How to save real audio files to hard disk

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 7, 2005
Updated • Apr 29, 2013
Music and Video
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14

I published a stream ripping tutorial yesterday and one of the comments that I have received was if I knew a way to save real audio music as well to the computer. After a bit of fiddling around I found a solution that lets you save real audio music to your computer's hard drive.

You will need the following tools: Real Player, Real Player Alternative or another tool / plugin that plays real audio files. I suggest Real Player Alternative as it is lighter and not as bloated as the official tool.

There is more than one way to save the files. I try to give an overview on all of them, there are surely more out there but I think its sufficient if you know how to save them, no one needs more than 2-3 ways for the same process.

1. Go to a webpage that offers Real Audio Streams, they normally offer a link to a .ram file which you download. The .ram file only contains the link to the .ra / .rm file, and that's what we need. Remember the .ra file contains the audio, the .ram file the location of the audio file.

Download the .ram file and open it locally with a text editor. You should see a line with a link to the audio file. If you are lucky the url starts with http://

If that's the case simply copy paste the url into your browser and you are prompted to download the audio file.

Unfortunately most of the time the url does not start with http but with rtsp:// for example. The browser won't download this files, there is a workaround for this though. Just a quick note, there is an older format as well, just in case, don't worry if you find a pnm:// link, its just the old protocol. There should not be a lot of those around anymore.

You can use the flashget program to which is a download manager to save streams, it is able to handle the rtsp:// format as well as others.

Once on your hard disk simply double click to start the audio file. I suggest a player like AIMP or VLC Media Player for that.

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Comments

  1. Madhu Sudhan said on September 9, 2012 at 7:38 pm
    Reply

    hi there,

    it workz, nice…

  2. Veron said on May 9, 2012 at 3:02 am
    Reply

    Hi there, LOVE some help! i’m getting an error “403 Forbidden nginx/0.9..5” when i entered the contents of the text file into safari for http://199.48.254.90/archives/lindaevans080201.rm. Many thanks..

  3. rabee said on May 18, 2011 at 1:27 am
    Reply

    thank you very very much
    I really needed it

  4. Rishi said on May 21, 2010 at 4:38 pm
    Reply

    Amazing buddy……mind blowing……very very thanks you…..

  5. Dilan said on May 5, 2010 at 5:13 pm
    Reply

    thnx very much ,u r the man(or girl)….great help dear,
    greets from SRI LANKA(pearl in indian ocean)
    thnx again…………………….

  6. Orzabal said on January 20, 2010 at 7:36 pm
    Reply

    Nice! it worked like a charm!!! thanks!

  7. Pravira said on August 6, 2008 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    To Ajith

    I used IE to download and the same problem occurred. But when I used Mozilla FireFox it downloaded just fine.

  8. Yair said on September 26, 2006 at 12:29 pm
    Reply

    something that might be usuful to add- if .ram adresses starting with pnm:// don’t work, it might fix them to replace it with rtsp:// (worked for me).

  9. eeax said on July 30, 2006 at 6:48 pm
    Reply

    Once again Audacity does this for live streams. It doesnt download mind you, it just records in real time. Which is better in some ways if you like music and messing with the EQ to get more bass, treble, louder etc. Its kinda oldschool in new school clothing.

  10. hb said on July 20, 2006 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    Alejo, how did you dumped the file? With Flashget? That wouldn’t work because flashget dump the stream correctly but the headers of the .ra/.rm file are incorrectly stored. The result is that the file is not playable. Try to download the file with MassDownloader or MPlayer. Massdownloader has a few bugs and therefore it’s difficult to handle. If you want to use Mplayer you will have to download the last repository version. This means you will need to know a little about programation or at least how to compile a project. The release version wouldn’t help.

    For more information about both products google them.

    Hernan (Yo tambien soy fana de Dolina ;).)

  11. eagle said on June 25, 2006 at 4:14 am
    Reply

    rtsp:// is a streaming protocol.
    You can use some of the software support streaming download, e.g. WMRecorder
    Just paste the link and you can now download it easily.

  12. ajith said on May 21, 2006 at 6:05 am
    Reply

    Hi, like you said i opened the .ram file, got an http://, pasted the url in my browser. Only it plays the file on realplayer when connected to the net. Tried downloading with flashget..got a 117kb file.. no use. This is the link http://www.malayalavedhi.com/Music/Music/music/Hindu_______Devotionals/Aa_Divya_Naamam_REMiX_______SWAMi_AYYAPPAN.ra

    Is there another way?

    ajith

  13. alejo said on May 9, 2006 at 1:29 pm
    Reply

    Hi. A question. I`ve downloaded the real audio file to my hard disc.
    But i can`t play it!!! An error message appears.

    rtsp://ms.espectador.com/audio/app_metafiles/dol0604241.rm

    i can listen this file on line but i cant listen it on my hard disk.

    please, help me.

    From Argentina , Alejo. Thanks (sorry about my poor english)

  14. jc said on November 23, 2005 at 4:31 am
    Reply

    How can we download an rm file that starts with rtsp://?

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