Hi
I have Audacity on my computer, have used it successfully in the past to edit short sound clips downloaded from the Internet and material recorded through the microphone. Now I want to edit some music that I have downloaded (legally) from the Internet. The files are in .wma format and are stored on my computer. I can open the files in Audacity but cannot play them. If I try I just get a short 'shriek' and the cursor whizzes through the file in less than a second.

My interpretation of this is that the files are very compressed when I load them and Audacity is not uncompressing them. I've tried saving the files with different file extensions but nothing works.

I also have a, different, problem when I try to record Cds playing on my computer CD player, but will deal with one at a time.

Will be very grateful if any Audacity experts can help.

Cna you play the files normally? If you can, then select the recording option in Audacity from Microphone to Mono Out. This will record any sounds from the machine. If you press record, and then play the file in Windows Media player or something, then it will show up on the screen. After that, you can export as MP3 / WAV / whatever

The only reason I can think of why you shouldn't do this is if it's too long to sit there and record it

I have a feeling that when I tried to do this one time, I had to download an application to rip the wma file to mp3 so that audacity was happy to open it. I don't recall the name or location of the application I'm afraid, it was on my old computer before it threw a hissy fit.

Thank you Oddball. I don't have Mono Out on my copy of Audacity (I've got version 1.2.4), but I tried Mono Mix, which worked.

sarah_flute - when I was unsuccessfully trying to get it to do what I wanted I got a message at one point which told me to rip the file. I did this but it still wouldn't play it. Oddball's suggestion has worked perfectly though, so I'm happy....................for now. Off to see if the same suggestion will work for my other problem - will be back if it doesn't.

Thanks both.

Glad Oddball's suggestion worked OK!

In case this helps:

http://koyotstar.free.fr/indexEn.html

Look on the left hand side for the 'Free MP3 WMA Converter'. Pretty sure its the one I used last time to convert some WMAs to MP3.

Thanks, I've just downloaded it, and will have a play with it tomorrow.