Question

Alright, I’m having trouble getting started on this one. I’m trying to use the soundsc function in Octave, but I keep getting this error:

error: sound.m: No command line utility found for sound playing

I’ve searched around some on the net but couldn’t find out what to do. Here’s a link to the source code of the file I found on the net that contains the error: http://octave-audio.sourcearchive.com/documentation/1.1.3/sound_8m-source.html

The error I think comes from here:

  ## What do we use for playing?
  global sound_play_utility;
  if ~isempty(sound_play_utility),
    ## User specified command
  elseif  (file_in_path(EXEC_PATH, "ofsndplay"))
    ## Mac
    sound_play_utility = "ofsndplay -"
  elseif (file_in_path(EXEC_PATH, "play"))
    ## Linux (sox)
    sound_play_utility = "play -t AU -";
  else
    error("sound.m: No command line utility found for sound playing");
  endif

I just so happen to be using Windows 7, so I guess I have to specify the path somehow my self? Change the source code? I have no idea what I’m suppose to do to get this to work! Can anyone tell me?

Answer 1

The file you linked to includes documentation at the top, which includes the following:

## This function writes the audio data through a pipe to the program
## "play" from the sox distribution.

So you need to install sox, for starters. This will include play.exe. Then you have to either set the value of the global variable sound_play_utility in Octave to reflect where you installed sox, or make sure the file_in_path(EXEC_PATH) stuff can find play.exe. Looking a few lines down from the snippet you posted, it looks like the file passes that variable to popen, which is supposed to launch a new process. I’ve never done anything like that on Octave on a Windows machine, so I can’t help you on the exact details.