Play a sound

Play a sound#

Goal: load an audio file from disk and start it playing.

This tutorial walks through Demo00_PlaySound, the simplest libYSE program. By the end you will have a sound playing, with hot keys to toggle, play, pause, and stop it.

Source: Demo00_PlaySound.cpp.

Loading the sound#

A YSE::sound is an instance — one object per voice you want in the scene. Load a file with create:

	// load a sound in memory
    sound.create(YSE_TEST_RESOURCES_DIR "/drone.ogg", nullptr, true);

	// false on validation means the sound could not be loaded
	if (!sound.isValid()) {
		std::cout << "sound 'drone.ogg' not found" << std::endl;
	}

The third argument is the loop flag; the demo loops the drone for as long as it plays. The path is resolved relative to the working directory, so the demo must be launched from build/bin/.

isValid() returns false if the file could not be opened or decoded — always check it after create and fail fast.

Controlling playback#

Four methods cover the basics:

void DemoPlaySound::ToggleSound()
{
	sound.toggle();
}

void DemoPlaySound::PlaySound()
{
	sound.play();
}

void DemoPlaySound::StopSound()
{
	sound.stop();
}

void DemoPlaySound::PauseSound()
{
	sound.pause();
}

  • play() — start playback. Starts immediately, or queues if the sound is still loading.

  • pause() — freeze the playhead. The next play() resumes from there.

  • stop() — halt and rewind to the start of the source.

  • toggle() — cycle playing → paused, paused → playing, stopped → playing. Handy for one-key mappings.

What you learned#

  • One YSE::sound instance per playing voice.

  • create(path, channel, loop) — the third arg is loop, leave channel as nullptr to use MainMix.

  • isValid() is the safety check after create.

  • play / pause / stop / toggle are the playback primitives.

Next#