Play audio as microphone input

Question

Just as there are printer drivers that do not connect to a printer at all but rather write to a PDF file, analogously there are virtual audio drivers available that do not connect to a physical microphone at all but can pipe input from other sources such as files or other programs.

I hope I'm not breaking any rules by recommending free/donation software, but VB-Audio Virtual Cable should let you create a pair of virtual input and output audio devices. Then you could play an MP3 into the virtual output device and then set the virtual input device as your "microphone". In theory I think that should work.

If all else fails, you could always roll your own virtual audio driver. Microsoft provides some sample code but unfortunately it is not applicable to the older Windows XP audio model. There is probably sample code available for XP too.