I am desiging a website for a rap star who sends me his work in .rar
extension format.  I cannot find any software to play it, or to
convert it.  I am also unsure what it converts best to, had no
experience with .rar files.

Should I convert them to .mp3, .ram, , or soemthing else?

They need to be downloadable and playable from the website.

Prefer not to pay for the download or conversion software, if anyone
knows some freeware or shareware for this.

Thanks in advance,

Scott

Hi!!

.rar files is a type of compressed files, like .zip files. Rar is the
native format of the file compression software WinRAR Archiver.
The audio files must be "inside" the rar files.

See the following page:
"What is a RAR file":
http://www.rarlab.com/rar_file.htm

"WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and
reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files
downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file
format."
http://www.rarlab.com/index.htm

To download it:
http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar330.exe

Note that you will download a full featured trial version, WinRAR is
technically free because trial version never limits use.

This is a nice WinRAR tutorial:
"Soulmaniacs - WinRAR Tutorial"
http://users.pandora.be/soulmaniacs/winrar.html


Alternative free software:
7-Zip:
http://www.7-zip.org/

UltimateZip:
http://www.ultimatezip.com/


Search strategy:
rar files
winrar
winrar tutorial


I hope this helps you. If you need further assistance, please let me
know using the clarification feature.

Regards.
livioflores-ga

you know what they say, give a man a fish and hell eat for a day,
teach a man to fish..., if you want to know what a particular file
extension is all about, you should visit a website like this one:
http://www.icdatamaster.com/
it provides you with a desctiption of what the extension is, and the
application that opens it.  Incidently I had the same problem as you
with .rar files about a year ago, I learned about them from one of
these sites.

To answer your question about what format to convert them to, your
fist step is to find out what format the file inside the .rar is! It
may already be in a format you can directly upload to the site. Also,
it would depend on how you want them to be downloaded (ie Embeded,
Linked, etc.). Do you want to provide links for visitors to click on?
If so, I would recommend links to both .wav and .MP3. The .wav format
will have lower quality audio than the MP3 but is almost universally
readable. The MP3 provides a file with better audio quality and would
be more attractive to most music lovers.

Let me know if you need more info.