I want to be able to open these files in Cool Edit,?

My digital audio recorder creates only Windows Media Player (wma) files when I download its content to my pc. I want to be able to open these files in Cool Edit, but can't seem to get the file type requirement right. I tried saving the .wma file as a .wav, which is supposed to be ok for both app's, but when I opened it in Cool Edit, it's nothing but loud hiss. Thanks a lot~~