A note on Real Audio (the above posting was getting a bit over long).

Real Audio, like MP3 is a format for saving and playing back sound files on a computer. Like MP3, "Real" files are much smaller than a full digital audio recording. Both formats manage this by throwing away a lot of information compared with a CD quality digital recording.

If you want to just play downloaded "Real" files on your computer, all you need is a compatible player. Real Networks, the people who invented "Real Audio" provide a free player (realplayer), but it is a nuisance because it tries to take over your computer, connect to the internet when you don't want it to and send god knows what private information back to Real Networks. Because of this, a lot of people regard it as spyware, and will not allow it to be installed on their PC.
The link I gave in an earlier posting is to Real Alternative, which allows you to plat "Real" files without using "Realplayer". This doesn't install anything dodgy on your PC and works pretty well on all except a couple of Real Player formats of file.

If, however, you want to put the tracks onto an audio CD, you need to convert them to a format a CD player will recognise. It will not play "Real" files.
Converting to a different format used to be difficult, as Real Networks tried to prevent anyone selling software which would do the job. Nowadays, there seem to be a few programmes available which will do the conversion, some are free. Here is a link to information about converting from Real Audio format - BLICKY. It has some links to conversion progs.

If you convert from Real Audio to MP3 there can be a serious reduction in sound quality. This is because, as mentioned earlier, both formats produce small files by throwing away bits of information. The two formats however throw out DIFFERENT information from the original sound file. Once the information is gone, it cannot be restored, so if you convert from Real to MP3, the original info is already gone and you are then removing even more of what we would recognise as the original sound.
I converted Honking Duck tracks to .wav files and burned to audio CD and now only need the time to sit and listen to 30-odd hours of music.

Quack!
GtD.