Real Audio files on WFMU's site

[cutout]

I've been trying to listen to a bunch of the older Best Show archives but the Real Audio streams can be really flaky. Do any of you happen to know WFMU's plan to convert them to mp3 eventually so they can be downloaded as part of the podcast via iTunes?

[nightswimmer]

New FOT here. I don't know anything about the station's plans, but I've started converting the archive for my own personal use and would gladly share files with you. Let me know if you're still interested. Thanks.

[Purple Aki]

Oh, dude, totally. I'd love that.

[nightswimmer]

I've recently become completely obsessed with listening to the Best Show from the beginning and started converting the archive files into mp3s, which consists of playing the original ram files in real time and recording them with Audacity. The audio quality should be just as good as the original archive files. Hopefully the mods and/or Tom don't mind that I post this, but here's the link to a torrent that I created, containing mp3 versions of all the Best Show episodes from late 2000 and all of 2001. There area  few episodes that have skips in them due to damaged ram files from the archives. Please tell me about any other problems and I'll try to fix them. Otherwise, enjoy!

http://kat.ph/the-best-show-on-wfmu-2000-2001-t7392084.html

Again, if this isn't okay to post this here, please let me know.

[jeff_s]

Thanks.  It'll be nice to catch up on some old best show.

[buffcoat]

I got 11% of this last week, but it hasn't been seeded for few days.

[bananagrabbers]

I've been working on collecting everything with another member of the boards.  I will say that if you have the .ram files, there are a lot of better / quicker options for conversion.  I know there are plenty of threads discussing such options.  I used All2MP3 on my Mac to convert all of the .ram files I had to MP3.  The beauty is you can set-up a bunch to convert at once, then walk way.  You can get through a few years in the time it would take you to record one episode via Audacity.

[nightswimmer]

I'm aware of the existence of better ways and have tried for hours to utilize these programs/methods to no avail. I'm a PC user and can't get All2MP3. After seeing your post, I looked online for batch ram to mp3 converters, downloaded and tried each, and had luck at all, just a lot of frustration. Any suggestions? Also, would you be willing to share any of your collection? There are a lot of non-archived shows that I've run into that I would love to have. Thanks.

[joe]

I used zamzar.com to convert the Real Audio files back when I was able to download them. It sounds like it's not as fast as All2MP3 but it's definitely faster than doing it in real time. I only got about halfway through 2002, so if anyone got further than that I would love it if they were able to share.

[nightswimmer]

Thanks for the tip. I'm less than halfway through 2002 as well.