Fast Sound Player is a program to play sound (snd ) resources or sound files (AIFF, QuickTime, wave or AU format) on a Macintosh. It is designed to be small and fast and as a result does not provide a lot of frills.
To use the program drag a file to Fast Sound Player to select it. The program either plays the sound or gives an error message and once there are no more sounds to play the program quits.
More Help
Most of the text in this file is also available within the program by:
- selecting Fast Sound Player Help in the Help menu
- selecting About Fast Sound Player in the Apple menu then clicking the Help button.
Selecting a sound to play
If you drag one or more sound files to the Fast Sound Player icon the program will launch if necessary and start playing. Dragging to the Fast Sound Player window when the program is running will also play the sound.
If a file has Fast Sound Player as its creator double-clicking it will automatically pass the file to FastSoundPlay. See "Creating Fast Sound Player Files" below for more information on this.
Notes:
- Fast Sound Player keeps an internal queue of up to 10 sounds to play in the order they were dragged or clicked.
- If you drag multiple files at one time the order they play will be somewhat arbitrary.
- You can drag sounds and add them to the list while a sound is playing.
Stopping or switching files
Clicking the Next button stops the current sound playing and starts playing the next sound in the queue. If there are no sounds waiting to play but a sound was previously played the button name changes to Repeat. Clicking Repeat plays the last/current sound again from the beginning. Pressing the space bar has the same effect as Next or Repeat, whichever is currently shown.
Clicking the Stop Playing button stops the sound currently playing. Pressing the escape key or the command-period combination has the same effect as Stop. When a sound is stopped the button changes to Restart Play and clicking that starts playing the current sound again from the beginning.
Clicking the go-away box on the main dialog or selecting Quit from the File menu stops playing the current sound and exits Fast Sound Player.
Setting Fast Sound Player options
There are no easily accessible options but if you like playing with resources it is possible to change some of the timeouts used by the program.
Note: You should be comfortable using a resource editor like ResEdit before attempting the steps below and only work on a copy of Fast Sound Player.
1) Open the OPTS resource in Fast Sound Player.
2) The first two bytes of this resource indicate how long to delay (in seconds) before
quitting FastSoundPlay if there are no sounds to play.
3) The 3rd and 4th bytes of this resource indicate how long (in tenths of a second) to
display an error message if the sound won't play.
4) Close the OPTS resource and save the modified file.
Creating Fast Sound Player files
All data files on the Macintosh have a 4 character creator code that identifies which application to launch when the file is double clicked. If you give a sound file the creator code for Fast Sound Player (eAN5) you can avoid having to find Fast Sound Player in order to drag to it. Whether you prefer dragging or double clicking to play a sound is then a personal preference.
The program you use to create sound files may allow you to set the creator code or you can use one of a number of free or shareware programs to change the creator code of an existing file. It is not necessary to change the creator code of system sound files since the system plays these automatically when you double click them without any involvement by Fast Sound Player.
Types of sound files supported by Fast Sound Player
Sound resources (snd ) inside a file: 8 bit, 16 bit, 3 to 1, 6 to 1, A-law, mu-law, diff and IMA4* formats
AIFF/AIFC files: 8 bit, 16 bit, 3 to 1, 6 to 1, A-law, mu-law, diff and IMA4* formats
QuickTime files: 8 bit, 16 bit, 3 to 1, 6 to 1, A-law, mu-law and IMA4* formats
PC WAVE files: 8 bit, 16 bit*, A-law and mu-law formats
AU/ULAW files: 8 bit, 16 bit, A-law and mu-law formats
In order to play diff formatted sounds you will need to put the diff system extensions in your System Folder. If you are using a version of the Sound Manager previous to version 3.3 you will also need to put the ALaw extension in your System Folder. Copies of these extensions are included with this program. See the separate document "About Decompressors" for more information.
Fast Sound Player requires at least Sound Manager version 3.0. The formats marked * in the list above are only supported with Sound Manager version 3.2 or later.
What Fast Sound Player Won't Do
Fast Sound Player is designed to be small, launch quickly and impose very little overhead on your computer. To accomplish this some things had to be left out:
- There is no way to change the sound volume from within the program.
- It can not pause a sound during play.
- It can not find and play sounds within a folder or alias.
- It does not support some sound formats and file types.
- It does not deal very well with corrupted sound files and may crash.
- If you play a large sound file from floppy there may be breaks in the sound
- For QuickTime files the sound is played but the video, if any, is not displayed.
Legal Stuff
Fast Sound Player is distributed as is with no warranties expressed or implied about what it may or may not do on your computer. Although the author is interested in hearing about any problems you encounter and will attempt to fix them in future releases anyone using Fast Sound Player does so at their own risk. No warranty is given as to the suitability of Fast Sound Player for a given purpose and no liability will be assumed under any circumstances for damages incurred directly or indirectly from its use. If you are not prepared to accept those risks your only remedy is to not use Fast Sound Player.
This software is free in the sense that no payment is expected for it but Alex Newcombe (the author) reserves all rights to the software written by him.
Permission is NOT granted for modification of this program in any fashion without the prior written permission of Alex Newcombe. Any distribution of this software must include unmodified versions of this document, the Decompressors folder (About decompressors, Alaw and diff) and the FastSoundPlay program itself. You do not have permission to distribute a modified version or charge a fee for the use of this program.
