Play a sound (maybe WAV?) from Windows line command

Question

How can i play a sound (CPU Beep or wav, don't matter what) using the Windows cmd?

Solution 1

Not in windows now, in order to test this possible solution, but try to: "start "

I think it will open the wav file with the associated program that your windows has for ".wav" files.

And note, this is a wild-guess - someone with windows may give you a better solution if this doesn't do the job

Solution 2

You can do this natively with PowerShell. PowerShell is included with Windows Vista and later, and can be downloaded from Microsoft for older versions.

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Wave files

PowerShell can be used to load the System.Media.SoundPlayer .NET class, which can be used to play a wave file.

(New-Object Media.SoundPlayer "C:\WINDOWS\Media\notify.wav").Play();

If you want, you can run this from the normal command line:

powershell -c (New-Object Media.SoundPlayer "C:\Windows\Media\notify.wav").PlaySync();

(note that PlaySync is used in the second example since the standard asynchronous play would be interrupted by the PowerShell process closing when launched like this)

And if you wanted to play only the first, say, 5 seconds of the sound:

powershell -c (New-Object Media.SoundPlayer "C:\Windows\Media\notify.wav").Play(); Start-Sleep -s 5; Exit;

Beep

A beep can be easily accomplished in the normal command line with echo ^G (where ^G represents BEL, ASCII character 7, inserted with Ctrl + G), as described in other answers. In the interest of completeness, here's the PowerShell method:

echo ^G

Yes, it's the same as the cmd one. echo in PowerShell is an alias (i.e. means the same thing) to Write-Host, which displays something to the screen (or triggers the Windows notification sound in the case of BEL).

An alternative method in PowerShell is to use the escape sequence for BEL, rather than inserting a literal BEL character with Ctrl + G:

echo `a

` is PowerShell's escape character, which modifies the meaning of the character after it. An escaped a indicates BEL. The advantage of this approach is it is easier and more visible when typed into a script.

To run this in a batch file (again, Vista or later):

powershell -c echo `a

source

Solution 3

echo ^G

Where ^G is CTRL + G or Alt + 7 on the keypad.

Solution 4

Install VLC. Use the following command. It starts up REALLY fast. This is what I used on Windows 7 b/c wmplayer takes so long to load, and the /close option was removed from wmplayer.

vlc.exe --play-and-exit audio.wav

Solution 5

Workaround (some sort of):

1) run audio file

2) wait till track ends (in my case its 5 seconds) and close media player

start wmplayer "C:\Windows\Media\Alarm10.wav" && timeout 5 && taskkill /im wmplayer.exe

View more solutions

Comments

[Andreas Rejbrand]

Using start file.wav is a bad idea. It might take a second to start a bloated media player, just for a single beep. In addition, file associations might be wrong, the media player might not play the file, or it might play it over and over again, etc. The way of creating a simple "beep" is to write beep ^G. "^G" is not the circumflex accent followed by a capital letter G, but rather a special character that you insert by pressing Ctrl+G. It is actually the BEL character with ASCII value 0x07.

[Admin]

Well, it'll certainly open the file in whatever application is associated with the type, but that's it. It's up to that application to decide what it does with it - it might play it, it might add it to a queue, or something else. Even if it does play the file, it's entirely likely that it won't terminate after playing, meaning this is probably a bad idea.

[Dodd10x]

Is it possible to also have this command kill and currently playing wav files before executing the new wav file?

[tvdo]

@Dodd10x Not easily for global audio, no. Could you provide more context? Do you intend to kill or pause? Is the other player another instance of this script, or a media player, or a browser, a game, etc.? If it's another instance of the same script, then it's much simpler (though still not entirely trivial).

[Dodd10x]

It's another instance of the same script. I'm thinking I could add a line to kill powershell.exe in the task list first

[tvdo]

@Dodd10x There are two ways I would suggest. One is to get the process ID of the PowerShell instance and save it to a file, then kill that ID at the start of a new instance (and clear the file). This is safer than killing all PS processes. The other way would be to use a semaphore (flag/signal) in PowerShell - you'd signal the semaphore, use Play() (async), wait for a semaphore, and close. Semaphores are a cleaner way of doing this, but a bit more complicated. I'd be happy to go into further detail in chat.

[DavidPostill]

Welcome to Super User! Please read How do I recommend software for some tips as to how you should go about recommending software. You should provide at least a link, some additional information about the software itself, and how it can be used to solve the problem in the question.

[honzajde]

Unfortunately this is running on foreground

[Mark Ribau]

Yea, this was intended to replace the wmplayer method since it was slow to load and they removed support for the /close argument. The PowerShell method is probably the best bet.

[Antonio]

This is so much not the best answer!

[zipizap]

@Antonio, that was in 2010 :)

[MLM]

For those looking for a headless VLC solution, vlc -I dummy --dummy-quiet t.mp3 vlc://quit from forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=79516#p262603

[Henrik]

Amazingly, this is marked as the accepted, "best answer"! 😁

[dr_]

This answer should be deleted. It isn't even worthy to stay as a comment.

[dr_]

This is the best answer. Bountied +50 reps.

[Anic17]

How can this be the "best" answer?

[Thomas H. Schmidt]

Please note that you have to use a backtick ` to escape spaces in file names, e.g. powershell -c (New-Object Media.SoundPlayer "c:\Windows\Media\Windows` Notify` Calendar.wav").PlaySync();

[Jovylle Bermudez]

This is true Magic, why G?

[jkmartindale]

@JovylleBermudez In ASCII (and later Unicode) the bell character is given control code 7, which is ^G because caret notation assigns control codes 1-26 the letters A-Z

[Jovylle Bermudez]

@jkmartindale Thank you.