Mathematica makes no sound under Ubuntu 11.04

Question

After waiting for days for my license I now got the opportunity to install Wolfram Mathematica 8 at home. However, neither the Play nor the Speak functions are doing anything as it seems that Mathematica cannot produce any sound output due to unknown reasons. Might anyone have an idea how I can fix this?

Answer 1

Ubuntu uses the PulseAudio sound system. It comes with the paplay command to play a sound file. The approach you found on the Ubuntu wiki should work, but you need to use paplay (or some other equivalent program) rather than the now obsolete aRts.

Here's some code adapted from the Ubuntu wiki. Add it to your ~/.Mathematica/Kernel/init.m or to a file that it includes. In addition to running paplay rather than artsplay, I've changed it to pipe the data rather than store it in a temporary file. Untested.

Begin["System`Private`"]
Unprotect[$SoundDisplayFunction]
Clear[$SoundDisplayFunction]
$SoundDisplayFunction =
    Module[{stream},
      stream = OpenWrite["!pacat", BinaryFormat -> True];
      BinaryWrite[stream, ExportString[#1, "WAV"]];
      Close[stream];
    ] &
Protect[$SoundDisplayFunction]
End[];

See also No sound in Mathematica 8.0.1 under Linux, which reports that a similar approach worked in Mathematica 8 (with ALSA rather than PulseAudio).