"RA to WAV" convertor?

Did you tried RealAudio Player (Real Player) ?
http://www5.real.com/products/player/download_player.html

Yes, I did. But, it doesn't come with a function
that converts realaudio to wave.

Are you trying to digitally extract audio, like from a CD, and then convert it to WAV format? Or, are you trying to send signals from a music source, like the line out of a cassette player, into the line in of a sound card. I can probably help, if you tell me more specifically what you are doing.

manchung...

I'll double check, but I recall, you won't be able to do that directly.  Maybe using different format to get there.
That would make you loose great deal of quality (fidelity).

I'll post this as comment since I have to double check first.
I'm here in and out fast.
Regards

I've never came across any program to convert RealAudio to wav but have you tried plugging the output from your pc speaker to your microphone input on your PC (assuming you have one)?

Primitive but it would let you convert RealAudio files after a fashion. It's better than nothing anyway :)

Sonic Foundry makes a product called Sound Forge XP.  According to PC computing, it has "strong RealAudio features."  I know it can export to RA, but I'm not positive if it can import.
The review is on page 128 of the February issue, and Sound Forge's number is 800-577-6642

There is a VERY good sound ultilty wich read/writes almost EVERY sound format known to man, is't called cool edit. You can download a sharewere version (full capabilities) of it at www.syntrillium.com (or was is one l)

manchung...

While dwagner solution might be the only way to do it, there one thing that you might watch before this attempt or you could blew your sound card.

And COOLEDIT PRO could Import and RA and you could save it in WAV.  It never worked.  I guess during the import phase, it just cannot convert it properly...

Regards

There is no such converter as you have heard before, it would lose alot of quality if you did it with your microphone but it would be in wav..  Otherwise I try opening it with Real Player then playing the sound while a sound recorder program is there.. It should record the sound and you can save it as a wav I would guess.

1.  When I connected the audio output to the microphone input
and tried to record it as a wav file, it returned an error message saying "Can't open audio device".

2. I am still using Windows 3.1 so I am unable to use Cool Edit Pro. So, I resorted to its version for windows 3.1. But, I didn't find a conversion function from realaudio to wav there.


Any other ideas, folks?

IMSI software has a package they call "Graphics file Converter".
This will also convert audio files.

They can be found at: www.imsisoft.com

Joel

Joel..

Sorry to disapoint you but that "graphics file converter" formerly know as "Hijack Pro" does not handle RA..

http://www.imsisoft.com/graphicsconverter/graphicfileconverter.html

Regards

oops, my bad.
(it was a comment)

No problem Joel ;-)

Thank you very much for converting the files for me, Hallmarc.

OK, everybody, here is the situation:

I successfully converted the .RA files to .WAV, but it wasn't easy.  First, I thought that I could convert just using CoolEditPro, but then I remembered that the program only exports to that format.  Then, I thought that with a full-duplex card, I would be able to both play and record at the same time.  Normally this is not a problem, for example, using two instances of sndrec32, which is very simple.  The catch is that the RA player hogs both the play and record DMA channels, and thus will not allow an external program access to the soundcard during play.  Now, I thought, OK, still not a problem, I'll just set up my older ISA audio card (I use an Ensoniq AudioPCI normally), and record internally from one audio card to the other.  Wrong again!  Using one card, it's a simple thing for the card to record its own internal .wav stream back to the record channel, but there is no easy way to specify that the .wav stream be sent to another card.  Final solution: attach 1 card's line out to the other card's line in and adjust appropriately.

For everybody out there who believes there is a conversion program (or suite at least), I think you've got to be right.  However, you'll be hard-pressed to find one.  Probably the only thing (and best thing) that can be done is to get one's hands on the RealAudio encoder (not cheap).  The encoder most certainly allows you to decode, but since it is a lossy compression algorithm, you wouldn't get back the .wav you put in.

The music was quite pleasant, even though I don't speak Chinese.  Anyway, good luck to you manchung...

Here is what I know about this problem (I don't think there's anything else out there either).  There is a C program that will convert RA 1.0 files to wav.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work on any modern version.  Also, there is a linux kernel hack that will let you record any data sent to the sound card.  Talking with the author, though, it has some formidable problems.  You can take a look at this hack here:

http://web.syr.edu/~jdimpson/proj/

It's the "paudio" project.  This is the best answer if it ever gets perfected (and, as far as I can see, something like this will be the only true answer).  It actually records the output to the card in a file as it's playing.  Very cool, and useful for tons of applications I can think of.  Although, he is having problems with the new RA files (losing parts of the data).

If you have a true full duplex sound card (most sound blasters are not true full duplex), then you can use whatever bandwidth RA is not using and record what it's playing.  Altough, with most samples, this will only give you a 11.025 kHz wav or so.

Everything listed above (although none works correctly) will give you a true digital copy of the RA file.  Then you can get into ways that convert D/A and then back A/D.  Pretty much equivalent ways are plugging the output of one PC to the input of another, OR outputting to a DAT and playing back.  Since you will lose some quality in the conversion, you need to be using a good D/A A/D sound card (sound blasters except for the AWE64 Gold (not value) are horrible).  Then, lower down the spectrum, you can record it to a tape and play it back again, or use sound blasters to do a PC to PC transfer.  For those with the AWE64 gold, you can output it digitally to a DAT using the SP/DIF port.  And if you really have a lot of cash to throw around, you can get an SP/DIF input and do the entire transfer digitally.

Regarding the above post, the RealAudio encoder is free at www.realaudio.com.  Real does not make a decoder for any of its products on any level.

Mail me at bjt1031@unix.tamu.edu if you have any comments or questions on this stuff.

Thanks a lot for your info, feecher.
I hope magigraf would get a chance to read your comments.