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To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
cc: kent@erlang.ericsson.se
Subject: How to make FreeBSD output sound?
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Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 00:24:05 +0200
From: Kent Boortz <kent@erlang.ericsson.se>
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I have a portable with built in SoundBlaster Pro compatible (ESS)
sound card. Seems to work. I can do

  % cat somesound.au > /dev/audio

and it is output to the speaker.

But I can't find any documentation *how* to work with sound on FreeBSD.

	- Are there any other devices that I can use to play
	  sampled sound (not MIDI)? What file format?

	- How about different sample frequences? Do I need to
	  configure the device? If so, how?

I have a C program that works on a SparcStation that write small sound
samples to the "/dev/audio" with "write()". Problem is when I run it
under FreeBSD it don't output any sound directly when it is written.
It seem to buffer it for a while until it got some more data and then
output it to the speaker. To my knowledge "write()" is unbuffered (The
only call I could find that flushes a write on a file descriptor was
"fsync()" so I tried it just in case but it didn't help).

Do you know what is going on? Any pointers to documentation?

It may be the case that I lack the basic understanding on devices
and device configuration. Any pointers?

/kgb