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.
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.
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 (
lee@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
).
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
.
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 (
titoivon@snakemail.hut.fi
).
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 (
laredo@gnu.ai.mit.edu
or
laredo@ix.netcom.com
).
It can be found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/playmidi-2.3.tgz
.
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.
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
(
Marc.Espie@ens.fr
).
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
.
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 (
jeske@uiuc.edu
), 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
.
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 (
robinson@cnj.digex.net
).
It can be found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/gmod+x-2.2.3.tgz
.
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 (
mech@df.lth.se
or
d91mn@efd.lth.se
).
It can be found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/mod-v0.81.tgz
.
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 (
perex@pf.jcu.cz
). pmod
also has it's own
mailing list (
pmod@pf.jcu.cz
), 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
.
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 (
mikmak@via.nl
). 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.
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 (
toru@jms.jeton.or.jp
).
It can be found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/nspmod-0.1.tar.gz
.
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 (
djg@djghome.demon.co.uk
).
It is available at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/yampmod-0.1.tar.gz
.
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.
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 (
bading@cs.tu-berlin.de
).
maplay
can be found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/maplay1_2.tar.gz
.
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.
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.
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
(
af1@irz.inf.tu-dresden.de
).
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
.
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 (
fishwj@ee.port.ac.uk
).
XWave can be found at
ftp://ftp.ee.port.ac.uk/pub/linux/sound/xwave0.01-1.tar.gz
.
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
.
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).