.flac? wtf? anyone know about these? music files, apparently...

[mindalina]

I've inadvertantly downloaded an album which has arrived as .flac files - had presumed they would be mp3 files but no. Why won't it work in windows media player? I've had a bit of a look on google and tried as per one suggestion to convert the files but am failing miserably and just want to listen to the damn album

Anyone know a way of making them work?

FLAC is "Free Lossless Audio Codec"

Download FLAC for Windows with installer. Run it to install (quick and simple) then run the program from the start menu, Drag the flac file in and click decode.

Other Versions in case anyone else needs it from this page

This one works too, but isn't free
Xilisoft Audio Converter

The site is very slow, but I got it from there just now to make sure it was the right thing. If you can't download it then post and I'll put it up somewhere.

You could install an audio player that works with FLAC files as well as mp3 (and windows media, and iTunes etc). The following are all excellent:

MediaMonkey
dbPowerAmp
WinAmp

Better still, the free versions of these include a trial version of (fairly cheap) paid-for versions which will let you convert your FLAC files to mp3 - much easier than FLAC for Windows.

Thanks for the advice. In the end I installed Winamp and it worked just fine