ADPLAY(1)

✨ adplay ✨

User Commands vibes, bestie 🎀 this is the adplay manual, and it is about to be SO good 💅

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🦋 NAME 🦋

adplay - AdPlay/UNIX console-based OPL2 audio player 🎶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

adplay [OPTION]... FILE...

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so AdPlay/UNIX is AdPlug's UNIX console-based frontend, and it's giving "play ALL the things" energy 🧚 It tries to play back every FILE you give it, using whichever output mechanism you pick from the many available ones.

If you only give it one file, it plays endlessly 🔁 With multiple files, it plays them in a sequence and exits after the last one. You can get the same result with just one file by using the -o option. When you use the disk writer, -o is implied 🌸

🌈 EXIT STATUS 🌈

adplay returns 0 on successful operation. 1 is returned otherwise. Simple, clean, iconic 💅

🔥 OUTPUT MECHANISMS 🔥

AdPlay/UNIX can play back using lots of different output mechanisms, and you pick one with the -O argument ✨ Whether a method is available depends on compile-time settings. The available methods get printed after the help text, which you can see with --help 👀

Here's the lowdown on each one, by abbreviation:

🎧 oss — Open Sound System (OSS) driver

This output method is available on most Linux and other UNIX systems.

🎹 null — Total silence

Discards anything sent to it. It can be useful for testing purposes 🙈

💾 disk — Disk writer

Writes its output to a file in Microsoft RIFF WAVE format 🎙️

🔊 esound — EsounD output

Creates a socket connection to an EsounD server and streams the audio to it.

🎮 qsa — QNX Sound Architecture (QSA) driver

Uses the QNX system's standard output method.

🌟 sdl — Simple Directmedia Layer (SDL) driver

Uses the SDL library for sound output. It has broader platform support than any of the other output methods, so it could be super useful on some exotic systems 🛸

🐚 alsa — Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) driver

Uses the standard output method on newer Linux systems.

🍓 ao — libao driver

Libao is a cross-platform audio library with very broad platform support. It might be useful on systems where SDL is not available, and generally for doing tricky things 🧁

👑 OPTIONS 👑

The order of the option commandline parameters is not important, except for -d, which always has to be specified after an -O option. Remember that one, it matters 🫶

🎯 Output selection:

• -O, --output=OUTPUT — Pick your output mechanism! The available ones depend on compilation settings and get printed in the --help output. A reasonable default is automatically selected, based on which output mechanisms are available.

🐧 OSS driver (oss) specific:

• -d, --device=FILE — Set the sound output device file to FILE. It's /dev/dsp by default.

💿 Disk writer (disk) specific:

• -d, --device=FILE — Write the sound data to FILE. The data is written in Microsoft RIFF WAVE format (little-endian). You can specify a single - to write to stdout instead.

⚠️ Bestie, heads up: this option has no default and must be specified when the disk writer is to be used!

🎶 EsounD output (esound) specific:

• -d, --device=URL — Connect to the "hostname:port" combination in URL. Example: "myhost.sound.net:1234". The default is "localhost:16001".

🎺 ALSA driver (alsa) specific:

• -d, --device=DEVICE — Set the sound output device to DEVICE. It's plughw:0,0 by default.

✨ Playback quality:

• -8, --8bit — Only use 8-bit samples for playback.
• --16bit — Only use 16-bit samples for playback (default).
• -f, --freq=FREQ — Set the playback frequency to FREQ, in Hz. It's 44100Hz by default.
• --stereo — Only use stereo samples for playback. The sound stream is just doubled, with no further audio processing. This option is pretty useless unless you have very obscure audio hardware that only accepts stereo streams. AdPlug only generates mono streams because the OPL2 only generates mono sound 🤷‍♀️
• --mono — Only use mono samples for playback (default if AdPlug <= 2.1.)
• --surround — Only use stereo samples for playback, but generate them from two mono OPL2 chips. One OPL2 chip is very slightly transposed to produce a pleasant harmonic/surround sound effect 🎧 (default if AdPlug >= 2.2.)
• -b, --buffer=SIZE — Set the sound buffer size to SIZE samples. If you notice sound skipping with the default setting, try a greater buffer size. Note that this is measured in samples, not bytes! The default is 2048 samples. Only the OSS, SDL, ALSA and libao output drivers support this option.

📺 Informative output:

• -i, --instruments — Display instrument names (if available).
• -r, --realtime — Display realtime playback information while playing. This shows a one-line status bar with the essential playback info 📊
• -m, --message — Display the song message (if available).

▶️ Playback:

• -s, --subsong=N — Play subsong number N, instead of the file's default subsong. Only useful for file formats that support multiple subsongs.
• -o, --once — Don't loop endlessly. This will exit adplay after the song ended. This is the default when multiple FILEs are given.
• -l, --loop=N — Loop N times, then stop. Due to technical limitations of the adplug library, a "loop" is considered to be the time between the start of playback and when looping first occurs. So playback may actually halt at an unexpected point, especially when combined with -s. This implies -o.

🧸 Miscellaneous:

• -D, --database=FILE — Additionally use database file FILE. This option can be specified multiple times. Each database file gets merged with the others, creating one large database on the fly 🗂️
• -q, --quiet — Be more quiet 🤫
• -v, --verbose — Be more verbose 📣
• -h, --help — Show a summary of options.
• -V, --version — Show the version of the program.

💌 AUTHOR 💌

Simon Peter <dn.tlp@gmx.net> is the one behind it all, and honestly we owe them a big thank-you 🫶

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Bye bestie 💜 that was AdPlay/UNIX 1.9, dated December 21, 2025. Now go make some music 🎀✨