audio-playback

name	audio-playback
description	Play audio files (MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, M4A) on Linux using available command-line tools such as aplay, ffplay, mpg123, or cvlc. Use this skill whenever the user wants to listen to, play back, or preview an audio file.
homepage	https://www.ffmpeg.org/ffplay.html
metadata	{"nanobot":{"emoji":"🔊","os":["linux"],"requires":{"bins":"[Truncated]"},"install":["[Truncated]","[Truncated]"]}}

Audio Playback

Play audio files from the command line. Automatically selects the best available player.

Supported Formats

MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, M4A, AAC, WMA, OPUS, and any format supported by the underlying tool.

Tool Priority

Try tools in this order and use the first one found:

1. ffplay (part of ffmpeg) — universal, handles all formats
2. mpg123 — lightweight, great for MP3
3. aplay — ALSA player, best for WAV/PCM
4. cvlc — VLC headless mode, very broad format support

Usage

Check available player

for cmd in ffplay mpg123 aplay cvlc; do command -v "$cmd" && break; done

Play a file (silent/non-interactive)

# ffplay (suppress GUI and verbose output)
ffplay -nodisp -autoexit -loglevel quiet /path/to/file.mp3

# mpg123
mpg123 -q /path/to/file.mp3

# aplay (WAV/PCM files only)
aplay /path/to/file.wav

# cvlc (VLC headless)
cvlc --play-and-exit /path/to/file.mp3

Play at a specific volume (0.0–1.0 scale)

# ffplay with volume
ffplay -nodisp -autoexit -volume 50 /path/to/file.mp3

# mpg123 with scale
mpg123 -q --scale 16384 /path/to/file.mp3

Play only a portion of a file

# Start at 30 s, play for 10 s
ffplay -nodisp -autoexit -ss 30 -t 10 /path/to/file.mp3

Notes

• Ensure the system audio device is not muted (amixer sset Master unmute on ALSA systems).
• On headless servers without a sound card, playback will fail silently; consider converting to a different format or streaming instead.
• For PicoClaw hardware boards (e.g., MaixCAM, LicheeRV Nano) that expose an audio device via ALSA, aplay is the most reliable choice for WAV files.