck though

 

[necropimp]

going from one lossy format to another lossy format is going to hurt

 

[infiskik]

Real Media's audio or video are some of the worst things ever, i would beg to not bother.

 

[easypeasy]

I agree, I'd thought readaudio to be compressed so heavily, it wouldn't be worth converting back to MP3???

 

[Davie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyclone download dbpoweramp music converter then install the Real music codec in their codec central area. http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm here first then here http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-ra.htm that might work but mabey not. in wich case i have no idea. good luck though

I think this would work (I already have db Power Amp installed), but the info page says it would convert in real time -- 2 hours for the files I'd be working with. May be my best option, though.

It's true that the sound quality of these files is pretty poor, but they're radio shows and mixes of some pretty obscure music that I have no other exposure to so I put up with it.

I've gone from realaudio to mp3 through my sound card, using 128kbps CBR encoding on the mp3 end. There's not much degradation, but lower bit rates are truly horrendous.

 

[blessingx]

It really depends on which RealAudio number it is, to comment how bad it is. And as I mention once a week, transcoding isn't the end of the world. I do so for audiobooks and radio programs as least once a month. Davie, if you notice new artifacts just bump up the bitrates. I've found as you move to extremely low bitrates, double the original is sometimes necessary to minimize trouble. For radio programs (if just speech) you may have luck with LAMEs "--alt -preset medium -a --lowpass 10" setting.