managed to solve my own problem! oh well, ill post the solution here in case otheres run into it.
To export audio from flash,
open a blank new FLA and then drag the audio from the old library into a new layer on the blank FLA.
Add enough frames to include the whole song, or whatever portion you want.
Then choose eport movie and choose to set the format type as WAV or AIF.
This dosent actually get me back to MP3 but i can get there from here.
thanks for your help tho.
john