14.1: /dev/audio gone? Is there a replacement?

SUMMARY:

After upgrading to 14.1, it looks like /dev/audio is gone.
Maybe this is some side effect of the "hot un/plugging" changes to
audio that wasn't mentioned in the Release Notes?

I used to be able to do "cp somesound.au /dev/audio".
What, if anything, is the replacement?

DETAILS:

The boot-up messages in the log file show the device uaudio0 getting
discovered just as before.  The only log file difference I see is that
"pcm0: <USB audio> on uaudio0" has changed to "pcm0: on uaudio0".
I see no audio*, uaudio*, nor pcm* in /dev now, though.

1) /dev/dsp0 isn't an instant substitute:
   "cp somesound.au /dev/dsp0" sounds like both the wrong speed and
   the volume cranked up well past distortion level.

2) "out123 -m -r 8000 --speed .5 -P -6 somesound.au" sounds like maybe
   something like this could be made to work if I could find all the
   right options, but the result so far is horribly noisy.  [The .au
   file I'm trying to play is sample rate 8000 mono.]

3) pacat/paplay gets "Connection failure: Connection refused".

Any suggestions?
 -WBE