[CM] Advice on using snd's (play) from another program?

[bil at ccrma.Stanford.EDU]

Here are a few observations (I'll look at this later
after breakfast):

Snd uses mpg321 (or mpg123) to translate an mp3 file into a format it 
can read,
so before Snd can play the mp3 file, it needs to be translated (via 
open-sound
for example).  I think the new output file in this case has a .wav 
extension.
Snd can play other formats without calling open-sound first.

You can preload sound files via mus-sound-preload (see extsnd.html), but 
if
you're renaming files right and left, I don't know what will happen.

If you just play a file, and there is no sound object for it in Snd 
(from
open-sound etc), there's no object for the start-playing-hook to pass
the hook function.  Snd should have a better error message in that case.