Problems with "Import MIDI"

[f00dl3a]

New to the Audacity program but decided to give it a shot as I can't seem to find any way to convert some old DOS game MIDIs to WAV files for personal listening in the car.

I'm using Windows XP w/ a Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card.

First off, let me clear the fact that Audacity plays WAV files and MP3 files just fine on the speakers. The problem occurs when I import a MIDI file, it is unable to play back the audio. Additionally, whenever I export to WAV the resulting WAV file is only 44 bytes in size and when opened in a text editor displays just a file header as shown below.

RIFF$ WAVEfmt D¬ ˆX data

Any ideas on how to get this functioning properly?

[steve]

Audacity does not support playing MIDI files.
MIDI files do not contain "audio" - they are just a list of instructions that tell a synthesizer which notes to play. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_In ... _Interface

The only MIDI support that is currently implemented is displaying MIDI data. http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Tracks

To "Record" a MIDI file with Audacity you play the MIDI file in a MIDI player of some kind (for example Windows Media Player can play MIDI files) and then record the output into Audacity. There is a page about recording sounds that are playing on your computer here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recor ... e_computer

Alternatively, MIDI files can be rendered directly to audio using programs such as Timidity. See here for some suggestions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1185 ... v-mp3-in-c