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  The Linux Sound Playing HOWTO
  Yoo C. Chung, [e-mail]
  v1.1, 18 May 1996

  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

  You can find the most recent version of this document on the World
  Wide Web at http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~wacko/howto/Sound-Playing-
  HOWTO.html.  This document can also be obtained from the Linux
  Documentation Project <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html>, albeit
  it might possibly be out of date by a few weeks.

  A Korean version of this document (rather outdated) is available at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

  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  out of date.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.

  Raymond Nijssen ([e-mail]) and Jeroen Rutten
  ([e-mail]) for information and help on Layer 3 Shareware
  Encoder/Decoder.

  Antonio Perez ([e-mail]) for information on MikMod.

  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.  The adagio package

  This package includes mp (a command-line MIDI file player) and xmp (an
  XView based MIDI file player). You will need the SlingShot extensions
  to use xmp. It also contains other programs for playing Adagio scores
  (I don't know much about this).

  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) 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. Don't
  hold me to my word, though.

  It is a port of the CMU MIDI Toolkit to Linux (well, there was enough
  added to make this questionable) by Greg Lee
  ([e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/adagio05.tgz. 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.

  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 probably won't be much different on a 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, or Motif interface. As far as
  I know, a statically linked timidity binay with the Motif interface is
  not available.

  You need Gravis Ultrasound patch files to use this. A small collection
  of GUS patch files can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/timidity-lib-0.1.tar.gz.
  You'll want to find much more if you want to properly use timidity.
  Look into the FAQ included with timidity for more information.
  timidity itself can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu//pub/Linux/apps/sound/timidity-0.2h.tgz.

  It is written by Tuukka Toivonen ([e-mail]).

  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 (CMF), Microsoft RIFF
  (RMI) files, and large MIDI archives from games such as Ultima 7.

  It has an X interface and also 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 is written by Nathan Laredo ([e-mail] or
  [e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/playmidi-2.3.tgz.

  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.

  They usually have 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. Use the -mono
  option if you need a simple way to reduce CPU load.

  This is a giftware program (quoting the author). It is by Marc Espie
  ([e-mail]).

  A version of this with the Makefile already tweaked for Linux is at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/tracker-4.3-linux.tar.gz.

  2.2.2.  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 ([e-mail]),
  but you can do anything you want with it (except that you can't claim
  you wrote it).

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/apps/sound/players/s3mod-v1.09.tar.gz.

  2.2.3.  gmod

  This is a music module player for the Gravis Ultrasound card. 4/6/8
  channel MOD, 669, MultiTracker, UltraTracker, and S3M are the
  supported formats.

  It requires version 2.90-2 or later sound driver. And a GUS, of
  course. You may have to modify the kernel a little to make volume
  control work as you like.

  This has an X interface. You need libfwf (which can be obtained from
  ftp://ftp.let.rug.nl/pub/FWF in source form, or from
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/devel for a shared ELF library) in
  addition to a reasonable X installation.

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

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/gmod+x-2.2.3.tgz.

  2.2.4.  mod

  This beta program plays MODs (15/31-instrument, up to 32 voices),
  MTMs, ULTs and S3Ms on the Gravis Ultrasound card. It has an ncurses
  interface. 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 version of the sound driver included in the 1.2.x
  kernels.

  The text interface requires ncurses. There is also an X interface
  included, which uses Tcl/Tk.

  It is written by Mikael Nordqvist ([e-mail] or
  [e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/mod-v0.81.tgz.

  2.2.5.  pmod

  pmod plays XM, S3M, MTM, MOD, and 669 modules on the Gravis Ultrasound
  card. It uses its own beta sound driver that comes with it. It claims
  that you can play modules and play the Linux version of Doom at the
  same time if you have a GUS MAX.

  It has a text interface that uses ncurses.

  The author is Jaroslav Kysela ([e-mail]). pmod also has it's
  own mailing list ([e-mail]), which I think is the preferred
  place to ask questions about pmod.

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/pgmod-1.25e.tgz.

  2.2.6.  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
  uses 16 bit stereo for the sound output. Use the -m option (for mono
  output) if you need to lower the CPU load.

  It was written by Jean-Paul Mikkers ([e-mail]). 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 is does not need such permission).
  It can be found somewhere below /pub/demos/ at ftp.cdrom.com or
  somewhere below /pub/msdos/programming/ at teeri.oulu.fi. Or you could
  get it from the author's homepage
  <http://www.stack.urc.tue.nl/~mikmak/welcome.htm>.

  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 ([e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  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, reflectng its alpha
  status.

  It was written by David Groves ([e-mail]).

  It is available at
  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 .mp2, and layer III usually
  have .mp3. The files are usually rather large compared to other
  formats, but the quality is very 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.  maplay

  This MPEG audio stream player only has support for layer I and layer
  II streams. It lacks support for layer III as of version 1.2. It
  supports 16 bit sound cards on Linux (though some 16 bit sound cards
  are rumored not to work with maplay).
  It is very 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 ([e-mail]).

  maplay can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/maplay1_2.tar.gz.

  2.3.2.  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 90Mhz
  Pentium), then you can try to play it directly without having to first
  convert the MPEG audio file to another format like in the following
  example (this example assumes that you're using sox).

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

  Of course, the number after -r should be 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 is
  available at ftp://ftp.fhg.de/pub/layer3/l3v200.linux.tar.gz. The demo
  version only converts layer III audio streams.

  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'' for another WAV player besides the ones
  listed here.

  2.4.1.  wavplay

  This unfinished program has a command line interface and an X Window
  interface for playing and recording in WAV format.

  Copyright is not explicitly mentioned. It is by Andre Fuechsel
  ([e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/wavplay021.tar.z.
  A patch for systems with sound drivers higher than 2.0 (which means
  almost all systems these days) is available at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/wavplay021_patch.tar.gz.

  2.4.2.  XWave

  This program is based on wavplay. It too has an X Window interface for
  playing and recording in WAV format. However, it also has some editing
  capabilities and can add effects.

  This is still in a rather buggy stage, so the author would appreciate
  any bug reports, bugfixes, or new code.

  This is registered freeware, in other words you can freely
  redistribute it as long as you register it by sending the author a
  color picture postcard. But it's OK to use it unregistered, as long as
  you don't get caught???

  The author is Will Fish ([e-mail]).

  XWave can be found at
  ftp://ftp.ee.port.ac.uk/pub/linux/sound/xwave0.01-1.tar.gz.

  2.5.  Other stuff

  2.5.1.  sox

  This program is actually a converter, that is, it converts one sound
  format to another. When invoked as play, however, it 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 (a lot of these
  formats I have no experience with, I just took it from the man page).

  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 might 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 found at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/sound/convert/Lsox-
  linux.tar.gz.

  2.5.2.  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.

  It is very useful for people who don't have hardware volume control,
  don't want to pump in extra electricity for the external amplifiers
  (which might degrade the sound output, unless you have a good one),
  don't have much need for really loud sounds, and want a convenient
  command line interface (I'm a command line geek) for controlling the
  volume.

  This is Freeware and it is written by Sam Lantinga
  ([e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/volume-1.1.tgz.

  3.2.  setmixer

  This is a command line mixer control program.

  The author is Michal Jaegermann ([e-mail]).

  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
  another program).

  It is written and copyrighted by Shannon Hendrix ([e-mail]
  or [e-mail]).

  It can be found at
  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 is available from the Linux Documentation
     Project <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html>.

  3. The Linux MIDI and Sound Pages <http://www.digiserve.com/ar/linux-
     snd/>

  4. alt.binaries.sounds.mods FAQ

  5. MPEG Audio Layer 3 FAQ
     <http://www.iis.fhg.de/departs/amm/layer3/sw/index.html>