The Linux Sound Playing HOWTO
 Yoo C. Chung, [email protected]
 v1.6, 11 August 1998

 This document lists applications for Linux that play various sound
 formats.


 1.  Introduction

 This is the Sound Playing HOWTO.  It lists the many sound formats and
 the applications that can be used to play them.  It also lists some
 hacks and advice on using these applications.  There are also some
 other interesting applications related to sound not directly related
 to playback.  However, this document does not describe how one can
 setup a Linux system for sound support.  Refer to the Linux Sound
 HOWTO by Jeff Tranter for instructions on setting up a Linux system
 for sound support and the supported sound hardware.

 This deals with normal user sound applications.  That is, it is only
 concerned about what the average user needs to know on the application
 side of sound, not exotic stuff like speech synthesis, or hardware
 stuff which is dealt in the Sound HOWTO.



 1.1.  Copyright of this document

 This document can be freely distributed and modified (I would
 appreciate it if I were notified of any modifications), as long as
 this copyright notice is preserved.  However, it cannot be placed
 under any further restrictions, and a modified document must have the
 same copyright as this one.  Also, credit must be given where due.



 1.2.  Copyright of the listed applications

 If there is no mention of any copyright, then the application is under
 the GNU General Public License.



 1.3.  Where to get this document

 The most recent official version of this document can be obtained from
 the Linux Documentation Project <http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/>.  The
 most recent unofficial version of this document can be obtained from
 <http://laplace.snu.ac.kr/~wacko/howto/>.

 A Korean version of this document (very outdated) is available at
 <http://laplace.snu.ac.kr/~wacko/howto/Sound-Playing-HOWTO.ks>.

 A Japanese version of this document is available at
 <http://jf.gee.kyoto-u.ac.jp/JF/JF-ftp/euc/Sound-Playing-HOWTO.euc>.



 1.4.  Feedback

 I am not omniscient, and I don't use all the applications in here (a
 few I can't even try), so there are bound to be mistakes.  Also,
 programs usually continuously evolve, so documentation tends to get
 out of date.  Therefore, if you find anything wrong, please send me
 any corrections.  Suggestions or additions to this document are
 welcome, too.
 1.5.  Acknowledgments

 All the authors of the applications in this HOWTO.  Also, Hannu
 Savolainen for the great sound driver and Linus Torvalds for the great
 underlying OS.

 I'd also like to thank Raymond Nijssen ([email protected]), Jeroen
 Rutten ([email protected]), Antonio Perez ([email protected]), Ian
 Jackson ([email protected]), and Peter Amstutz
 ([email protected]) for their information and help.



 2.  Playing Various Sound Formats

 There are many kinds of sound formats (WAV, MIDI, MPEG etc.).  Below,
 we list the various formats and the applications that can be used to
 play them.



 2.1.  MIDI

 MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Device Interface.  MIDI files
 usually have the extension .mid.  They contain sequencing information,
 that is, information on when to play what instrument in what way, etc.
 Depending on your hardware (and maybe the software you use to play
 them), the sound might be awesome, or it might be downright crappy.



 2.1.1.  adagio

 This package includes mp (a command-line MIDI file player) and xmp (an
 XView based MIDI file player, not to be confused with the module
 player also called xmp).  You will need the SlingShot extensions to
 use xmp.  It also contains other programs for playing Adagio scores.


 If you have a GUS, mp can also play MOD files (see section ``Modules''
 for more information on modules).

 One little annoying bug (as of version 0.5 on some hardware) is that
 the sound breaks at the end.  Namely, instead of ending the sound the
 way the MIDI file specifies, it ends by playing the note right before
 the last one in a long interval.  It hasn't stopped me from using mp,
 but it might prevent someone from using it for `real' work.  It also
 starts up relatively slowly.

 The package does not mention any copyright (at least none that I can
 find), so I assume it can be freely redistributed and modified.  (By a
 strict interpretation of copyright law, nothing gives one the right to
 do these things, but I somehow doubt that this was the intention of
 the author.)

 It is a port of the CMU MIDI Toolkit to Linux (though there was enough
 added to make this questionable) by Greg Lee
 ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/sound/adagio05.tar.gz>.  The
 binaries included here are in a.out format (linked with ancient
 libraries), and the xmp binary segfaults in a X11R6 environment
 (XFree86 3.1.1, libc 4.7.2).  The mp binary works fine in an a.out
 environment.

 You will need a bit of hackery to compile it.  Actually, it's not much
 of a hackery.  All you have to do is to include the -lfl switch at the
 end of SHROBJ and XMPOBJ in the Makefile.  This is to link in the flex
 library, which is not linked in by default.  Then follow the
 installation instructions.  And don't forget to have XView and the
 SlingShot extensions installed if you want to compile xmp.



 2.1.2.  TiMidity

 Some people recommend this experimental program because of good sound
 quality (which is very true, it's much better than mp on a Sound
 Blaster 16, though it probably won't be much different on soundcards
 with wavetable synthesis like the GUS).  However, it suffers from high
 CPU loads.  It plays MIDI by first converting MIDI to WAV and then
 plays the WAV (you can also convert a MIDI file to a WAV file without
 playing if you want).  This is the reason for its CPU intensive
 nature.

 It also has an optional ncurses, SLang, Tcl/Tk or Motif interface.

 You need Gravis Ultrasound patch files to use this.  Look into the FAQ
 included with TiMidity for more information.

 The author is Tuukka Toivonen ([email protected]).

 The latest version of TiMidity can be found at the TiMidity home page
 <http://www.cgs.fi/~tt/timidity/>.  This page also contains a link to
 a small library of GUS patches.



 2.1.3.  playmidi

 This is a MIDI player that plays to FM, GUS, and external MIDI.  It is
 supposed to have a faster startup time compared to other MIDI players.
 It is also able to play Creative Music Files, Microsoft RIFF files,
 and large MIDI archives from games such as Ultima 7.

 It has an X interface and a SVGA interface.  It also has an option for
 real time playback with tracking all the notes on each channel and the
 current playback clock (included automatically with xplaymidi and
 splaymidi).

 You should do something like



      $ splaymidi foo.mid; stty sane



 if you are going to use the SVGA interface, since it doesn't reset the
 terminal tty mode properly.  The SVGA interface may be removed in the
 near future.

 It was written by Nathan Laredo ([email protected] or
 [email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/playmidi-2.3.tar.gz>.


 2.2.  Modules

 Modules (in computer music) are digital music files, made up of a set
 of samples and sequencing information, telling the player when to play
 which sample (instrument) on which track at what pitch, optionally
 performing an effect, like vibrato for example.

 An advantage it has over MIDI is that it can include almost any kind
 of sound (including human voices).  Another is that it sounds just
 about the same on any platform, because the samples are in the module.
 A disadvantage it has is that it has a much larger file size compared
 to MIDI.  Another one is that it has no real standard format (the only
 `real' one is the ProTracker, which many modules aren't quite
 compatible with).  It originated on the Amiga.

 The most common format has the extension .mod.  There are many other
 extensions depending on what format they are in.



 2.2.1.  tracker

 This very portable program (it has been ported to many platforms)
 plays Soundtracker and Protracker music modules.  It uses 16 bit
 stereo output, and I consider the quality to be very good.  If you
 need a simple way to reduce CPU load use the -mono option.

 This is a giftware program (quoting the author).  It is by Marc Espie
 ([email protected]).

 A version of this with the Makefile already tweaked for Linux can be
 obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/tracker-4.3-linux.tar.gz>.



 2.2.2.  gmod

 This is a music module player for the Gravis Ultrasound card.  4/6/8
 channel MOD, 8 channel 669, MultiTracker (MTM), UltraTracker (ULT),
 FastTracker (XM), and ScreamTracker III (S3M) are the supported
 formats.

 It requires a version 3.0 or later sound driver.  And a GUS, of
 course.  You may need to modify the kernel to make volume control work
 the way you want.

 This has an X interface.  It uses the QT toolkit (needs version 0.99
 or greater).  Check the QT toolkit homepage <http://www.troll.no/> for
 information on QT.

 This can be freely distributed.  It was originally written by Hannu
 Savolainen, and now maintained by Andrew J. Robinson
 ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/gmod-3.1.tar.gz>.



 2.2.3.  MikMod

 This portable module player plays XM, ULT, STM, S3M, MTM, MOD and UNI
 formats.  (The UNI format is an internal format used by MikMod.)  It
 has support for zipped module files.  It uses 16 bit stereo for the
 sound output.  Use the -m option (for mono output) if you need a
 simple way to lower the CPU load.

 The Unix version can either use ncurses or Tcl/Tk for its interface.
 It can also be used as a library, not just an independent program.

 It was originally written by Jean-Paul Mikkers ([email protected]).  It is
 now maintained by Jake Stine ([email protected]).  This is shareware
 that has to be registered if you want to use it commercially.  You
 also need permission to redistribute it commercially (non-commercial
 redistribution does not need such permission).

 This can be found at the MikMod home page
 <http://www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~amstpi/mikmod.html>.



 2.2.4.  xmp

 This is a module player (not to be confused with Adagio's xmp) which
 can play MOD, S3M, MTM, PTM, PTR, STM, 669, and XM modules (other
 formats are also supported, but still experimental or incomplete).  If
 you have soundcards with wavetable synthesis (GUS or SoundBlaster
 32AWE), then you can use this feature of the soundcard to lower the
 load on the CPU.  It also supports compressed modules.

 An X frontend to xmp is also available.

 This was written by Claudio Matsuoka ([email protected]) and
 Hipolito Carraro Jr.

 This can found at the xmp home page <http://xmp.home.ml.org/>.



 2.2.5.  s3mod

 This plays 4/6/8 track MOD modules and Scream Tracker 3 modules.  It
 uses 8 bit mono output with a sampling rate of 22000 Hz by default.
 You can use the option -s to enable stereo, -b to enable 16 bit
 output, and -f to set the sampling frequency.  However, the sound
 output is worse than tracker (some noise), so I recommend using
 tracker instead of s3mod for playing ordinary MOD files (unless you
 have an underpowered machine).  It has a much smaller CPU load
 compared to tracker.

 It is copyrighted by Daniel Marks and David Jeske ([email protected]),
 but you can do anything you want with it (except that you can't claim
 you wrote it).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/s3mod-
 v1.09.tar.gz>.



 2.2.6.  mod

 This beta program plays MODs (15/31-instrument, up to 32 voices),
 MTMs, ULTs and S3Ms on the Gravis Ultrasound card.  It can also use
 packed modules if you have gzip, lharc, unzip, and unarj installed.
 It cannot play Powerpacked modules or modules packed with some Amiga
 composers ("PACK" signature).

 This requires at least version 3.0 of the sound driver.  It won't work
 with the 2.90-2 or earlier version of the sound driver.  The text
 interface requires ncurses.  There is also an X interface included,
 which uses Tcl/Tk.

 It was written by Mikael Nordqvist ([email protected] or
 [email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/mod-v0.81.tgz>.



 2.2.7.  nspmod

 This is an alpha module player which can play MTM, S3M, and MOD
 modules.  It is intended to be a module player for soundcards without
 a DSP (not to be confused with what Creative Labs calls a DSP).  It
 has a CPU load somewhat similar compared to tracker.


 It has a feature which lets modules loop if they want to.  The number
 of loops can be limited by the -l option.  It uses only 8 bit sound
 output (as of version 0.1).

 This was written by Toru Egashira ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/nspmod-0.1.tar.gz>.



 2.2.8.  yampmod

 This alpha program was designed to play 4-channel modules using the
 minimum of CPU resources.  It was not designed to produce high quality
 sound.  So the only sound output it produces is 22 kHz mono output.
 Also, the output isn't as clean as it should be, reflecting its alpha
 status.

 It was written by David Groves ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/yampmod-0.1.tar.gz>.



 2.3.  MPEG audio streams

 MPEG is a standard specifying the coding of video and the associated
 audio for digital storage.  MPEG is usually associated with video, but
 the audio part of the standard can be used separately.  The audio part
 of the MPEG standard defines three layers, layer I, II, and III.
 Players that can decode higher layers can also decode lower layers
 (e.g. layer III players can play layer II files).  Layer I MPEG audio
 files usually have the extension .mpg (so if there is a file with this
 extension that can't be played by a MPEG video player, it's probably
 an audio stream), layer II usually have the extension .mp2, and layer
 III usually have the extension .mp3.  The audio compression is pretty
 good.  A two megabyte layer II MPEG audio file will probably take up
 25 megabytes for a raw PCM sample file with the same quality.



 2.3.1.  mpg123

 This beta program is an efficient MPEG audio stream player, which has
 support for layers I, II, and III.  It is based on code from many
 sources.  It is able to play in real time streams that are read by
 HTTP (i.e. one can play an MPEG audio stream directly over the World
 Wide Web).

 The main author is Michael Hipp ([email protected]
 tuebingen.de).  It may be used and distributed in unmodified form
 freely for non-commercial purposes.  Inclusion in a collection of free
 software (such as CD-ROM images of FTP servers) is explicitly allowed.

 The latest version can be obtained from the mpg123 homepage
 <http://mpg.123.org/>.



 2.3.2.  maplay 1.2

 This MPEG audio stream player only has support for layer I and layer
 II streams, and lacks support for layer III streams.  It supports 16
 bit sound cards on Linux.

 It is pretty CPU intensive, taking up to about 55% CPU time on a 60MHz
 Pentium.  The output is intolerable on a 66MHz 486 because the CPU
 just can't catch up with the sound.  If this happens to you, try
 playing only one side of the audio stream (with the -l or -r option),
 instead of the default stereo.

 A slight change in one of the files may be necessary in order to
 compile it.  Namely, you may need to add the following line to the
 beginning of the file configuration.sh.



      #! /bin/sh



 The author is Tobias Bading ([email protected]).  maplay 1.2 can
 be obtained from  <ftp://ftp.cs.tu-
 berlin.de/pub/misc/maplay1.2/maplay1_2.tar>.



 2.3.3.  maplay 1.3b

 This is an unofficial modification (i.e. not by the original author)
 of maplay 1.2, so that it can run with a much lower load on the CPU.
 It accomplishes this mainly by making u-law output actually work on
 other platforms besides the SPARC.  Note that it uses u-law output by
 default, so the sound quality is lower.

 The modifications were made by Orlando Andico
 ([email protected]).

 This can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/maplay-1.3b-
 Linux.tar.gz>.



 2.3.4.  maplay3

 This is another derivative of maplay 1.2.  It adds support for MPEG
 Layer 3 audio streams.  Currently it seems to have some bugs in its
 playback (you may hear some screeching noises).  You may have to
 twiddle with the options to solve this.
 The modifications were made by Timo Jantunen ([email protected] or
 [email protected]).  It says that it can be used freely, but making money
 off of it is not allowed.  However, I'm not entirely sure about the
 validity of this copyright, since the original maplay is under the GNU
 General Public License, which does not allow derivative works to have
 a different copyright.

 This can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/maplay3.tar.gz>.



 2.3.5.  splay

 This beta player is another derivative of maplay 1.2 (actually, it is
 a derivative of maplay 1.2+, which is a MS Windows only derivative of
 maplay 1.2).  It adds support for MPEG Layer 3 audio streams.  It is
 also able to play WAV files.  It can also play audio streams received
 over an HTTP connection.

 Another feature of splay is that it can be used as a library (under
 the LGPL), so that it can be used in other programs.  It also tries to
 improve performance by using threading (you need pthread to use this
 feature) and a little inline assembly.

 splay uses a command line interface and an optional X interface (which
 uses QT).

 If after compiling it doesn't work (e.g. it segmentation faults), try
 compiling it again without threading.

 This is by Jung Woo-jae ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from splay's home page
 <http://adam.kaist.ac.kr/~jwj95/>.



 2.3.6.  Sajber Jukebox

 This program is a MPEG audio player with a graphical user interface.
 It is based on splay, so it includes support for MPEG audio layers up
 to III.  It is also able to play MPEG audio streams in real time with
 the stream being fed by HTTP.  It is also easy to configure.

 It uses the QT toolkit (at least version 1.2 is required).  It also
 uses the LinuxThreads library (the included binary only works with
 version 0.5).

 The author is Joel Lindholm ([email protected]).

 The latest version can be obtained from
 <ftp://kewl.campus.luth.se/pub/jukebox>.



 2.3.7.  amp

 This beta MPEG audio player only has support for MPEG Layer 3 audio
 streams.  It is able to play directly to the soundcard, and it can
 output to raw PCM or WAV files.  This also gives quite a load on the
 CPU (about 60% on a 133MHz Pentium).

 This was written by Tomislav Uzelac ([email protected]).  It can be
 freely used and distributed, as long as it is not sold commercially
 without permission (including it in CD-ROMs that contain free software
 is explicitly permitted, though).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://ftp.rasip.fer.hr/pub/mpeg/amp-0.7.3.tgz>.



 2.3.8.  XAudio

 This alpha library was written to be a fast implementation of an MPEG
 audio decoding library to be used by various GUI front-ends.  It
 supports MPEG audio layers I, II, and III.  It is capable of random
 access to bitstreams.  A command-line interface is included.  A Motif
 (Lesstif) front-end is also included in the Linux version.

 This is by Gilles Boccon-Gibod, Alain Jobart and others.  The front-
 ends to the libary can be freely downloaded.  The library itself must
 be licensed to be used (a source and binary license is available).

 The front-ends to the library can be obtained from the XAudio home
 page <http://www.xaudio.com/>.



 2.3.9.  Layer 3 Shareware Encoder/Decoder

 This is actually a converter that converts MPEG Layer 3 audio streams
 to WAV, AIFF, SND, AIFC, or just raw PCM sample files.  The Linux
 version does not directly output the sound to the soundcard.  One has
 to first convert it to some other format.

 However, when you try to play a converted file using sox, you'll
 probably just get noise because the word order in the PCM samples is
 not right (at least on Intel platforms).  You need to give sox the
 option -x to solve this problem.  But there are some players that
 don't have to be told that the word order is wrong, so you might not
 have to worry about this.

 If you have a really fast computer (probably at least a 100Mhz
 Pentium), then you can try to play MPEG Layer 3 streams directly
 without having to first convert the audio file to another format like
 in the following example (this example assumes that you're using sox
 and playing a 44.1 kHz stereo sample).



      $ l3dec foo.mp3 -sto | play -t raw -x -u -w -c 2 -r 44100 -



 The number after -r is the sample rate of the audio stream, and the
 number after -c depends on whether it is mono or stereo (or even
 quad).  If this looks too complicated, you can use something like a
 shell script or an alias.

 This is shareware copyrighted by Fraunhofer-IIS.  A demo version for
 Linux on x86 systems can be obtained from
 <ftp://ftp.fhg.de/pub/layer3>.  The demo version only converts layer
 III audio streams.



 2.3.10.  X11Amp

 This beta software is an MPEG audio stream player with a graphical
 interface,  similar to the one used by the Windows program winamp.

 There is no copyright mentioned anywhere (I assume that it can be
 freely used for personal use).  It is maintained by Mikael Alm
 ([email protected]), Thomas Nilsson ([email protected]), and Olle
 Hallnas ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from X11Amp's homepage <http://www.x11amp.bz.nu/>.
 Only binaries for Intel Linux and FreeBSD are made available here.


 2.4.  WAV

 Quote from the sox man page:


      These appear to be very similar to IFF files, but not the
      same.  They are the native sound file format of Windows 3.1.
      Obviously, Windows 3.1 is of such incredible importance to
      the computer industry that it just had to have its own sound
      file format.


 These usually have the extension .wav.

 Also see section ``sox'' and ``bplay'' for other WAV players besides
 the ones listed here.



 2.4.1.  wavplay

 This program supports playing and recording with the WAV format.  It
 uses locking so that only one sound may be played at a time.  Its
 locking capabilities can also be used separately from its sound
 playing capabilities.

 In addition to a command-line interface, it also has a Motif
 interface, which can be used with Lesstif.

 It was originally written by Andre Fuechsel ([email protected]
 dresden.de), but was evolved to the point of being completely
 rewritten by Warren W. Gay ([email protected] or
 [email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/wavplay-1.0.tar.gz>.



 2.5.  Other stuff

 This section lists stuff that play sound formats that don't deserve a
 separate section (i.e. formats that have only one player available),
 or players that play more than one format.



 2.5.1.  sox

 This program is actually a converter, that is, it converts one sound
 format to another.  However, some versions of sox, when invoked as
 play, plays the sound (the play application in the Sound HOWTO
 probably refers to this).  It supports raw (no header) binary and
 textual data, IRCAM Sound Files, Sound Blaster .voc, SPARC .au
 (w/header), Mac HCOM, PC/DOS .sou, Sndtool, and Sounder, NeXT .snd,
 Windows 3.1 RIFF/WAV, Turtle Beach .smp, CD-R, and Apple/SGI AIFF and
 8SVX formats


 Since somewhere in the 1.3.6x kernels, you might have to make a small
 change in one file to make it play the sound directly.  Namely, you
 may have to change line 179 in sbdsp.c from



      if (abuf_size < 4096 || abuf_size > 65536) {



 to



      if (abuf_size < 1 || abuf_size > 65536) {



 But then again, you may not have to do this.  But doing this won't
 break anything.


 It is written and copyrighted by many people, and can be used for any
 purpose.

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/convert/Lsox-
 linux.tar.gz>.

 A more recent version by Chris Bagwell ([email protected]) (based
 on the latest gamma version of the original sox, and includes the
 above fix) can be obtained from
 <http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/cbagwell/projects.html>.  In
 addition, this version supports MS ADPCM and IMA ADPCM WAV formats.



 2.5.2.  bplay

 This beta program plays raw audio, WAV, and VOC files.  It's also able
 to record to these files.  It uses a variety of techniques to get the
 highest speed possible so that it can run acceptably even on slow
 machines.  One of these techniques require that the installed programs
 be setuid root.  The paranoid hoping to use this may want to use the
 Debian package by Ian Jackson ([email protected]), which disables the
 feature that needs the setuid bit.

 The author is David Monro ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/bplay-0.96.tar.gz>.



 2.5.3.  SIDPLAY

 This program emulates the Sound Interface Device chip (MOS 6581,
 commonly called SID) and the Micro Processor Unit (MOS 6510) of the
 Commodore 64.  Therefore it is able to load and execute C64 machine
 code programs which produce music or sound.  In general these are
 independent fragments of code and data which have been ripped from
 games and demonstration programs and have been transferred directly
 from the C64.

 It uses a command line interface by default.  There are also Tk and QT
 interfaces available separately from the main package.

 It is maintained by Michael Schwendt ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from SIDPLAY's home page
 <http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5147/>.



 2.5.4.  RealAudio Player

 This lets you listen to sound, which is stored in a proprietary
 format, in real time over the Internet without downloading the whole
 sound file first.  It could be used stand alone, but it is really
 intended to be used along with a web browser (the explicitly supported
 ones are Mosaic and Netscape).  It cannot be used without X (you
 wouldn't be able to get it working with Lynx in a text console).

 However, there exists a hack which allows one to run the RealAudio
 player from the text console.  It requires the X virtual frame buffer
 (Xvfb) server to work.  This hack can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/traplayer-0.5.tar.gz>.

 This is by Progressive Networks, Inc.  This cannot be redistributed,
 modified etc.  Look at the license for exact details on what you can
 do.  It can be obtained by registering with no cost at the RealAudio
 home page <http://www.realaudio.com/>.



 2.5.5.  cat

 One might think what cat, the sometimes overused concatenating
 utility, has to do with playing sounds.  I'll show a use of it through
 an example.



      $ cat sample.voc > /dev/dsp
      $ cat sample.wav > /dev/dsp
      $ cat sample.au > /dev/audio



 Doing a cat of an .au file to /dev/audio will usually work, and if
 you're lucky enough that the file has the correct byte order (for your
 platform) etc., a cat of a sound file that uses PCM samples (like .wav
 or .voc) to /dev/dsp might even sound right.

 This isn't a totally useless use of cat.  It might be useful, for
 example, if you have a sound file that none of your programs
 recognize, and you know that it uses PCM samples, then you might be
 able to get a very approximate idea on how it sounds like this way (if
 you're lucky).



 3.  Other useful sound utilities

 This section has nothing to do with the actual playing of sound files.
 Rather, it is a collection of some sound utilities that one might find
 useful.


 3.1.  volume

 This is a simple command line interface for controlling the volume
 (what else could it be?).  It also has a separate program with a
 Tcl/Tk interface included in the package for controlling the volume
 and playing .au sound files.  A very simple Tcl/Tk CD player is also
 included.

 This is Freeware and it is written by Sam Lantinga
 ([email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/soundcard/volume-2.1.tar.gz>.



 3.2.  Sound Studio

 This is a Tcl/Tk application that supports playback, recording, and
 editing of digital sound using sox.  It includes sox in the
 distribution to avoid compatibility problems.

 This was written by Paul Sharpe and N. J. Bailey
 ([email protected]).  It may be freely used and redistributed if
 a postcard is sent.


 It can be found at Sound Studio's home page <http://www.elec-
 eng.leeds.ac.uk/staff/een6njb/Software/Studio/screens.html>.



 3.3.  Tickle Music

 This beta Tcl/Tk program is a music file browser that allows you to
 play various sound formats as long as an appropriate program to play
 it is on your system.  By default gmod is used for playing MOD files
 and mp for playing MIDI files (you can change the source to use other
 programs).

 It is written and copyrighted by Shannon Hendrix ([email protected]
 or [email protected]).

 It can be obtained from
 <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/tmusic-1.0.tar.gz>.



 4.  References


 1. The documentation included with the applications in this document.

 2. The Linux Sound HOWTO.  It can be found at the Linux Documentation
    Project <http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/>.
 3. Linux MIDI and Sound Applications
    <http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linux_soundapps.html>

 4. Programmer's Guide to OSS <http://www.4front-tech.com/pguide/>

 5. SoX home page <http://www.spies.com/Sox/>

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