How can I play sound in Java?

Question

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();
}

A bad example:

import  sun.audio.*;    //import the sun.audio package
import  java.io.*;

//** add this into your application code as appropriate
// Open an input stream  to the audio file.
InputStream in = new FileInputStream(Filename);

// Create an AudioStream object from the input stream.
AudioStream as = new AudioStream(in);         

// Use the static class member "player" from class AudioPlayer to play
// clip.
AudioPlayer.player.start(as);            

// Similarly, to stop the audio.
AudioPlayer.player.stop(as); 

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();
}

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();
   }
}

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).

I created a game framework sometime ago to work on Android and Desktop, the desktop part that handle sound maybe can be used as inspiration to what you need.

https://github.com/hamilton-lima/jaga/blob/master/jaga%20desktop/src-desktop/com/athanazio/jaga/desktop/sound/Sound.java

Here is the code for reference.

package com.athanazio.jaga.desktop.sound;

import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;

import javax.sound.sampled.AudioFormat;
import javax.sound.sampled.AudioInputStream;
import javax.sound.sampled.AudioSystem;
import javax.sound.sampled.DataLine;
import javax.sound.sampled.LineUnavailableException;
import javax.sound.sampled.SourceDataLine;
import javax.sound.sampled.UnsupportedAudioFileException;

public class Sound {

    AudioInputStream in;

    AudioFormat decodedFormat;

    AudioInputStream din;

    AudioFormat baseFormat;

    SourceDataLine line;

    private boolean loop;

    private BufferedInputStream stream;

    // private ByteArrayInputStream stream;

    /**
     * recreate the stream
     * 
     */
    public void reset() {
        try {
            stream.reset();
            in = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(stream);
            din = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(decodedFormat, in);
            line = getLine(decodedFormat);

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void close() {
        try {
            line.close();
            din.close();
            in.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {
        }
    }

    Sound(String filename, boolean loop) {
        this(filename);
        this.loop = loop;
    }

    Sound(String filename) {
        this.loop = false;
        try {
            InputStream raw = Object.class.getResourceAsStream(filename);
            stream = new BufferedInputStream(raw);

            // ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            // byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
            // int read = raw.read(buffer);
            // while( read > 0 ) {
            // out.write(buffer, 0, read);
            // read = raw.read(buffer);
            // }
            // stream = new ByteArrayInputStream(out.toByteArray());

            in = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(stream);
            din = null;

            if (in != null) {
                baseFormat = in.getFormat();

                decodedFormat = new AudioFormat(
                        AudioFormat.Encoding.PCM_SIGNED, baseFormat
                                .getSampleRate(), 16, baseFormat.getChannels(),
                        baseFormat.getChannels() * 2, baseFormat
                                .getSampleRate(), false);

                din = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(decodedFormat, in);
                line = getLine(decodedFormat);
            }
        } catch (UnsupportedAudioFileException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (LineUnavailableException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private SourceDataLine getLine(AudioFormat audioFormat)
            throws LineUnavailableException {
        SourceDataLine res = null;
        DataLine.Info info = new DataLine.Info(SourceDataLine.class,
                audioFormat);
        res = (SourceDataLine) AudioSystem.getLine(info);
        res.open(audioFormat);
        return res;
    }

    public void play() {

        try {
            boolean firstTime = true;
            while (firstTime || loop) {

                firstTime = false;
                byte[] data = new byte[4096];

                if (line != null) {

                    line.start();
                    int nBytesRead = 0;

                    while (nBytesRead != -1) {
                        nBytesRead = din.read(data, 0, data.length);
                        if (nBytesRead != -1)
                            line.write(data, 0, nBytesRead);
                    }

                    line.drain();
                    line.stop();
                    line.close();

                    reset();
                }
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}

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/