*.Ram to *.MP3

[Kent]

I downloaded the real audio plugin for winamp and justin's MP3 output plugin.

I want to play a *.Ram file and have it write
to an MP3 file, but it just seems to freeze.

Playing a *.Ram file with the Wavout works fine.

[Arioch]

I often used WinAMP 2 for converting RA to WAV, then i used LAme for encoding it to MP3, or OGGENC to encode it into OGG i prefer now.
Later i use Windows Commander (my preferred file manager) with CD Ripper plugin that also features WAV encoding.

So the question is how to turn RA into WAV.

Personally i use Tara plugin - it needs RealPleyr or RealOne or RealAlternate installed and reused its DLLs for WinAMP.
If You have WinAMP3 - You will also need WinAMP2-to-WinAMP3 bridge, that NullSoft released right after they rekeased WA3

Then select output to DiskWriter and here we are.

One more idea is to try new WinAMP DirectX input plugin
Got to guliverkly at SourceForge and download RealMedia DirectX codec.
Personally i now can play RA in any DirectX-based player, though for WinAMP i still prefer Tara

[OlympicHero]

Search for "Streambox Ripper".

It let's you convert straight from RA/RAM to MP3.

[abstrak]

will i lose quality if i go from RAM to MP3?

[Arioch]

Sure.
Google for "lossy compression"

When You do any lossy compression, including, say, DVD->MPEG4 or Jpeg->Jpeg2000 you always loose something

[Arioch]

i meant lossy REcompression

Imaging we have string ABCDEFGHIJK. Let it be analogue of uncompressed AudioCD

Let's imagine that OGG will loose letter G (lossy!).
Let's imagine that MP3 will loose letters B and H.
Letls imagine that RA will loose D, H anf K.

Then now You have the string ABCEFGIJ.
If we'd compress original audio to MP3, we'd had ACDEFGIJK - which is of course better quality.
But You want to compress RA string.
The You'd get ACEFGIJ - because we have no info to recreate lost letters D and K.

You see, on any re-coding losses are summarised.