WMA and WAV File Formats

Windows Media DRM, a component of PlaysForSure and Windows Media Connect, is supported on many modern portable audio devices and streaming media clients such as Roku, SoundBridge, Xbox 360 and Wii. Players which support the WMA format but not Windows Media DRM lists protected titles as unplayable.

With regards to the DRM of WMA, the loss of the ability to restore licenses for WMA files in the Windows Media Player 11 was not positively received in an article from The Inquirer. In addition, the publisher criticized the Microsoft Zune for not supporting the standard Windows Media DRM system, rendering protected WMA files unplayable on the device.

The FFmpeg project has reverse-engineered and re-implemented the WMA codecs (except WMA Pro) to allow their use on POSIX-compliant operating systems such as Linux. RealNetworks has announced plans to support playback of DRM-unprotected WMA files in RealPlayer for Linux.

The usage of the WAV format has more to do with its familiarity, its simplicity and simple structure, which is heavily based on the IFF file format. Because of this, it continues to enjoy widespread use with a variety of software applications, often functioning as a 'lowest common denominator' when it comes to exchanging sound files between different programs.

In spite of their large size, uncompressed WAV (though that format can be different from the Microsoft WAV) files are sometimes used by some radio broadcasters, especially those that have adopted the tapeless system.

Convert WMA to WAV with NoteBurner Audio Converter

Audio file conversion: NoteBurner's big advantage is that once you have set it up you can use your favorite media player (iTunes, Realplayer, Winamp, Windows Media Player etc.) to queue the music up for conversion. When using your media player all you have to do is configure it to use the virtual CD burner rather than the physical one that is installed inside your computer. Output Audio Formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless.

The configuration of NoteBurner WMA to WAV. The settings menu has a reasonable set of configuration options so that you can tweak how NoteBurner WMA to WAV deals with your audio files. You can set the default folder that music is saved to, change audio formats, choose various CBR and VBR encoding bitrates, select ID3 tag versions 1 and 2, and enable NoteBurner to automatically run every time you start Microsoft Windows.

NoteBurner WMA to WAV converts any DRM protected music files (such as M4P, M4A, WMA, M4B) and unprotected music (WMA, MP3, rax, MP4, WAV, RA, snd, OGG, aif) to plain MP3, WAV, WMA formats with Virtual CD-RW drive. It is a protected audio and music converter tool designed for virtually burning.