Real Audio -> MP3? HELP!

[cleo]

My boss just emailed me asking if I could figure out a way fo her to burn a Real Audio file from Democracy Now to CD so she could use it in the classroom. I have done massive googling and the only thing I have come up with are these instructions from Macworld (http://www.macworld.com/2002/04/secrets/mac911.html). The problem is that I don't have any of the specified software and I don't have a clue as to whether I could even do it on my iMac 800.

Soooo... two questions:
1) Does anyone know of an easier way to do this?
2) If not, would any of you studly Mac audio masters be willing to help a damsel (er, dyke :)) in distress and do it for me? (Convert the RA to something burnable, that is). I would be forever grateful and may even be willing to do some (ahem) favors for you in the future. ;)

Seriously, if anyone could help me out it would be sooo cool - I really want to get on my boss's good side with this!

[Choppaface]

i remember in sound jam that you could record stuff to disk as mp3s or aiffs...dunno if they moved this feature over to itunes.

check out simpleSound in your apple extras folder of your OS9 installation (assuming you haven't wiped it...). i'm pretty sure you can record aiff's in it...then just import those into itunes. you might have to give it the aiff extension though....

[cleo]

Originally posted by Choppaface

check out simpleSound in your apple extras folder of your OS9 installation (assuming you haven't wiped it...).

:( I have. I'm an OS X-only gal.

But in general... would it be possible to get some kind of recording program and then turn it on (recording) while playing the Real Audio files? Would it just pick up the sound through the internal mic on my iMac?

On Windows you can't do this kind of thing, as the sound card can't be used by two apps at once... might it really work here?