Playing sound files with OSS
============================

This is not a definitive guide for playing sound files. However the following
should be sufficient for testing OSS.

VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't use the "cat" or "dd" commands (or any generic file manipulation commands
to play sounds). They don't know how sound files should be played. The result
will almost certainly be very poor (white noise).

Command line utilities for playing common sound files are included in the
OSS package. More utilities are probaly included in your Linux/Unix
distribution. Also check http://www.opensound.com for info about usefull
applications.

Playing audio (.au, .wav, .snd, etc) files
------------------------------------------

The "play" program shipped with OSS can be used to play .au, .wav and few
frequently used audio file formats. Please note that most Linux distributions
also have a command called "play" which usually doesn't work. Make sure
you use the "play" program that is in the directory you installed OSS
(instead of /usr/bin/play).

Usage: play filename1 [filename2 [... filenameN]]

You can use xmms (from http://www.xmms.org) to play MP3 and MP3 files. xmms is
also included in many Linux distributions.

Playing MIDI (.mid) files
-------------------------

The "mplay" program that comes with OSS is designed for playing MIDI files.
mplay without any arguments shows a list of available playback devices.

Use mplay # filename to play a MIDI file. # is the device number to be used
for playback. For example "mplay 0 rock.mid".

NOTE! Most soundcards don't have hardware level MIDI playback (wave table)
capability. The external MIDI (MPU401) port doesn't produce any sound without
an external MIDI sound module connected to the MIDI (joystick) port or a
MIDI daughtercard placed on the "mother" soundcard. In these situations
you can use the SoftOSS driver to play MIDI using software wave table
emulation. Other alternative is using Timidity which probably gives better
sound quality than SoftOSS.