WMA to mp3

[Clouded Sky]

Any of you know a good program or something that might be able to convert WMAs to mp3. My dad downloaded a few songs off wal-mart.com and he wants me to burn them. i tried once but it wouldn't let me convert because it said they were "protected." Also, windows media player i thought would be able to burn them, it doesn't seem to recognize my cd-drive as a valid burner. any ideas?

[Endless]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Digital rights management (DRM). In short, check wal-mart's site about what right you are entitled with the "purchasing" (haha) of their songs. If it says no copy, then tough cookies, you just got serviced.

[Rye]

Well, it's not exactly the most legal thing, but if you have a decent microphone, record the songs on it, and then you will have them as .wav files, which can be burnt on a CD. The only draw back is that it may have background sound or the quality may suck if you have a bad microphone. The problem with me is that I have to use the microsoft sound recorder, which stops every 60 seconds, so while there is no singing in the songs, I click off and record really fast and it gives you addition time. I do that until the sound is over. That's the only drawback for me, because my microphone is pretty good.

Believe me, I do this all the time. xD

[MecaKane]

Well, it's not exactly the most legal thing, but if you have a decent microphone, record the songs on it, and then you will have them as .wav files, which can be burnt on a CD. The only draw back is that it may have background sound or the quality may suck if you have a bad microphone. The problem with me is that I have to use the microsoft sound recorder, which stops every 60 seconds, so while there is no singing in the songs, I click off and record really fast and it gives you addition time. I do that until the sound is over. That's the only drawback for me, because my microphone is pretty good.

Believe me, I do this all the time. xD
You can set the sound recorder to pick up on the "sterio mixer" sound property, that plays MP3s and WMAs, and not the mic for doing that, from the volume control>properties>change volume for recording, make sure sterio mixer and mic are selected in the little box down there, then "OK" so you'll go into the recording properties and select sterio mixer and unselect mic.
Also, for the time thing you can just record nothing for 60 seconds, hit record again, and it'll go to 2 minutes, repeat untill you get to longer than the length of the song then go back to the start of the file to start recording, and when it's over from one of the option menus select delete after position and there you go.
I was a fiend for ripping CDs that way when I was 12 and got my frist computer and didn't have anything to do on it.

[DMKA]

Kane is correct on the stereo mix thing, but I reccomend getting Audacity (http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlaudacity.html) for the recording. It's the best recorder I've ever seen, with tons of tweaks you can preform (if needed), and there's no limit to how long you can record, so you won't have to deal with that crap. Plus best of all, it's 100% legally free. :D

[rubah]

Very interesting kane, I'll have to find some use for this.

[HybridFan]

dbpoweramp can convert almost any type of audio file to another although you will need to download quite a few plugins

[Croyles]

type "WMA to mp3 converter" in google and you will probably stumble across something worth your while

[Killy]

Latest versions of Winamp have wave-out plugin, you could try that.

[crono_logical]

Wave-out is for using the wave out instead of DirectSound to play the audio, I think you meant the DiskWriter plugin to write an actual wav to disk. You can then convert the wav to mp3 with other tools. Downloading an mp3 of the track made directly from a CD source rather than converting would be a better idea though, due to quality loss when converting from wma to mp3. :p

[Yrkoon]

in responce to the original post "acoustica mp3 to wave converter plus" will let you convert wma,wave,mp3 files with a simple right click to any of they formats and later ones let you convert to ogg files :)

ive converted tons of files using that for my rio carbon mp3 player and drm hasnt been a prob for me :)