Whether you want to share the real sound of your MIDI set-up with others or simply send Mom a CD of homemade Christmas music for the holidays, you will eventually find yourself looking for a way to convert your MIDI compositions into CD audio. There are a handful of converters available for this purpose to be found on the web, but perhaps the easiest to use of all is Winamp. After simple reconfiguration Winamp will allow you to easily convert your MIDI files to WAVs which can then be recorded directly onto an audio CD. Following are instructions for how to configure Winamp to do this.
Important Note: Winamp 3 will not convert MIDI to WAV. To convert MIDI to WAV you will need to get Winamp v2.91 by clicking the link below. Once you've downloaded and installed Winamp v2.91 return to this page.
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First download and install Winamp v2.91.. |
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Play with it a bit to learn how to open folders, select music files, crop your selection down to one or many files. If you have more than one file in the 'Playlist' box you will notice that Winamp will play them all one after the other. You can use this feature to convert a whole group of MIDI files at one time. |
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Make a new folder on your hard drive called something like "Music" to receive the output from Winamp. |
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Now you're ready to configure Winamp. Start Winamp and right-click the top bar to open a menu:  |
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Slide your mouse down to 'Options' and click 'Preferences':  |
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In the Preferences box under Plug-ins click 'Input', select 'Nullsoft MIDI player' and then click the 'Configure' button:  |
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When the Configuration box opens click the 'Device' tab and then select 'DirectMusic / Microsoft Synthesizer [with output]' in the dropdown Device list and click the 'OK' button:  |
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Return to the 'Preferences' box, select 'Output' from the Plug-ins list, 'Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in' in the Output plug-ins list and click 'Configure'.  |
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Click the 'Output Directory' button and navigate to the folder you made to receive Winamp's output.  Select your output folder in the 'Browse' box and then click the 'OK' button.  |
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Last, click the 'OK' on the 'Configuration' box and then the 'Close' button on the 'Preferences' box. Close Winamp and restart it. |
That's it. With this set-up you can now convert MIDIs to WAVs. You can move these new sounds to storage for use as system event sounds or, if you have a CD burner, assemble a group of them for use in creation of an audio CD.
One last thing: With this configuration every time you use Winamp to play a MIDI it will record a WAV which, if done mindlessly, will eat your hard drive alive. To disable the recording function return to 'Nullsoft MIDI player' configuration and select another device from the Device list on Device tab.
If you have more questions about this or other Winamp features check out the Winamp 2 Forums.
My thanks to peter, NeoRenegade, sawg, and DJEgg of the Winamp forum whose patient help turned on my bulb.