How about calling an external script that just writes over the sound files?

I keep a ulaw file which contains 250ms of silence on each repeater for that purpose. For example, my weather script creates ulaw files that are used as squelch tail files. If there aren't any weather events, the script copies the silence files to the tail files. When there's an event, it uses Cepstral to create the tail file. That way the tail files still play but no one notices it.

You could have your external script copy the effects files somewhere. Copy the silence file into each of their places. Then when you return from the net, copy the originals back into place.
Like this :
On start : cp foo.ul ./Archive/foo.ul
                  cp bar.ul ./Archive/bar.ul
                  cp silence.ul foo.ul
                  cp silence.ul bar.ul

On return cp ./Archive/foo.ul foo.ul
                  cp ./Archive/bar.ul bar.ul

You get the idea.

--
Robert A. Poff
Loganville, PA

S/V Loon
1983 Hunter 34
Havre de Grace, MD.

WB3AWJ - Allstar 27784
Powered by Linux

On Sat, 2012-11-17 at 19:51 -0700, Jeff Carrier wrote:

is there a way to switch the function stanza with a dtmf command? Here's my issue. I have some prerecorded audio clips that can be called via dtmf commands. They're goofy things like canned laughs and applause clips. I use the "playback" versus the "localplay" so the files will play on my 4 nodes that are permanently connected.