Neil, mplayer can rip the stream straight to mp3 just use mplayer -dumpstream "url" -dumpfile filename.mp3 eg. mplayer -dumpstream "rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/science/materialworld.ra?title="Material_World"&start="0:53"" -dumpfile matworld.mp3 It works for me. Regards Mark Major