Thanks, Stefano. I was hoping it was that simple.

Using bash under MacOS I can't see audio or dsp in /dev, or anything
like it but in the past I've been using "afplay" --which I think is
common in Unix and not a Mac special --to play pre-existing WAVs or
MP3s. It just remains to suss out the format of a WAV file.

I had overlooked Oleg's "media/wav" because I thought it was Win-only.
But it seems it does the WAV-output task for me.

I guess what I was hoping for was something like this: jplay
?21000#256  NB. 1s of white noise
--but the dog can see the rabbit now.

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 4:35 PM, Stefano Lanzavecchia <[email protected]> wrote:
> Ian, as far as I know, under most Uni*s you can simply write binary data to
> /dev/audio and it will play
> (http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=65073 or
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/cant-hear-sound-from
> -cat-dev-urandom-dev-audio-883996/) music or noises if the system is
> correctly configured and depending on what you send to it.
>
> Then there's /dev/dsp (http://www.opensound.com/pguide/audio.html) and I
> don't know enough to tell you the difference between /dev/audio and /dev/dsp
> (in the days when I mainly played with Linux, computers didn't come with a
> soundcard and I couldn't afford one).
>
> I don't know if MacOSX is Uni* enough to come equipped with those devices in
> its filesystem...
> --
> Stefano
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [email protected] [mailto:programming-
>> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Ian Clark
>> Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 5:26 PM
>> To: Programming forum
>> Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Music of the spheres
>>
>> Thanks, David.
>>
>> A 1980s microcomputer offered a built-in function to do this as a matter
> of
>> course. That was back in the days when we thought it smart to play Three
>> Blind Mice with a sequence of beeps. But nowadays such a simple facility
>> seems to have dropped off the menu. If I knew more UNIX I suspect it
>> wouldn't be a problem.
>>
>> If nobody knows a straightforward way I'll have to fiddle with one of the
> more
>> involved ways you suggest. Like outputting a WAV file and then playing it.
>> Audacity will indeed generate me a 1 sec WAV of any spot-frequency -- in
> any
>> waveform I like -- and also tell me the name of the nearest musical note.
> I've
>> used it before for the 7 classical planets. They chime pretty well
> together (a
>> fact that historically cried out for explanation).
>>
>> But I don't know how to use Audacity like a driver. And I was hoping for a
>> more general facility, to grace a series of simple math articles.
>>
>> I didn't know OEIS offered a way to play any number sequence as a sound
>> (thanks for that) -- but Mathematica certainly does. The Riemann Zeta
>> function sounds really spacey.
>>
>> Mathematicians are shy of admitting the utility of "displaying" a
> time-series
>> in this way. Applied to market prices, you might even be able to train
> your ear
>> to hear the crash coming. :-)
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 1:01 PM, David Ward Lambert
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > I'd recommend nyquist or nyquist + audacity if I could figure out how
>> > to use them.  You'd have the choice of synthesized instruments as well
>> > as a sine wave, and many output formats.
>> >
>> > There must be a way via web browser, I'm sure you're aware the the
>> > online encyclopedia of integer sequences provides an option to play
>> > the sequence.
>> >
>> > I apologize for responding---I do not know the answer.
>> >
>> > Dave.
>> >
>> > Message: 5
>> > Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 04:21:05 +0100
>> > From: Ian Clark <[email protected]>
>> > Subject: [Jprogramming] Music of the spheres
>> > To: Programming forum <[email protected]>
>> > Message-ID:
>> >
>> >
>> <[email protected]
>> ail.com>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>> >
>> > If I have a noun: 194.18
>> > (the value, in Hz, as it happens, of the 24th octave above the
>> > "musical note" of the solar day... other planetary periods to be
>> > substituted)
>> > does anyone have a simple way of generating a brief audible tone of
>> > that frequency?
>> >
>> > Mac or Unix please, not Win.
>> >
>> > Just a verb to emit the sound will be fine for now. Generating a WAV
>> > file to play conventionally is a likely future requirement.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
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