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GIL-less Portaudio Streams for Python

pastream builds on top of portaudio and the excellent sounddevice python bindings to provide some more advanced functionality right out of the box. Note that in addition to the pastream library, pastream includes a command line application for playing and recording audio files.

Features

GIL-less Audio Callbacks
Having the portaudio callback implemented in C means audio interrupts can be serviced quickly and reliably without ever needing to acquire the Python Global Interpreter Lock (GIL). This is crucial when working with libraries like Pillow which may greedily grab and hold the GIL subsequently causing audio overruns/underruns.
Input Stream iterators

Efficiently retrieve live audio capture data through an iterable. As simple as:

import pastream as ps
for chunk in ps.chunks():
    process(chunk)

See pastream.chunks and pastream.InputStream.chunks method.

Reader/Writer Threads
pastream simplifies the process of implementing stream reader and writer threads to manipulate and/or generate data in the background while leaving the main thread free for higher level management tasks.

Dependencies

cffi

sounddevice (depends on PortAudio)

soundfile (depends on libsndfile)

(Optional) numpy

Installation

For linux platforms a recent version of the PortAudio and libsndfile C libraries are required. (For Windows and OSX, the sounddevice and soundfile packages include prebuilt versions for you). You can either install the latest available from your package manager (e.g. apt-get install libportaudio2 libsndfile for debian/raspbian) or install the latest stable build from the package website (Recommended); see links in Dependencies.

pastream is now available on PyPI. Installation is as easy as:

$ pip install pastream

Building From Source

To compile from source under unix platforms, libffi is required. (For Windows, this is already included with cffi). libffi is available through most package managers (e.g., yum install libffi-devel, apt-get install libffi-dev, brew install libffi). More information on installing libffi is available here.

If doing a fresh checkout:

$ git clone --recursive http://github.com/tgarc/pastream

If you already have a checkout:

$ git submodule update --init

Then do a pip install from your working copy:

$ pip install <path/to/checkout>

Building Documentation

Documentation for pastream can be easily generated in a wide variety of formats using Sphinx. Just follow the steps below.

Checkout the repository:

$ git clone --recursive http://github.com/tgarc/pastream

Then use the included makefile/make.bat to generate documentation. (Here we output to the html format):

$ cd pastream/docs
$ make html

Examples

Record 1000 frames to file, then play it back:

import pastream as ps

# Use *with* statements to auto-close the stream
with ps.SoundFileInputStream('recording.wav') as stream:
    stream.frames = 1000
    stream.start()
    stream.wait() # Block until recording is done

with ps.SoundFileOutputStream('recording.wav') as stream:
    stream.frames = 1000
    stream.start()
    stream.wait()

Grab (real) frequency transformed live audio stream with 50% overlap:

import pastream as ps, numpy as np

chunksize = 1024
window = np.hanning(chunksize)
for x_l in ps.chunks(chunksize, overlap=chunksize//2, channels=1):
    X_l = np.fft.rfft(x_l * window)

See also the included examples under /examples.

Command Line Application

Once installed, the pastream application should be callable from your command line. If you’re familiar with sox you’ll notice that some of the command line syntax is quite similar. Here are a few examples to help get you started.

Display the help file:

$ pastream -h

List available audio devices:

$ pastream -l

Simultaneous play and record from the default audio device:

$ pastream input.wav output.wav

Pipe input from sox using the AU format:

$ sox -n -t au - synth sine 440 | pastream - output.wav

Play a RAW file:

$ pastream -c1 -r48k -e=pcm_16 -o output.raw

Record 10 seconds of audio at 48kHz:

$ pastream null output.wav -r48k -n=480k

API Reference

Release Notes

0.0.8:
  • BUG: fixed possible bad behavior when pad >= 0 frames < 0 (06881)
  • BUG: pad > 0 can cause too many frame reads (fixed in e917e)
  • Receive buffer is no longer automatically flushed when calling start() (cd65b)
  • BUG: AttributeError was not correctly being caught and reraised in stream threads (3bc5e)
  • Added sphinx documentation (11c13)
  • frames attribute changed from long to long long (ee4ebb)
  • chunks: eliminated an unnecessary copy when using overlap (b0304)
0.0.7:
  • add –loop option to the CLI to allow looping playback.
  • allow empty string as an alternative to null
  • Raise exception when attempting to open stream with RAW playback file if any of samplerate/channels/subtype are not specified.
  • change prebuffering behavior slightly: only wait until the first write, not until the buffer fills up. This should avoid potential long pre-buffer times
  • fix formatting errors in __repr__ when using multiple dtypes and/or devices
  • no need to vendor pa_ringbuffer anymore, it’s available on pip! (Thanks @mgeier !)
  • if a SoundFile inpf is passed to a SoundFileInputStream class, it will be used to set the stream samplerate/channels.
  • addresses a bug when BUFFERSIZE < 8192
  • Stream and SoundFileStream classes renamed to *DuplexStream
  • Swapped assignments of input/output in SoundFileStreams to make it align with the usage in the rest of the library. The order of input/output arguments from the CLI still stays the same though.
  • remove allow_drops parameters. It can be added back at a later point if it proves to be a more useful feature
0.0.6:
  • fix ‘null’ not properly matching on cmdline
  • chunks: check that portaudio has not been terminated before trying to close/stop a stream
  • drop allow_xruns/XRunError
  • Buffered*Stream -> *Stream
  • *Buffer{Empty,Full} -> Buffer{Empty,Full}
  • fix remaining issues with wheel building
  • Dropped unused exception classes (PaStreamError, AudioBufferError)
  • Added prebuffer argument to start() to bypass filling output buffer before stream starts
0.0.5:
  • Redirect sys.stdout to devnull when ‘-‘ is used as the output file stream
  • Specifying multiple --file-type s at command line fixed
  • --format now only accepts a single argument
  • ringbuffersize_t is of a different type for mac platforms; fixed
  • ps.chunks() README example fixed
  • frames is now a signed value. The behavior previously reserved for
    frames == 0 now is active whenever frames < 0
    • Comma separated arguments are no longer allowed; multiple argument options can only be specified by passing them multiple times
    • dropped support for passing a bool for pad parameter
    • -q flag for specifying buffersize has been dropped. This is now reserved for the new --quiet option.
  • add a loopback test for the pastream app using stdin > stdout
  • improvement: chunks function: make sure that stream is closed properly without the performance hit of having an extra yield
  • new feature: If both padding and frames are < 0, padding will be added indefinitely
  • new feature: -q/--quiet option; this drops the deprecated -q option for specifying buffersize
0.0.4:
  • bugfix: chunks: overlap was (accidentally) not allowed if chunksize was not non-zero. This should be allowed as long as stream.blocksize > 0.
  • chunks now supports passing a generic ndarray to out parameter (without having to cast it to a bytes object)
  • nframes renamed to frames
  • padding renamed to pad
  • added allow_drops option to give user the option to ignore ReceiveBufferEmpty error in more atypical use cases
  • raise_on_xruns changed to allow_xruns; inverted behavior
  • got rid of undocumented keep_alive option; the combination of allow_drops and pad can give the same functionality
  • --pad now can be specified without an argument which just sets pad to True
  • added autopadding feature: Now if frames > 0 and pad == True or pad < 0, playback will be zero padded out to frames. This is a nice feature for the pastream application and SoundFileStream since sometimes you want to add extra padding after the file playback.
0.0.3:
  • command line options for size parameters now accept k/K/m/M suffix
  • Backwards compatibility break: multiple argument command line options now accept a comma delimited list
  • improved SoundFileStream reader writers; nearly zero read/write misses
  • bugfix: __repr__ had a bug for certain cases
0.0.2:
  • Improved SoundFileStream interface: remove sfkwargs; instead format, endian, and subtype can be passed directly since they don’t collide with any of the sounddevice parameters
  • Updated examples to allow half or full duplex operation. Also accepts subtype for RAW files
  • chunks() updates * better polling behavior greatly decreases read misses * now supports generic buffers so numpy is not required * added out option to allow user to pass a preallocated buffer * bugfix: overlap was not overlapping correctly
  • MAJOR bugfix: samplerate was not being properly passed up the class chain
  • MAJOR bugfix: lastTime was not being properly copied in py_pastream.c so the value returned was garbage
  • bugfix: assert_chunks_equal: the ‘inframes’ buffer was not being allocated enough space for when chunksize > blocksize which was causing mismatch hysteria
0.0.1:
  • First tenable release

Index

Index