Play MP3 or WAV file via the Linux command line

Question

I would like to make an alarm system backed by a Ubuntu (no graphical interface) box, which plays various announcement and alarm audio tracks (.mp3 or .wav) via the command line.

For example:

$ root> audioplay ./hello.wav

The audio should come from the PC audio jack. I might also wrap it with another socket listener (for example, Ruby Sinatra).

How can I do this?

Just in case you're looking for example files: `/usr/share/sounds` is a good place to look for them. — Martin Thoma, Sep 16 '14 at 11:37

score 93 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 09 '11 at 12:10

93

The play command from the sox package will play any file format supported by sox using the default audio device, e.g

$ play something.mp3
$ play something.wav

You may need to install extra packages to gain support for all formats, for example on Ubuntu 11.04 the MP3 support is not available until you install libsox-fmt-mp3.

answered Jul 09 '11 at 12:10

1

it also supports ogg files (and probably others). – lepe Jun 03 '15 at 06:12
1

In Ubuntu Xenial, there is `libsox-fmt-all` package to install all formats. – Eugene Gr. Philippov Aug 06 '17 at 19:23
BTW, the `-v` option specify the volume, e.g `1` is normal, `0.5` is half, `2` is twice. – Eric Mar 15 '20 at 11:56

Maxim · Answer 2 · 2019-05-19T17:45:48.980

82

The most standard way to play a WAV file in Linux is using the aplay command, which is part of the ALSA system.

aplay [flags] [filename [filename]] ...

aplay a.wav

Links: (Wikipedia) (aplay man page)

(Both in Fedora and in Ubuntu/Mint it is part of the alsa-utils package)

This does not require any additional packages to your Linux installation like sox or mplayer or vlc, just the basic ALSA which is a part of any system nowadays.

edited May 19 '19 at 17:45

answered Nov 28 '12 at 06:20

Maxim

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Thanks for the tip! I added this alias to my shell config: alias beep="aplay --quiet /usr/share/sounds/pop.wav" . That way I can get a notification when long running commands finish. For example: compile && run && beep – Jesse Hallett Dec 06 '12 at 01:35
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Yes, Jesse! I do exactly the same with compiling (long file conversions, etc). I use sounds from here: ["Opilki sounds"](http://addons.miranda-im.org/details.php?action=viewfile&id=3379) (they are under the Creatve Commons license) forgive me this minor advertisement, i'm not related to the project in any way :) – Maxim Dec 07 '12 at 07:39
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Dead easy and already installed everywhere. +1 – Pitto Jul 26 '13 at 09:08
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Remember that you **can't** play an MP3 with `aplay`. You'll just get static. – starbeamrainbowlabs Jul 25 '16 at 20:03
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@starbeamrainbowlabs, i wrote about WAV files only ! – Maxim Aug 08 '16 at 02:01
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@Maxim I know! I just added that comment because I tried to play an mp3 :P – starbeamrainbowlabs Aug 08 '16 at 05:39
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This is a correct answer. yeah you can install too many CLI multimedia players buy why not use a built-in one. – pouya Apr 17 '20 at 11:50

score 58 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 09 '11 at 11:53

58

mpg123 is a command-line utility which plays mp3 files. You can install it in Ubuntu with:

sudo apt-get install mpg123

edited Jul 09 '11 at 11:53

Gaff

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answered Apr 27 '11 at 13:14

pavium

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This doesn't play wav files. – Cerin Jun 14 '17 at 03:31

score 26 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 05 '15 at 21:52

26

Install vlc by using:

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

Make sure that you have all repositories open. Also run the following before you install:

sudo apt-get update

VLC has a command-line operation method invoked by cvlc. The next part would be to write a .sh that will call the command. I am no good at writing bash scripts. The end-result would be something like:

cvlc xyz.mp3
cvlc --play-and-exit done.mp3

edited Nov 05 '15 at 21:52

Michael Cole

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answered Apr 28 '11 at 04:48

prometheuspk

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cvlc too slow to boot up? and need to run by a non-root user? – c2h2 May 09 '11 at 03:24
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`cvlc --play-and-exit done.mp3` if you don't want to ctrl-c it. – Michael Cole Nov 05 '15 at 20:23
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`cvlc --play-and-exit --no-loop done.mp3` . I need the extra option `--no-loop`, so that the sound file is not repeated over and over. (vlc 2.2.2, xubuntu 16.04.4) – loved.by.Jesus Apr 18 '18 at 08:46
note that vlc usually depends on qt5 and X on some distribution, but mpg123 depends on only alsa-lib. – recolic Oct 02 '19 at 18:25

score 12 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 27 '11 at 13:03

12

You can simply pipe your sound data to the pc speaker device:

cat rawsound | /dev/pcsp

answered Apr 27 '11 at 13:03

troelskn

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I very much doubt that is going to work with MP3 files. – Jul 09 '11 at 12:11
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It won't work with mp3 encoded sound of course, but it will work with raw wav data – troelskn Jul 18 '11 at 08:05
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I don't have the /dev/pcsp device. What else can I try? – trusktr Aug 31 '13 at 05:21
I get "cat: rawsound: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden" – Timo Apr 08 '15 at 07:04
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This is so beautifully simple. I love it. – bballdave025 Jul 08 '20 at 03:08

score 10 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:15

10

On Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), there is no need to install anything. You can play a sound using paplay [audio] with is part of the PulseAudio sound server:

paplay mysound.mp3

edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:15

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 08 '17 at 11:16

mxdsp

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I would think this works only if `paplay --list-file-formats` includes MP3 in the format list, which it does not on my machine (which, admittedly, is not Ubuntu). Does paplay ever really include MP3? – Peter Hansen Feb 12 '20 at 14:42
Correct. WAV seems to be on that list but not MP3. You might need to install proprietary codecs. On Ubuntu that would be `sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras`. – mxdsp Mar 09 '20 at 12:53

score 8 · Answer 7 · edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:11

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MPlayer is another player which can play pretty much any audio/video format from command line. To install it in Ubuntu just execute this command:

sudo apt-get install mplayer

You can then play the file using this syntax:

mplayer [path to file]

edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:11

Peter Mortensen

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answered Aug 20 '13 at 13:35

Ali Parsai

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score 6 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:52

6

I found another way:

FFmpeg is installed on my Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo)

So:

$ ffplay music.mp3

-nodisp
hide spectrum analyzer

-nostats
hide cursor/file information

-hide_banner
hide build information


Hide all (no output):

$ ffplay music.mp3 -nodisp -nostats -hide_banner

edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:52

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 07 '19 at 16:37

Gromish

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Is there a way to use the interactive commands with stdin and `-nodisp`? – Avrumy Dec 11 '20 at 04:10

score 1 · Answer 9 · edited Mar 07 '20 at 18:14

canberra-gtk-play

For simple Bash scripts MPlayer is probably a bit too heavy and too verbose in terms of output. A built-in option is canberra-gtk-play which comes preinstalled on Ubuntu:

canberra-gtk-play --file=/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/drip.ogg

Note: it uses the alerts volume, and you must pass --file= in order to play a file from a path.

It can also play a sound by id which represents the file name without extension of media files under /usr/share/sounds (apparently this only works for sounds that are registered as part of a sound theme):

canberra-gtk-play --id="desktop-login"

canberra-gtk-play --id="message"

gst-launch-1.0/gst-launch-0.10

Another option is using the gstreamer command-line tools which are present on most modern Linux boxes:

gst-launch-1.0 playbin uri=file:///usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/message.ogg

To suppress all output redirect it to /dev/null:

gst-launch-1.0 playbin uri=file:///usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/message.ogg > /dev/null 2>&1

Both gst-launch-1.0 and gst-launch-0.10 might be present on your system.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 11 '20 at 19:42

0

You can play all sound files (mp3, wav, ogg etc) via ffplay

ffplay -nodisp -autoexit ticktock.mp3

ffmpeg is very powerful and you can steam it to other sockets as well as sound cards.

answered Apr 11 '20 at 19:42

Ganesh Krishnan

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Play MP3 or WAV file via the Linux command line

10 Answers10

canberra-gtk-play

gst-launch-1.0/gst-launch-0.10

Linked