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Q&A Is there anything like an interactive version of aplay or speaker-test?

Would something like Alda work for your purposes? It runs as a server, even when you want to do something like create an audio file, so whether through the REPL or by reverse-engineering it to fig...

posted 6mo ago by John C‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar John C‭ · 2026-03-09T22:06:02Z (6 months ago)
Would something like [Alda](https://alda.io/) work for your purposes?  It runs as a server, even when you want to do something like create an audio file, so whether through the REPL or by reverse-engineering it to figure out how to connect to the server, it sounds (no pun intended) like it should get somewhere in the neighborhood.

I don't know the current state of affairs (such as whether it works interactively), but [CSound](https://csound.com/) might also come close.  If you think of Alda as analogous to a MIDI tracker, CSound looks more like a full synthesizer.