Okay, I've tested this and it worked:

mplayer -ao pcm file.wma

This will produce "audiodump.wav" which I was able to import into Audacity.

On 11/10/06, John Jason Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:51:20 -0800
"Seth Wegner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dijo:

> Have you tried playing it in mplayer? If it'll play in mplayer, it'll
> encode in mencoder.

It'll play in mplayer. Also in totem and vlc. RealPlayer, however, says
it is not supported (although RealPlayer on my Windows 2000 desktop
*will* play it). It will also play in Windows Media Player, installed
via Crossover Office.

WMA is not on the list of supported file types for Audacity.
Nevertheless, Audacity opens it. But when I try to play it in Audacity
I get a screaming noise for a few seconds. (The file is several minutes
long.) Audacity offers the ability to export the file to Mp3 or to WAV.
I tried both, then opened the exported files into Audacity. Got the
same screaming noise.

I used lame to convert it to Mp3. When I opened the resulting file into
Audacity, it plays just static.

I can't figure out how to use mplayer to export to another format. I
spent 15 minutes reading through the man page and finally gave up. Too
many options, too little understanding of the terminology. Pretend that
I'm 100 years old and my idea of playing music is to put vinyl on the
record player. In other words, I do not understand what an of the
options are referring to.

In an attempt to resolve this problem I copied the files to my Windows
2000 desktop. There, they play fine in RealPlayer. I downloaded and
installed Winamp, which also happily plays them. And I downloaded and
installed Audacity, which gives the same result as the Linux version.

Why do I want to play them in Audacity? Wouldn't one of these others do
as well? Well, the others do play the files just fine. But these are
recordings of a Tibetan informant from which I must record the sound
segments. I mean, very detailed transcriptions. It is very hard to hear
such details, but Audacity has the ability to slow down the tempo
without changing the pitch. This is invaluable to me. And I have never
found another audio player that has this capability.

And why are these files in WMA format? Because constructing the
phonology of Tibetan is a group project and one of the group members
has a brand new hand-held digital recorder. I don't know what brand it
is, but it is about the size of an iPod mini and comes with a USB
connector. I can download the files right to my computer from the
device. Unfortunately, it records in WMA format, and I don't think
there is any other option.

So that's the problem. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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