It's not that midi format LOWERS the quality, it's that midi is some tonedeaf moron banging on his keyboard to reproduce the sound in a crappy format that varies from computer to computer. It's not a data conversion from the OST, it's a manual process. So, Chris, please stop posting that. Those suck. Thanks.

Now, then... how can you possibly not have the mp3 codecs on your computer? The file extension IS .mp3, right? And not, say, .ogg or .flac? What media player are you using?

Assuming that you somehow don't have the codecs, you could just download WinAMP which should have them. Any media player should, really.