WMA (Windows Media Audio)
 

Can anyone tell me with which application I can play .wma files (windows media audio)?

XMMS (my XMS - in RH 7.1) won't let me...

Thanks

Luckily (or sadly, depends on how you look at it) no Linux app will do that, WMA is proprietary M$ stuff, the compression scheme ain't shared with the Open Source community.

I know that MPlayer play windows media like wma or wmv, but I have problem installing it. Is ther any way to play wma with xms?
I have like 10 Gb of music in wma (I know it sucks) but know I am using Linux like 95% and it would be great to play my music on Linux

i confirm that mplayer plays both wmw and wma flawlessly

just mplayer. and just for about the past 6 months or so.

Thank you it really works and MPlayer it cames with the rpms in Mandrake 9.1. Now I can hear all my music in Linux. Linux rules!!!

use m player. XMMS is slightly outdated and too much like winamp.
Although winamp is good, the modules will only work with the windows version. There are some plugins around, but they arent garenteed to work properly, also there are plugins that allow you to use mplayer modules to play things in xmms if you dont want to switch to mplayer

Mplayer is definitely the way to go, as you have found out. The great thing is that it can also use libraries from almost anything, xmms included, so there is a really small list of things not supported by mplayer one way or another. I personlly like xmms for just-your-average mp3 player (I have the xmms-shell program called whenever I use my 'multimedia' buttons on my keyboard) because it uses the same skin format as WinAmp 2.x! Yay!

Thank you all for your replies. I have a question how can I use Mplayer libries in xmms becuase I more familiar with xmms than with mplayer.
Another question, how can I burn a normal music cd out of wma? is there a program that does that or I have to change the format from wma to mp3 first ? And if so is there a program that convert mp3 to wma?

1) Unless there is an XMMS plugin that allows you to use mplayer to play a file, then you may be out of luck.
2) You can use mplayer to convert them to .wav files, and then use your normal GUI burner app to make an audio CD (I would recommend K3B or ERoaster). To convert to wav, use mplayer filename.wma -ao pcm -aofile filename.wav (check: it might be -ao wav)

try AMAROK
 

Install the w32codecs and XMMS should be able to play them.

Today, I recommend amarok. Two years ago, when this thread was started, mplayer was the only real choice. ;)