WMA Tracks can’t Burn, Play, Tag, Convert, Sync or be Analyzed

MediaMonkey relies on Windows Media components to read and play Windows Media formats (WMA, WMV, ASF, …) as well as MP3 files. Thus, if Windows Media Player can’t play a file in a Windows Media format, MediaMonkey won’t be able to either. Such issues can arise if:

  1. a file is corrupted
  2. a file is protected by digital rights management (DRM)
  3. the Windows Media Components aren’t installed correctly
  4. you’re running Windows 10: http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/245/0/wma-encoding-fails-on-windows-10

1. In the case of file corruption of a specific file, a tool such as asfbin can be used to fix it:
http://www.radioactivepages.com/asfbin.aspx
After using the page to process the wma file in question, rename the resulting file and then play it in MediaMonkey.

2. If playback, conversion, and burning failures still occur with certain WMA files and/or you receive an error that ‘…Some of the tracks are protected by Digital Rights Management…’ then it is probably due to to the fact that the tracks are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) and you do not have rights to play them, the rights may have expired, or there is a problem with the DRM certificates. Check online for solutions to aquiring these certificates for your system for the provider of your DRMed WMA files.

3. In cases where there are missing or faulty Windows Media components, all Windows Media files will fail even though other audio formats may work. This will result in:
o no sound, volume analysis failures
o sync failures, conversion failures, burn failures
o failed tag updates (WMA only)
o an error message regarding the inability to decode WMA files

This can occur if you have Windows ‘N’ installed, which doesn’t include codecs needed for playback. To resolve, you’ll need to install the missing codecs.

If Windows Media Components have already been installed, these issues can be cause by outdated or corrupted Windows Media Drivers. To resolve this:
1. In some cases simply reboot your machine and the problem will disappear.
2. If reboot doesn’t work, then you can try:
a) (re)install codecs from
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=507
b) (re)install Windows Media Player to ensure that latest codecs are installed
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-media-player-details.aspx
3. For a complete refresh of Windows Media Components (this will also resolve WMA Tagging problems), try:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/WMFDist11-WindowsXP-X86-ENU.exe

Applies to: ,

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