Playing AUDIO FILES on Athena
There are three major types of audio file formats, and many less common
formats:
.au Sun Microsystem's AU
.aiff SGI/Macintosh AIFF
.wav Windows WAV
.hcom Macintosh HCOM
.raw Raw files (no header)
.ub, .sb, .uw, .sw, .ul Raw files of a given size/style
.sf IRCAM (CSound, MixView)
.voc Sound Blaster VOC
.smp Turtle Beach SampleVision
.mp2, .mp3 MPEG 1.0/2.0 Layer 1, 2, and 3
.ogg Ogg-Squish bitstream
To play MPEG audio files, use "mpg123":
athena% add infoagents
athena% mpg123 filename.mp3
For more information on "mpg123" type:
athena% man mpg123
You can also play Ogg, AIFF, AIFC, WAVE, or raw files on current
Athena and SIPB-Athena platforms with "ogg":
athena% add outland
athena% ogg play filename.ext
For more information on "ogg" type:
athena% ogg --help
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SGI only:
The SGI Indy's are capable of playing almost all of the above formats
with the "sfplay" program, and can convert to/from them with
"sfconvert", both of which are in the /usr/sbin directory. For more
information on these programs, just type:
athena% man sfplay
and
athena% man sfconvert
The "aifc2aiff" program can convert SGI AIFC format files to AIFF format, so
sounds recorded on the SGI can be used on a Sun.
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Sun only:
You can play an AU file with the "audioplay" program:
athena% audioplay filename.au
The "sox" program can convert a number of other formats into AU
format. Sox will try to guess the type of audio file you give it by
the filename extension. In the below example, it assumes that
"file.wav" is an Windows WAV file and proceeds accordingly to create a
Sun Microsystems AU file from that audio data:
athena% add audio
athena% sox filename.wav filename.au
For more information on "sox", you can type:
athena% add audio
athena% man sox
You may also attempt to play a WAV file by using the "soundtool"
program from the audio locker:
athena% add audio
athena% soundtool filename.wav
Last updated: 4/23/98
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