RA is an audio format developed by RealNetworks to use in its RealPlayer for streaming audio which means that it can be played while downloading. It uses several audio codecs, they range from the ones for delivering high-fidelity sound to those for recording low bitrate audio data. Although, the format was pretty popular and was used by many radio station to stream online, now it is technically inferior to other newer formats.

This format was originally created as an alternative to mp3. The idea was to achieve a small file size with better sound quality. The first versions weren’t quite successful, but with the development of AAC, it became possible to store sound with less loss of quality, and with the same file sizes as that of mp3.