Ask Slashdot: Can you Convert RealAudio to MP3?

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?