Afplay and controls

Question

I play audio files with QuickTime Player and it works perfectly, with the help of some friends.
But I am curious and want to find out whether afplay would be a suitable alternative.
After some research on various forums and internet in general I concluded, that afplay is rather primitive.
One can play afplay and one can kill it; that's all.
I didn't find a way to pause or resume it.
I know, that afinfo supplies info about the duration, but that information is already available in my own program.
I can't find the current time of the playing audio file in analogy with QTP, so I can't determine, when to stop or when the song is completed.
Should I give up on afplay or could you suggest any alternatives?

Answer 1

I followed your suggestion and installed "Play Sound" as an alternative to "QuickTime Player" and "afplay" which both work fine, although "afplay" does not allow as much control as I want with regard to pause and resume.
"Play Sound" also works fine, but I can't get the info for duration and position(=current time) which I need to end the loop in time. Probably I ask for the info at the wrong level.
The following script is an adaptation of a script written for QTP by my good friend Hiroto and a bit by myself; everything works except for the duration and position variables which however are crucial to obtain the required control. Could you have a look at those lines?
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set the_path to cell "bestandspad3" of current record --record in Filemaker Pro
tell application "Play Sound"
play the_path
end tell
set tekst to ""
repeat
display dialog "Interrupt" buttons {"Stop/Pauze", "Next song", "Next artist"} giving up after (my secLeft())
set {b, fin} to {button returned, gave up} of result
display dialog "resterende tijd: " & secLeft() buttons {"ok"}
if fin then exit repeat
if b = "Stop/Pauze" then
tell application "Play Sound" to pause
display dialog "Stoppen of verder gaan?" buttons {"Echt stoppen?", "Hervat"} default button 2
set b to button returned of result
if b = "Hervat" then
tell application "Play Sound"
tell sound -- document 1 in QTP
get duration of sound
get position of sound
if duration of sound = position of sound then exit repeat
-- duration and possibly position are not recognized
end tell
resume
end tell
else
set tekst to "Stop"
exit repeat
end if
else if b= "Next song" then
set tekst to ""
exit repeat
else
set tekst to "Next"
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
set the clipboard to tekst
tell application "Play Sound"
stop
end tell
on secLeft()
tell application "Play Sound"
tell sound -- document 1 in QTP
-- set d to (duration - position)
-- duration and position are not recognized; next line is temporary.
set d to 15
end tell
end tell
set d to round d rounding up
if d<1 then set d to 1
return d
end secLeft
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