Cardio is a simple to use library for playing various audio files. It includes support for a number of audio formats and is extensible via plugins.

The plugins that come with cardio are all licensed under the LGPL (2.1 or later). Supported file formats are:

• AIFF
• AU
• FLAC (via libflac)
• MIDI (via TiMidity++)
• MOD/XM/IT/etc (either via DUMB or libmodplug)
• MPC (via Musepack)
• VOC
• Vorbis (via libvorbis)
• WAV
• WV (via WavPack)

Supported output methods are:

• ALSA (via alsa-lib; plugin is alpha quality)
• Diskwriter (WAV with RF64 support)
• OSS

There are other plugins available that, due to various reasons, are not able to be included in the main package. These are:

• adplug-cardio for playing files supported by AdPlug
• ape-cardio for playing Monkey's Audio files
• faad-cardio for playing MP4/AAC files via FAAD
• gbsplay-cardio for playing GBS chiptunes with gbsplay's engine
• gme-cardio for playing chiptunes supported by Game_Music_Emu
• mpg123-cardio for playing MP3 files via MPG123
• nosefart-cardio for playing NSF chiptunes with nosefart's engine
• xmp-cardio for playing module files supported by The Extended Module Player

gme-cardio plays both GBS and NSF files, so gbsplay-cardio and nosefart-cardio are a bit redundant; but I wrote them before I found Game Music Emu. xmp-cardio is useful in that XMP supports a ridiculous number of module types, so if you have some module that neither DUMB nor libmodplug can play, xmp-cardio might be able to.

In addition, a plugin for Amarok 1 to use cardio as the playback engine is available.