Convert WMA to WAV

Tony writes, "Part of [my] podcast will involve material I record on an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder WS-100. It transfers the files to the PC via USB connection. However, when I tried to open the file with Audacity, it says the file is a Window Media file and need to convert it."

The Olympus WS-100 is definitely a convenient tool for voice recording applications. Before I get into how to convert Windows Media WMA files to WAV files you can edit with Audacity, let me offer an important tip: if you plan to edit the audio recorded with the WS-100, make sure you record in the HQ mode. The lower quality modes apply extra compression which is great for saving space, but your audio won't sound good if you recompress to something like MP3 later.

To convert files from WMA to WAV, the easy (although somewhat ugly) solution is WinFF. The app uses file conversion support from FFmpeg to convert between many different audio and video formats. Below are step-by-step instructions for converting from WMA to WAV with WinFF.

Converting WMA to WAV with WinFF

1) After downloading and installing WinFF, launch the application and select the WMA file or files you want to convert to WAV.

2) Choose the Wav for CD option from the Choose Format to Convert to... menu.

3) Pick a Destination folder to save your file(s) and click Start Converting.

When the conversion finishes, you're ready to edit the WAV files in Audacity or any other audio editor.

This tutorial should work for both Linux and Windows.