Recording from Real Audio Streams

May 16, 2005 11:35 PM

I believe it's been asked before, and I'm already able to do this, but I'm sure there's an easier and more efficient way of recording Real Audio and other streaming audio sources so I can listen to them on my MP3 player.

I have so far tried (successfuly) the following methods.

Queue up files, set up dbpoweramp to record tracks, autodetecting silences to break up separate tracks and then either -

Cable from line out to line in, set software to record from line in.

or

Select `stereo mixer' as my recording source and record directly from the soundcard.

I have also tried downloading the .ra files themselves and converting them. This invloves opening the small files on the website and extracting the actual link to the file, downloading the file, then converting it to mp3. This is quite labour intensive.

Is there any better software for making this process more automatic? I would prefer freeware, as I'm already able to do it with free software. The direct rip from stream is best because you don't lose any quality from conversion to analog (as I understand it).

Oh yes, I'm using WinXP.

posted by tomble to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

I use streamripper for ShoutCast and other mp3 streams. Real Audio is hard as hell, as I remember, if it's coming off a Real server daemon.
posted by trinarian at 11:45 PM on May 16, 2005

previous
posted by scarabic at 11:51 PM on May 16, 2005

Response by poster: I should have mentioned, avoiding recording in real time is a bonus!
posted by tomble at 11:54 PM on May 16, 2005

Yeah. Several of the suggestions in the other thread require that. A couple don't. I've tried and tried with MPlayer but never been able to get it to work. I would really love any detailed explanations of how to go about this with MPlayer or VLC or something that can suck in the data stream and convert to MP3 without having to recapture the analog playback.
posted by scarabic at 12:35 AM on May 17, 2005

I think you should still expect at least some loss of quality to convert from one compressed format to another, even if it never goes analog in the process.
posted by scarabic at 12:36 AM on May 17, 2005

If you are using Mac OS X, then this should help. Be warned though - it does work (I use it all the time) but you do need to be happy in the terminal.
posted by ninthart at 3:20 AM on May 17, 2005

soundcapture works well for me
posted by kenaman at 4:21 AM on May 17, 2005

Streambox VCR works great. It's no longer commercially available because, in general, sites don't *want* you to do this, but you can find it on the web. It's kind of a pain to learn to use, but once you figure it out it's very easy to queue up a bunch of .ram files and have it download them. It downloads them *fast*. I can download a half dozen one hour shows in about 15 minutes (that is, 6 hours of audio). It comes with a ripper that converts to mp3.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:21 AM on May 17, 2005

On the Mac side, I've had great success with Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba. The standard version works extremely well for recording Real Audio and automatically sending it to iTunes for encoding. It also allows you to split recordings up. Often I listen on my iPod when I run, so I split up hour-long recordings into 10 six-minute tracks, which is very handy since most of my runs are shorter than that. Don't know if there is a similar program for Windows.
posted by young_simba at 6:14 AM on May 17, 2005

I guess the only way to do this faster than real time, is to download the files and then convert them. I don't know any software that will do both though.

This site goes through the entire process, and lists free software for both downloading and converting.

Personally I can recommend using NetTransport for the downloading. It's free if you can tolerate a nag-screen.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 6:27 AM on May 17, 2005

For real-time capture, I licensed Total Recorder. I tried several others and settled for Total Recorder because you can schedule the recording process for unattended downloads. I'm eager to try Swen's method for downloading the .ra file because I'm impatient by nature.
posted by KrustyKlingon at 8:14 AM on May 17, 2005

Belated, but thanks to everyone who answered this question. With your answers and these links, I can MP3 the Essential Mix every Monday. Good work.
posted by blag at 1:41 PM on May 21, 2005