cat blah.wav > /dev/audio gives crap..
 

From slashdot, I ran across this article: http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/view/9074

In it, it discusses playing wav files in a shell script by simply saying:
system("cat /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Beep_Pop.wav > /dev/audio");

Well, I don't have KDE currently installed on my FC2 machine, so I tried it with /usr/share/sounds/warning.wav, and all I get out is crap.. which makes me curious:

Is his /dev/audio set up differently than mine, or is the KDE_Beep_Pop.wav, or is the difference that warning.wav is 16 bit, and according to the article, KDE_Beep_Pop.wav is 8 bit? If so, is there a command line app that can downsample to the appropriate bit rate?

Yeah, I know I can just use "aplay", but I've had screwy results with that in the past, and I like the simplicity of cat blah > /dev/audio (false difference?).. and besides all that, I'm mildly curious about the internals of /dev/audio..

Thanks for any help you can give...

I know this thread is a bit old, but it doesn't for for me either. Any suggestion to solve this would be very welcome.