How can I play sound in Java?

Question

I want to be able to play sound files in my program. Where should I look?

Answer 1

For playing sound in java, you can refer to the following code.

import java.io.*;
import java.net.URL;
import javax.sound.sampled.*;
import javax.swing.*;

// To play sound using Clip, the process need to be alive.
// Hence, we use a Swing application.
public class SoundClipTest extends JFrame {

   public SoundClipTest() {
      this.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
      this.setTitle("Test Sound Clip");
      this.setSize(300, 200);
      this.setVisible(true);

      try {
         // Open an audio input stream.
         URL url = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("gameover.wav");
         AudioInputStream audioIn = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(url);
         // Get a sound clip resource.
         Clip clip = AudioSystem.getClip();
         // Open audio clip and load samples from the audio input stream.
         clip.open(audioIn);
         clip.start();
      } catch (UnsupportedAudioFileException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (IOException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (LineUnavailableException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      }
   }

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      new SoundClipTest();
   }
}

Answer 2

I wrote the following code that works fine. But I think it only works with .wav format.

public static synchronized void playSound(final String url) {
  new Thread(new Runnable() {
  // The wrapper thread is unnecessary, unless it blocks on the
  // Clip finishing; see comments.
    public void run() {
      try {
        Clip clip = AudioSystem.getClip();
        AudioInputStream inputStream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(
          Main.class.getResourceAsStream("/path/to/sounds/" + url));
        clip.open(inputStream);
        clip.start(); 
      } catch (Exception e) {
        System.err.println(e.getMessage());
      }
    }
  }).start();
}

Answer 3

There is an alternative to importing the sound files which works in both applets and applications: convert the audio files into .java files and simply use them in your code.

I have developed a tool which makes this process a lot easier. It simplifies the Java Sound API quite a bit.

http://stephengware.com/projects/soundtoclass/

Answer 4

I didn't want to have so many lines of code just to play a simple damn sound. This can work if you have the JavaFX package (already included in my jdk 8).

private static void playSound(String sound){
    // cl is the ClassLoader for the current class, ie. CurrentClass.class.getClassLoader();
    URL file = cl.getResource(sound);
    final Media media = new Media(file.toString());
    final MediaPlayer mediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer(media);
    mediaPlayer.play();
}

Notice : You need to initialize JavaFX. A quick way to do that, is to call the constructor of JFXPanel() once in your app :

static{
    JFXPanel fxPanel = new JFXPanel();
}

Answer 5

I'm surprised nobody suggested using Applet. Use Applet. You'll have to supply the beep audio file as a wav file, but it works. I tried this on Ubuntu:

package javaapplication2;

import java.applet.Applet;
import java.applet.AudioClip;
import java.io.File;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;

public class JavaApplication2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws MalformedURLException {
        File file = new File("/path/to/your/sounds/beep3.wav");
        URL url = null;
        if (file.canRead()) {url = file.toURI().toURL();}
        System.out.println(url);
        AudioClip clip = Applet.newAudioClip(url);
        clip.play();
        System.out.println("should've played by now");
    }
}
//beep3.wav was available from: http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/interface_sound_effects/beep-3.wav

Answer 6

For whatever reason, the top answer by wchargin was giving me a null pointer error when I was calling this.getClass().getResourceAsStream().

What worked for me was the following:

void playSound(String soundFile) {
    File f = new File("./" + soundFile);
    AudioInputStream audioIn = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(f.toURI().toURL());  
    Clip clip = AudioSystem.getClip();
    clip.open(audioIn);
    clip.start();
}

And I would play the sound with:

 playSound("sounds/effects/sheep1.wav");

sounds/effects/sheep1.wav was located in the base directory of my project in Eclipse (so not inside the src folder).