link field template syntax / display link field as an image / devel dpm (D7)
I dont really understand what the problem is, If you are already outputting the link URL, and you want to display that as an image, surely you can just wrap it in an img tag?

&lt;?php $path = $items[0]['#file']-&gt;uri; ?&gt; 

&lt;img src="&lt;?php print file_create_url($path); ?&gt;" /&gt;


OR, with an mp3 file like in your example...

&lt;?php $path = $items[0]['#file']-&gt;uri; ?&gt; 
&lt;audio controls&gt;
  &lt;source src="&lt;?php print file_create_url($path); ?&gt;" type="audio/mpeg"&gt;
&lt;/audio&gt;