Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 3 - STEP BY STEP GUIDE Manual page 98

84 Chapter 8. Audio, Video, and General Amusement
8.2. Playing Digital Audio Files
Digital audio has become very popular in recent years. Users enjoy the technology because the sound
quality is excellent compared to analog tape or records, and the files are compact (audio files can
easily be transferred across the Internet).
To take advantage of this technology, Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes the powerful X Multimedia
System (XMMS), a cross-platform multimedia player which allows you to play several digital audio
file formats.
Figure 8-3. XMMS Interface
XMMS can be used for more than just playing digital audio files. By default XMMS can play Ogg
Vorbis, RIFF wave, and most module formats. Additionally, XMMS can be extended via plugins to
play a number of other digital multimedia formats.
To launch XMMS, go to Main Menu => Sound & Video => Audio Player.
To launch XMMS from a shell prompt, type the command
.
xmms
8.2.1. Using XMMS
To play an audio file with XMMS, click the Open button and choose a file from the Load File(s)
window.
Figure 8-4. The Load File(s) Window
In Figure 8-4, you see that there are several files to choose from. The files that end in are Ogg
.ogg
Vorbis files, a popular new audio file format, while the file is an audio playlist file. You can use
.pls
XMMS to add audio files into a list and then save it as a playlist. This can be convenient if you have