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.wma files from your device. Batch is supported — queue a folder of voice recordings or a ripped Windows Media Player library in one pass. Files stay in your browser session.HH:MM:SS.mmm format. Use millisecond precision to land exactly on the down-beat or at a word boundary instead of mid-syllable.WMA is the audio half of Microsoft's old Windows Media platform — .wma files are usually a Windows Media Audio v2 lossy stream wrapped in an ASF (Advanced Systems Format) container, launched with Windows Media Technologies 4.0 in August 1999 and refined through WMA 9 in 2003. Voice memos recorded on older PCs, classroom and meeting recordings from Olympus and Sony dictaphones, ripped Windows Media Player CDs, and audiobooks from Audible's pre-2014 catalogue all routinely come out as WMA. Cutting beats re-encoding to MP3 first whenever the downstream tool already accepts WMA — every extra encode pass on a lossy stream throws away frequency detail.
.m4r) for the import..aa/WMA-derived files and self-ripped book CDs ship as 30–60-minute chapters; trim end-of-chapter outros or table-of-contents segments before loading into a phone podcast player.| Property | WMA | MP3 |
|---|---|---|
| Released | August 1999 (Microsoft, Windows Media 4) | 1993 (Fraunhofer IIS, ISO/IEC 11172-3) |
| Container | ASF (.wma, .asf) |
Bare MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer III bitstream (.mp3) |
| Common codec inside | WMAv2 (lossy); WMAv1 legacy; WMA Pro, Lossless, Voice are separate codecs | MPEG-1 Layer 3 |
| Typical bitrate | 64–192 kbps lossy; 128 kbps+ for stereo music | 96–320 kbps lossy |
| Max channels (standard tier) | 2 (stereo) — Pro extends to 7.1 | 2 (Layer III); 5.1 via MP3 Surround (rare) |
| Sample rate ceiling | 48 kHz standard; 96 kHz in WMA Pro/Lossless | 48 kHz (MPEG-1) / 24 kHz (MPEG-2) |
| Patent / royalty status | Microsoft-owned, royalty-bearing for distribution | All major MP3 patents expired April 2017 |
| Native playback in 2026 | Windows Media Player and the new Media Player app on Windows 10/11; limited elsewhere | Every major OS, browser, car stereo, smartphone |
The MP3 patent pool was officially terminated by Fraunhofer and Technicolor in April 2017, which is why MP3 is universal today; WMA never reached that level of cross-platform ubiquity even though most modern OS media stacks can still decode it. If your destination is a non-Windows device, cutting and then converting WMA to MP3 or WMA to WAV is usually less hassle than asking the recipient to install codecs.
Sizes are approximate, for one hour of audio at the listed bitrate, stereo unless noted.
| Setting | Size per hour | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 320 kbps CBR stereo (WMAv2 max practical) | ~144 MB | Archive masters, music collections |
| 192 kbps CBR stereo | ~86 MB | High-quality podcasts, music ripped from CD |
| 128 kbps CBR stereo | ~58 MB | General music, near-transparent for casual listening |
| 96 kbps CBR stereo | ~43 MB | Voice with light music, web embeds |
| 64 kbps CBR mono | ~29 MB | Dictaphone recordings, audiobooks, lectures |
| 32 kbps CBR mono | ~14 MB | Long-form voice archives, voicemail-grade |
| WMA Voice 20 kbps mono | ~9 MB | Pure speech — the codec was designed for this |
WMA Voice is a separate codec (not just WMA Standard at a low bitrate); most browser-based cutters expose WMA Standard / WMA v2 only, so for sub-32 kbps speech archives you're usually better re-encoding to Opus or AMR via a WMA to MP3 conversion plus a follow-up encode.
When you keep the output format as WMA and the cut points fall on codec frame boundaries, the trim is effectively a copy and quality is preserved. If you change the output codec, bitrate, sample rate, or channel layout — or if your cut points fall mid-frame — the audio gets decoded and re-encoded, which costs a small amount of detail (mostly inaudible at 128 kbps+). For voice memos cut on syllable boundaries the loss is imperceptible.
No. WMA files with Windows Media DRM (WMDRM) — common for old PlaysForSure music-store purchases and some Audible-era audiobook downloads — are encrypted and can't be cut or re-encoded by any browser tool. Microsoft retired the legacy WMDRM service infrastructure in September 2024, so even Windows Media Player can no longer renew licenses on those files. You'd need to play the file in a licensed app and re-record, or recover an unprotected backup.
Enter Start and Duration in HH:MM:SS.mmm form — e.g., 00:14:32.480 start with 00:00:08.250 duration extracts an 8.25-second clip beginning at 14m 32.480s. Use an audio editor with a waveform display first (Audacity, ocenaudio) to find the exact ms timestamps, then paste them in. Court-reportable clips usually need 250–500 ms of padding on each end so the speaker's first and last consonants aren't clipped.
.wma only playing in Windows Media Player?WMA decode support outside the Windows ecosystem is patchy. VLC and ffmpeg-based tools handle it on macOS and Linux, but native macOS Music, iOS Files, Android's default media player, most car stereos, and most smart speakers don't ship WMA decoders. If you need broad playback, cut the file as WMA and then convert with WMA to MP3, WMA to M4A, or WMA to WAV.
WMAv2 (Windows Media Audio 9.x and the standard backwards-compatible decoder since 2003). WMAv1 only matters if the playback target is genuinely ancient — pre-2001 PocketPC devices, some early MP3 players with WMA add-ons, or specialty industrial hardware. Every Windows version since XP, plus VLC and ffmpeg, decodes WMAv2 natively.
Each cut produces one clip per pass. To extract three highlights from a single meeting recording, run three cuts (each with its own Start + Duration) and export them as separate .wma files. If you need them stitched back into a single track, convert each piece to a common codec first via WMA to MP3 and join in any podcast editor or DAW (Audacity, Reaper) — there's no batch-region API in the cutter UI.
WMA stores ASF metadata objects (WM/AlbumTitle, WM/TrackNumber, WM/Year, WM/Picture for embedded art, etc.). These are copied from input to output when the cut path doesn't re-encode the audio stream. If you change codec or bitrate, the encoder re-writes the ASF header and most common tags survive, but unusual custom tags can be dropped — re-add them in MP3Tag or foobar2000 if you depend on them.
In xconvert's UI both terms refer to the same operation: pick a Start and a Duration (or End) and keep only that span. "Trim" usually implies cutting off material from the beginning and/or end ("trim the silence"); "cut" can also mean removing a middle segment, which is handled by exporting the two side pieces and re-joining them in a DAW. Some other tools split "trim" (lossless boundary) and "cut" (re-encode); xconvert's path picks the cheapest of the two automatically.
Cuts happen in your browser session — your .wma is processed locally, and files are deleted after the session ends. No account is required, no watermark is added, and there's no Pro tier gating WMA-specific features.