I need to convert some WMA files (versions range from 4 to 9) to WAV format in order to transcode into an obscure proprietary format that only supports WAV input. I can't find any way of doing this ... I searched Google and found some tools (i.e. wma2wav) but those don't produce proper PCM WAV files. The solution must support a CLI interface, but for kicks I tried playing a WMA through WinAMP using the Disk Writer plugin -- no luck, it played through the speakers.

Any thoughts?

1.) Transcode???
2.) What audio format?


I believe there is an older version (of the plugin) that is able to decode WMAs to wavs.

You can use dbPowerAMP, or CoolEdit/Adobe Audition, to load and decode WMA files normally.

pseudoacoustic - It's a format for a client, I don't have any details on it. As far as the transcoding is concerned, this is very low bitrate and while the quality would be better performing the codec on a full quality source they don't want to pay for this.

rjamorim - I glanced at the tools mentioned, but it didn't look like they supported CLI.

Not to worry ... as I did find a perfect solution in the form of mplayer, which supports WMA playback and a PCM output writer. Even better, it works on both Windows and *nix. B)

$ mplayer -really-quiet -vc dummy -vo null -waveheader -ao pcm -aofile sample.wav sample.wma



-Derek