Audacity Forum

Thanks for the clarification.
The reason that you cannot find it in the manual is because Audacity cannot convert MIDI to MP3 or to any other audio format.
As has already been said, MIDI is not audio, so it cannot be directly converted into an audio format.

MIDI files are like "sheet music" for electronic instruments. They contain the information that tells a synthesizer which notes to play, when to play them and how loud to play them. The sound is then created by the synthesizer. To create audio (sound) from a MIDI file, the MIDI data must be "played". The exact sound that you get from a MIDI file depends on the synthesizer that it is being played on.

Windows Media Player has a built-in software synthesizer that it uses to play MIDI files. QuickTime player also has its own software synthesizer, and if you play the same MIDI file in each of these players the sound will be slightly different because they are using different synthesizers to play the sound.

Although MIDI cannot be "converted" into an audio format, it is possible to play the MIDI file in a media player that supports MIDI files (such as Windows Media Player) and then use Audacity to record the sound. There is a tutorial here for how to record sounds that are playing on your computer: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recor ... e_computer

A much more simple way is to use a program that can "play" the MIDI file through its own software synthesizer and "write" the audio directly to a file. That's what Timidity does.

You can do a google search on converting midi to mp3. Sometimes the software you have is not enough and you have to try a 3rd party. There are programs available to do this.

petguy wrote:You can do a google search on converting midi to mp3

MIDI is not audio.

"Converting" MIDI to audio is like "converting" a musical score into audio or "converting" a book into spoken words.

Anyone that says that MIDI can be converted into MP3 is either misleading you or conning you. There's no shortage of con men on the Internet.