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mpg123(1) General Commands Manual mpg123(1) NAME mpg123 - play audio MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 stream (layers 1, 2 and 3) SYNOPSIS mpg123 [ options ] file-or-URL... DESCRIPTION mpg123 reads one or more files (or standard input if ``-'' is specified) or URLs and plays them on the audio device (default) or outputs them to stdout. file/URL is assumed to be an MPEG audio bit stream. OPERANDS The following operands are supported: file(s) The path name(s) of one or more input files. They must be valid MPEG-1.0/2.0/2.5 au‐ dio layer 1, 2 or 3 bit streams. If a dash ``-'' is specified, MPEG data will be read from the standard input. Furthermore, any name starting with ``http://'' is recognized as URL (see next section). OPTIONS mpg123 options may be either the traditional POSIX one letter options, or the GNU style long options. POSIX style options start with a single ``-'', while GNU long options start with ``--''. Option arguments (if needed) follow separated by whitespace (not ``=''). Note that some options can be absent from your installation when disabled in the build process. INPUT OPTIONS -k num, --skip num Skip first num frames. By default the decoding starts at the first frame. -n num, --frames num Decode only num frames. By default the complete stream is decoded. --fuzzy Enable fuzzy seeks (guessing byte offsets or using approximate seek points from Xing TOC). Without that, seeks need a first scan through the file before they can jump at positions. You can decide here: sample-accurate operation with gapless features or faster (fuzzy) seeking. -y, --no-resync Do NOT try to resync and continue decoding if an error occurs in the input file. Nor‐ mally, mpg123 tries to keep the playback alive at all costs, including skipping in‐ valid material and searching new header when something goes wrong. With this switch you can make it bail out on data errors (and perhaps spare your ears a bad time). Note that this switch has been renamed from --resync. The old name still works, but is not advertised or recommended to use (subject to removal in future). -F, --no-frankenstein Disable support for Frankenstein streams. Normally, mpg123 stays true to the concept of MPEG audio being just a concatenation of MPEG frames. It will continue decoding even if the type of MPEG frames varies wildly. With this switch, it will only decode the input as long as it does not change its character (from layer I to layer III, changing sampling rate, from mono to stereo), silently assuming end of stream on such occasion. The switch also stops decoding of compatible MPEG frames if there was an Info frame (Xing header, Lame tag) that contained a length of the track in MPEG frames. This comes a bit closer to the notion of a MP3 file as a defined collection of MPEG frames that belong together, but gets rid of the flexibility that can be fun at times but mostly is hell for the programmer of the parser and decoder ... --resync-limit bytes Set number of bytes to search for valid MPEG data once lost in stream; <0 means search whole stream. If you know there are huge chunks of invalid data in your files... here is your hammer. Note: Only since version 1.14 this also increases the amount of junk skipped on beginning. -p URL | none, --proxy URL | none The specified proxy will be used for HTTP requests. It should be specified as full URL (``http://host.domain:port/''), but the ``http://'' prefix, the port number and the trailing slash are optional (the default port is 80). Specifying none means not to use any proxy, and to retrieve files directly from the respective servers. See also the ``HTTP SUPPORT'' section. -u auth, --auth auth HTTP authentication to use when receiving files via HTTP. The format used is user:password. --ignore-mime Ignore MIME types given by HTTP server. If you know better and want mpg123 to decode something the server thinks is image/png, then just do it. --no-icy-meta Do not accept ICY meta data. --streamdump filename Dump a copy of the input data (as read by libmpg123) to the given file. This enables you to store a web stream to disk while playing, or just create a concatenation of the local files you play for ... why not? --icy-interval bytes This setting enables you to play a stream dump containing ICY metadata at the given interval in bytes (the value of the icy-metaint HTTP response header). Without it, such a stream will play, but will cause regular decoding glitches with resync. --no-seekbuffer Disable the default micro-buffering of non-seekable streams that gives the parser a safer footing. -@ file, --list file Read filenames and/or URLs of MPEG audio streams from the specified file in addition to the ones specified on the command line (if any). Note that file can be either an ordinary file, a dash ``-'' to indicate that a list of filenames/URLs is to be read from the standard input, or an URL pointing to a an appropriate list file. Note: only one -@ option can be used (if more than one is specified, only the last one will be recognized). -l n, --listentry n Of the playlist, play specified entry only. n is the number of entry starting at 1. A value of 0 is the default and means playing the whole list, a negative value means showing of the list of titles with their numbers... --continue Enable playlist continuation mode. This changes frame skipping to apply only to the first track and also continues to play following tracks in playlist after the selected one. Also, the option to play a number of frames only applies to the whole playlist. Basically, this tries to treat the playlist more like one big stream (like, an audio book). The current track number in list (1-based) and frame number (0-based) are printed at exit (useful if you interrupted playback and want to continue later). Note that the continuation info is printed to standard output unless the switch for piping audio data to standard out is used. Also, it really makes sense to work with actual playlist files instead of lists of file names as arguments, to keep track positions consistent. --loop times for looping track(s) a certain number of times, < 0 means infinite loop (not with --random!). --keep-open For remote control mode: Keep loaded file open after reaching end. --timeout seconds Timeout in (integer) seconds before declaring a stream dead (if <= 0, wait forever). -z, --shuffle Shuffle play. Randomly shuffles the order of files specified on the command line, or in the list file. -Z, --random Continuous random play. Keeps picking a random file from the command line or the play list. Unlike shuffle play above, random play never ends, and plays individual songs more than once. -i, --index Index / scan through the track before playback. This fills the index table for seek‐ ing (if enabled in libmpg123) and may make the operating system cache the file con‐ tents for smoother operating on playback. --index-size size Set the number of entries in the seek frame index table. --preframes num Set the number of frames to be read as lead-in before a seeked-to position. This serves to fill the layer 3 bit reservoir, which is needed to faithfully reproduce a certain sample at a certain position. Note that for layer 3, a minimum of 1 is en‐ forced (because of frame overlap), and for layer 1 and 2, this is limited to 2 (no bit reservoir in that case, but engine spin-up anyway). OUTPUT and PROCESSING OPTIONS -o module, --output module Select audio output module. You can provide a comma-separated list to use the first one that works. Also see -a. --list-modules List the available modules. --list-devices List the available output devices for given output module. If there is no functional‐ ity to list devices in the chosen module, an error will be printed and mpg123 will exit with a non-zero code. -a dev, --audiodevice dev Specify the audio device to use. The default as well as the possible values depend on the active output. For the JACK output, a comma-separated list of ports to connect to (for each channel) can be specified. -s, --stdout The decoded audio samples are written to standard output, instead of playing them through the audio device. This option must be used if your audio hardware is not sup‐ ported by mpg123. The output format per default is raw (headerless) linear PCM audio data, 16 bit, stereo, host byte order (you can force mono or 8bit). -O file, --outfile Write raw output into a file (instead of simply redirecting standard output to a file with the shell). -w file, --wav Write output as WAV file. This will cause the MPEG stream to be decoded and saved as file file , or standard output if - is used as file name. You can also use --au and --cdr for AU and CDR format, respectively. Note that WAV/AU writing to non-seekable files, or redirected stdout, needs some thought. Since 1.16.0, the logic changed to writing the header with the first actual data. This avoids spurious WAV headers in a pipe, for example. The result of decoding nothing to WAV/AU is a file consisting just of the header when it is seekable and really nothing when not (not even a header). Correctly writing data with prophetic headers to stdout is no easy business. --au file Does not play the MPEG file but writes it to file in SUN audio format. If - is used as the filename, the AU file is written to stdout. See paragraph about WAV writing for header fun with non-seekable streams. --cdr file Does not play the MPEG file but writes it to file as a CDR file. If - is used as the filename, the CDR file is written to stdout. --reopen Forces reopen of the audiodevice after ever song --cpu decoder-type Selects a certain decoder (optimized for specific CPU), for example i586 or MMX. The list of available decoders can vary; depending on the build and what your CPU sup‐ ports. This option is only available when the build actually includes several opti‐ mized decoders. --test-cpu Tests your CPU and prints a list of possible choices for --cpu. --list-cpu Lists all available decoder choices, regardless of support by your CPU. -g gain, --gain gain [DEPRECATED] Set audio hardware output gain (default: don't change). The unit of the gain value is hardware and output module dependent. (This parameter is only provided for backwards compatibility and may be removed in the future without prior notice. Use the audio player for playing and a mixer app for mixing, UNIX style!) -f factor, --scale factor Change scale factor (default: 32768). --rva-mix, --rva-radio Enable RVA (relative volume adjustment) using the values stored for ReplayGain radio mode / mix mode with all tracks roughly equal loudness. The first valid information found in ID3V2 Tags (Comment named RVA or the RVA2 frame) or ReplayGain header in Lame/Info Tag is used. --rva-album, --rva-audiophile Enable RVA (relative volume adjustment) using the values stored for ReplayGain audio‐ phile mode / album mode with usually the effect of adjusting album loudness but keep‐ ing relative loudness inside album. The first valid information found in ID3V2 Tags (Comment named RVA_ALBUM or the RVA2 frame) or ReplayGain header in Lame/Info Tag is used. -0, --single0; -1, --single1 Decode only channel 0 (left) or channel 1 (right), respectively. These options are available for stereo MPEG streams only. -m, --mono, --mix, --singlemix Mix both channels / decode mono. It takes less CPU time than full stereo decoding. --stereo Force stereo output -r rate, --rate rate Set sample rate (default: automatic). You may want to change this if you need a con‐ stant bitrate independent of the mpeg stream rate. mpg123 automagically converts the rate. You should then combine this with --stereo or --mono. --resample method Set resampling method to employ if forcing an output rate. Choices (case-insensitive) are NtoM, dirty, and fine. The fine resampler is the default. It employs libsyn123's low-latency fairly efficient resampler to postprocess the output from libmpg123 in‐ stead of the fast but very crude NtoM decoder (drop sample method) that mpg123 offers since decades. If you are really low on CPU time, choose NtoM, as the resampler usu‐ ally needs more time than the MPEG decoder itself. The mpg123 program is smart enough to combine the 2to1 or 4to1 downsampling modes with the postprocessing for extreme downsampling. -2, --2to1; -4, --4to1 Performs a downsampling of ratio 2:1 (22 kHz from 44.1 kHz) or 4:1 (11 kHz) on the output stream, respectively. Saves some CPU cycles, but of course throws away the high frequencies, as the decoder does not bother producing them. --pitch value Set a pitch change (speedup/down, 0 is neutral; 0.05 is 5% speedup). When not enforc‐ ing an output rate, this changes the output sampling rate, so it only works in the range your audio system/hardware supports. When you combine this with a fixed output rate, it modifies a software resampling ratio instead. --8bit Forces 8bit output --float Forces f32 encoding -e enc, --encoding enc Choose output sample encoding. Possible values look like f32 (32-bit floating point), s32 (32-bit signed integer), u32 (32-bit unsigned integer) and the variants with dif‐ ferent numbers of bits (s24, u24, s16, u16, s8, u8) and also special variants like ulaw and alaw 8-bit. See the output of mpg123's longhelp for actually available en‐ codings. -d n, --doublespeed n Only play every n'th frame. This will cause the MPEG stream to be played n times faster, which can be used for special effects. Can also be combined with the --half‐‐ speed option to play 3 out of 4 frames etc. Don't expect great sound quality when us‐ ing this option. -h n, --halfspeed n Play each frame n times. This will cause the MPEG stream to be played at 1/n'th speed (n times slower), which can be used for special effects. Can also be combined with the --doublespeed option to double every third frame or things like that. Don't expect great sound quality when using this option. -E file, --equalizer Enables equalization, taken from file. The file needs to contain 32 lines of data, additional comment lines may be prefixed with #. Each data line consists of two floating-point entries, separated by whitespace. They specify the multipliers for left and right channel of a certain frequency band, respectively. The first line cor‐ responds to the lowest, the 32nd to the highest frequency band. Note that you can control the equalizer interactively with the generic control interface. Also note that these are the 32 bands of the MPEG codec, not spaced like you would see for a usual graphic equalizer. The upside is that there is zero computational cost in addi‐ tion to decoding. The downside is that you roughly have bass in band 0, (upper) mids in band 1, treble in all others. --gapless Enable code that cuts (junk) samples at beginning and end of tracks, enabling gapless transitions between MPEG files when encoder padding and codec delays would prevent it. This is enabled per default beginning with mpg123 version 1.0.0 . --no-gapless Disable the gapless code. That gives you MP3 decodings that include encoder delay and padding plus mpg123's decoder delay. --no-infoframe Do not parse the Xing/Lame/VBR/Info frame, decode it instead just like a stupid old MP3 hardware player. This implies disabling of gapless playback as the necessary in‐ formation is in said metadata frame. -D n, --delay n Insert a delay of n seconds before each track. -o h, --headphones Direct audio output to the headphone connector (some hardware only; AIX, HP, SUN). -o s, --speaker Direct audio output to the speaker (some hardware only; AIX, HP, SUN). -o l, --lineout Direct audio output to the line-out connector (some hardware only; AIX, HP, SUN). -b size, --buffer size Use an audio output buffer of size Kbytes. This is useful to bypass short periods of heavy system activity, which would normally cause the audio output to be interrupted. You should specify a buffer size of at least 1024 (i.e. 1 Mb, which equals about 6 seconds of audio data) or more; less than about 300 does not make much sense. The de‐ fault is 0, which turns buffering off. --preload fraction Wait for the buffer to be filled to fraction before starting playback (fraction be‐ tween 0 and 1). You can tune this prebuffering to either get faster sound to your ears or safer uninterrupted web radio. Default is 0.2 (wait for 20 % of buffer to be full, changed from 1 in version 1.23). --devbuffer seconds Set device buffer in seconds; <= 0 means default value. This is the small buffer be‐ tween the application and the audio backend, possibly directly related to hardware buffers. --smooth Keep buffer over track boundaries -- meaning, do not empty the buffer between tracks for possibly some added smoothness. MISC OPTIONS -t, --test Test mode. The audio stream is decoded, but no output occurs. -c, --check Check for filter range violations (clipping), and report them for each frame if any occur. -v, --verbose Increase the verbosity level. For example, displays the frame numbers during decod‐ ing. -q, --quiet Quiet. Suppress diagnostic messages. -C, --control Enable terminal control keys. This is enabled automatically if a terminal is detected. By default use 's' or the space bar to stop/restart (pause, unpause) playback, 'f' to jump forward to the next song, 'b' to jump back to the beginning of the song, ',' to rewind, '.' to fast forward, and 'q' to quit. Type 'h' for a full list of available controls. --no-control Disable terminal control even if terminal is detected. --title In an xterm, rxvt, screen, iris-ansi (compatible, TERM environment variable is exam‐ ined), change the window's title to the name of song currently playing. --name name Set the name of this instance, possibly used in various places. This sets the client name for JACK output. --long-tag Display ID3 tag info always in long format with one line per item (artist, title, ...) --utf8 Regardless of environment, print metadata in UTF-8 (otherwise, when not using UTF-8 locale, you'll get ASCII stripdown). -R, --remote Activate generic control interface. mpg123 will then read and execute commands from stdin. Basic usage is ``load <filename> '' to play some file and the obvious ``pause'', ``command. ``jump <frame>'' will jump/seek to a given point (MPEG frame number). Issue ``help'' to get a full list of commands and syntax. --remote-err Print responses for generic control mode to standard error, not standard out. This is automatically triggered when using -s. --fifo path Create a fifo / named pipe on the given path and use that for reading commands instead of standard input. --aggressive Tries to get higher priority -T, --realtime Tries to gain realtime priority. This option usually requires root privileges to have any effect. -?, --help Shows short usage instructions. --longhelp Shows long usage instructions. --version Print the version string. HTTP SUPPORT In addition to reading MPEG audio streams from ordinary files and from the standard input, mpg123 supports retrieval of MPEG audio files or playlists via the HTTP protocol, which is used in the World Wide Web (WWW). Such files are specified using a so-called URL, which starts with ``http://''. When a file with that prefix is encountered, mpg123 attempts to open an HTTP connection to the server in order to retrieve that file to decode and play it. It is often useful to retrieve files through a WWW cache or so-called proxy. To accomplish this, mpg123 examines the environment for variables named MP3_HTTP_PROXY, http_proxy and HTTP_PROXY, in this order. The value of the first one that is set will be used as proxy specification. To override this, you can use the -p command line option (see the ``OPTIONS'' section). Specifying -p none will enforce contacting the server directly without using any proxy, even if one of the above environment variables is set. Note that, in order to play MPEG audio files from a WWW server, it is necessary that the con‐ nection to that server is fast enough. For example, a 128 kbit/s MPEG file requires the net‐ work connection to be at least 128 kbit/s (16 kbyte/s) plus protocol overhead. If you suffer from short network outages, you should try the -b option (buffer) to bypass such outages. If your network connection is generally not fast enough to retrieve MPEG audio files in real‐ time, you can first download the files to your local harddisk (e.g. using wget(1)) and then play them from there. If authentication is needed to access the file it can be specified with the -u user:pass. INTERRUPT When in terminal control mode, you can quit via pressing the q key, while any time you can abort mpg123 by pressing Ctrl-C. If not in terminal control mode, this will skip to the next file (if any). If you want to abort playing immediately in that case, press Ctrl-C twice in short succession (within about one second). Note that the result of quitting mpg123 pressing Ctrl-C might not be audible immediately, due to audio data buffering in the audio device. This delay is system dependent, but it is usu‐ ally not more than one or two seconds. PLAYBACK STATUS LINE In verbose mode, mpg123 updates a line with various information centering around the current playback position. On any decent terminal, the line also works as a progress bar in the cur‐ rent file by reversing video for a fraction of the line according to the current position. An example for a full line is this: > 0291+0955 00:01.68+00:28.22 [00:05.30] mix 100=085 192 kb/s 576 B acc 18 clip p+0.014 The information consists of, in order: > single-character playback state (``>'' for playing, ``='' for pausing/looping, ``_'' for stopped) 0291+0955 current frame offset and number of remaining frames after the plus sign 00:01.68+00:28.22 current position from and remaining time in human terms (hours, minutes, seconds) [00:05.30] fill of the output buffer in terms of playback time, if the buffer is enabled mix selected RVA mode (possible values: mix, alb (album), and --- (neutral, off)) 100=085 set volume and the RVA-modified effective volume after the equal sign 192 kb/s current bitrate 576 B size of current frame in bytes acc if positions are accurate, possible values are ``acc'' for accurate positions or ``fuz'' for fuzzy (with guessed byte offsets using mean frame size) 18 clip amount of clipped samples, non-zero only if decoder reports that (generic does, some optimized ones not) p+0.014 pitch change (increased/decreased playback sampling rate on user request) NOTES MPEG audio decoding requires a good deal of CPU performance, especially layer-3. To decode it in realtime, you should have at least an i486DX4, Pentium, Alpha, SuperSparc or equivalent processor. You can also use the -m option to decode mono only, which reduces the CPU load somewhat for layer-3 streams. See also the -2 and -4 options. If everything else fails, have mpg123 decode to a file and then use an appropriate utility to play that file with less CPU load. Most probably you can configure mpg123 to produce a for‐ mat suitable for your audio device (see above about encodings and sampling rates). If your system is generally fast enough to decode in realtime, but there are sometimes peri‐ ods of heavy system load (such as cronjobs, users logging in remotely, starting of ``big'' programs etc.) causing the audio output to be interrupted, then you should use the -b option to use a buffer of reasonable size (at least 1000 Kbytes). EXIT CODE Up to version 1.25.x, mpg123 always returned exit code 0 also for complete junk on the input side. Fatal errors were only considered for output. With version 1.26.0, this changed to the behaviour described below. When not using the remote control interface (which returns input errors as text messages), the process exit code is zero (success) only if all tracks in a playlist had at least one frame parsed, even if it did not decode cleanly, or are empty, MPEG-wise (perhaps only meta‐ data, or really an empty file). When you decode nothing, nothing is the result and that is fine. When a track later aborts because of parser errors or breakdown of the network communi‐ cation, this is treated as end of a track, but does not make the process as such fail. One really bad (or non-existing) stream in the playlist results in a non-zero error code, consis‐ tent with other UNIX tools. An error in audio output results in the process ending with a non-zero exit code immediately, regardless of how much data has been successfully played before. The forgiveness is only on the input side. BUGS Mostly MPEG-1 layer 2 and 3 are tested in real life. Please report any issues and provide test files to help fixing them. No CRC error checking is performed. Some platforms lack audio hardware support; you may be able to use the -s switch to feed the decoded data to a program that can play it on your audio device. AUTHORS Maintainer: Thomas Orgis <maintainer AT mpg123.org>, <thomas AT orgis.org> Original Creator: Michael Hipp Uses code or ideas from various people, see the AUTHORS file accompanying the source code. LICENSE mpg123 is licensed under the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, LGPL, version 2.1 . WEBSITE http://www.mpg123.org http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpg123 26 Apr 2020 mpg123(1)
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