Is there a reason I would use one over the other?
I know of absolutely no reason to ever use any Real media formats. Crappy quality and proprietary.
Technologically, I have no opinion.
But, I will never trust RealAudio again after it was shown they were a “pioneer” of spyware.
Is streaming Ogg Vorbis an option?
http://www.vorbis.com/
I would be personally go with .mp3 since it’s a pretty universal format. I have yet to encounter a media player that doesn’t support it. Real Audio, on the other hand, will read ONLY in shitty RealPlayer, which has horrid quality, IMO. I also second RevTim about the spyware thing. That’s also a big reason I don’t use any Real Media software.
Real audio is awful.
Good thread topic. I was thinking of asking why anyone, anywhere, would use anything other than MP3 or WAV. Is there ever any advantage to posting your audio files as .rm?
Real Player is supported by Symbian OS and I use it for streams to smart-phones. I have encoded various movies to RM format to watch on my phone. MP3 is better quality obviously, but RM does have it’s uses.
While we’re on the subject, does anyone know of a simple way to convert .rm files to either mp3 or wav?
The only thing I have found so far is a method of trapping the sound card output in real-time, then saving that in the desired format. But this is clumsy and time-consuming for 10 songs.
Ideally it would be a standalone batch converter from rm->mp3.
Musicat that’s one of the things that has me perplexed. There are so many rm files on the internet yet no fricking converters or at least not easy to find.
Can you stream MP3’s? all the ones I have seen you had to download onto your HD completely before it could be run.
So I’m not the only one who’s perplexed. Is there any technical or legal reason why a standalone converter doesn’t exist?
There is a way to do it.
There is a program that can be found on the web called RM Converter.
Though unless RM is the only format you can find something in, I wouldn’t bother as it is INCREDIBLY lossy and would give you a poor quality file generally.
I kinda sorta remember Real suing a company that had a program that would capture and save a RealAudio stream. Sorry I can’t give more than that.
So how about a link? If it’s not illegal, there’s no reason not to post it.
A google search for “rm converter” turned up www.rmconverter.com, which I had discarded before, since neither MP3 or WAV is mentioned anywhere in the conversion list.
At the RM to MP3 Converter Directory, which sounds like just the thing, there are two programs that appear to be capture-type programs, at least according to a friend who tried them. They are not standalone file data converters; you must play the file in realtime and tweak some volume settings to get the desired final product. Time consuming.
And Mockingbird, I understand what you are saying about the sound quality. However, RM is the only format I can find some things in, so I have no choice.
Quicktime can do it through a browser. Most likely through the standalone player as well.