How to play a sound from the macOS command line

Use the afplay built-in command:

afplay file.mp3

Here are some more options from tldr.sh

afplay

  Command-line audio player.
  More information: https://ss64.com/osx/afplay.html.

  - Play a sound file (waits until playback ends):
    afplay path/to/file

  - Play a sound file at 2x speed (playback rate):
    afplay --rate 2 path/to/file

  - Play a sound file at half speed:
    afplay --rate 0.5 path/to/file

  - Play the first N seconds of a sound file:
    afplay --time seconds path/to/file

You can also make your Mac talk using the say command

say "test"

say -v Fred "Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?"