Play sound

In Python, for playing sound there are several options (see http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=python+play+sound). However, under Ubuntu I didn’t have much success with portable solutions :( I got most luck with wx.Sound('sound.wav') which used to work for a while but then it stopped… So I’ve decided to just call mplayer to do the job.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os

SOUND = 'Gong.wav'

command = 'mplayer %s 1>/dev/null 2>&1' % SOUND
os.system(command)

Not too elegant but at least it works…

Notes

If you want to launch mplayer in the background without any verbosity, here is how to do that:

mplayer music.mp3 &>/dev/null </dev/null &

Update (20101016): I forgot to mention that with the help of mplayer, you can play videos too. Just pass an AVI instead of an MP3, for instance.