I have an Unraid server that is already going to be deployed in an area. Background music is needed and I'm hoping the server can also be the music player as well. Will a docker container be able to output audio to the motherboard's speaker output by default? If possible but not by default, are there any special settings that need to be configured? Or maybe not a docker, but a plugin would have access to the audio output?

If this already exists, does anyone have any recommendations? I would like to have a share folder I can add mp3 files to and the software automatically plays the files randomly (ideally with crossfade). It would also be awesome if the software would automatically recognize new files or the removal of files to include or exclude from the shuffle. No controls would be needed, but have the ability to pause/resume and control volume would be nice.

Something like this would be great!  Post back if you ever find such a solution!!

I never did. It would be awesome if there was a premade solution but I wasn't able to find anything. I recently did come across creating VMs and passing sound through that. It's a bigger footprint than needed, but looks like a lightweight Windows 98 VM with the sound configured and running a media player might be at least one solution: 

 

yea, i think i might do something like that too, i will try to find a super lightweight distro that's basically a media player, and have a cheap USB soundcard.  Im just trying to provide an, easily adjustable, background/hold music loop for a business.  For now i just have an old 3gb sony mp3 player plugged into the phone system, but its a pain in the ass to update the music/voice loop. 

I love that 98se is alive and well still!  

I did make this post, and it seems like a docker based solution would be better than a plugin.