RealRhapsody help?

[MD1032]

Hey, I just installed the crappy RealPlayer and got a free trial of this "RealRhapsody" with it. They've got like EVERYTHING in here. Pink Floyd, Kansas, The Who, you name it. There's some great music in here. The only problem is that RealRhapsody's MP3 playback utterly sucks. It's just terrible, I've NEVER heard worse from any program. Is there a way to save the MP3's to my hard drive, like permanently? Where does Realrhapsody store the MP3's it downloads? I really really want to play this stuff in foobar, because it's awful right now.

 

[xixco]

rhapsody streams the music, and the quality depends on your connection/settings.

other than keeping the music in a buffer (like any streaming program), the song is never saved to your harddrive. you either listen (via streaming) or burn to CD (which i've heard is nigh impossible w/o broadband), but never save.

 

[MD1032]

That's weird, because every new song I listen to has a download meter that completes. If I access the song later on, it doesn't have to load, it's already loaded.

Anyway, that kinda sucks. It would be great to be able to play this stuff somewhere else, because the quality just sucks. Yes, I do have it switched to broadband, so the MP3's are definitely of decent quality (lack that weird treble distortion sound you get from 128 and below), it's just that the decoder that RealRhapsody uses just plain sucks.

 

[xixco]

yeah, forgot about that (instantaneous listening after initial load) --- still a "buffer" state, even though the whole song is buffered in a sense. i'm surprised no one's found a way to hack that by now and find the music on your HD. not that i advocate that. (and i'm not a subscriber, in case anyone's eyeballing me now, haha)

in any case, i think that only stays in an immediate-play state until you close the program and reopen it --- but again, i don't have subscription and haven't used the service in a couple of months now, so correct me if i'm wrong.

regarding quality, if it's any help, i believe that the music is actually encoded WMA instead of MP3.
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meanwhile, in trying to confirm that, i can't find the link to the FAQ that says so...

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cancel that. here we go:

"Rhapsody currently delivers audio encoded with Windows Media 8 using a proprietary streaming mechanism."

perhaps that explains?

 

[MD1032]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xixco yeah, forgot about that (instantaneous listening after initial load) --- still a "buffer" state, even though the whole song is buffered in a sense. i'm surprised no one's found a way to hack that by now and find the music on your HD. not that i advocate that. (and i'm not a subscriber, in case anyone's eyeballing me now, haha) in any case, i think that only stays in an immediate-play state until you close the program and reopen it --- but again, i don't have subscription and haven't used the service in a couple of months now, so correct me if i'm wrong. regarding quality, if it's any help, i believe that the music is actually encoded WMA instead of MP3. ----------------------- meanwhile, in trying to confirm that, i can't find the link to the FAQ that says so... ----------------------- cancel that. here we go: "Rhapsody currently delivers audio encoded with Windows Media 8 using a proprietary streaming mechanism." perhaps that explains?

It means the stream already sounds like crap before reaching me, then it decodes it, furthering its crappiness.

I'm certain the files are somewhere in my HD in some hidden cache, because I can still access the files today, for example, that I "downloaded" yesterday. I definitely think this is not a buffer state, it is actually saving it somewhere.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MD1032 It means the stream already sounds like crap before reaching me, then it decodes it, furthering its crappiness. I'm certain the files are somewhere in my HD in some hidden cache, because I can still access the files today, for example, that I "downloaded" yesterday. I definitely think this is not a buffer state, it is actually saving it somewhere.

But try listening to a song you played a week or two ago. It will probably have to redownload it because you filled the cache and so it got overwritten.