SoundFile is an audio library based on libsndfile, CFFI and NumPy. Full documentation is available on http://pysoundfile.readthedocs.org/.
SoundFile can read and write sound files. File reading/writing is supported through libsndfile, which is a free, cross-platform, open-source (LGPL) library for reading and writing many different sampled sound file formats that runs on many platforms including Windows, OS X, and Unix. It is accessed through CFFI, which is a foreign function interface for Python calling C code. CFFI is supported for CPython 2.6+, 3.x and PyPy 2.0+. SoundFile represents audio data as NumPy arrays.
(c) 2013, Bastian Bechtold
SoundFile has evolved rapidly during the last few releases. Most notably, we changed the import name from import pysoundfile
to import soundfile
in 0.7. In 0.6, we cleaned up many small inconsistencies, particularly in the the ordering and naming of function arguments and the removal of the indexing interface.
In 0.8.0, we changed the default value of always_2d
from True
to False
. Also, the order of arguments of the write
function changed from write(data, file, ...)
to write(file, data, ...)
.
In 0.9.0, we changed the ctype
arguments of the buffer_*
methods to dtype
, using the Numpy dtype
notation. The old ctype
arguments still work, but are now officially deprecated.
SoundFile depends on the Python packages CFFI and NumPy, and the system library libsndfile.
In a modern Python, you can use pip install soundfile
to download and install the latest release of SoundFile and its dependencies. On Windows and OS X, this will also install the library libsndfile. On Linux, you need to install libsndfile using your distribution's package manager, for example sudo apt-get install libsndfile1
.
If you are running on an unusual platform or if you are using an older version of Python, you might need to install NumPy and CFFI separately, for example using the Anaconda package manager or the Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages.
In case of API usage errors the soundfile
module raises the usual ValueError or TypeError.
For other errors SoundFileError is raised (used to be RuntimeError). Particularly, a LibsndfileError subclass of this exception is raised on errors reported by the libsndfile library. In that case the exception object provides the libsndfile internal error code in the LibsndfileError.code attribute and the raw libsndfile error message in the LibsndfileError.error_string attribute.
Data can be written to the file using soundfile.write(), or read from the file using soundfile.read(). SoundFile can open all file formats that libsndfile supports, for example WAV, FLAC, OGG and MAT files (see Known Issues below about writing OGG files).
Here is an example for a program that reads a wave file and copies it into an FLAC file:
import soundfile as sf
data, samplerate = sf.read('existing_file.wav')
sf.write('new_file.flac', data, samplerate)
Sound files can also be read in short, optionally overlapping blocks with soundfile.blocks(). For example, this calculates the signal level for each block of a long file:
import numpy as np
import soundfile as sf
rms = [np.sqrt(np.mean(block**2)) for block in
sf.blocks('myfile.wav', blocksize=1024, overlap=512)]
Sound files can also be opened as SoundFile objects. Every SoundFile has a specific sample rate, data format and a set number of channels.
If a file is opened, it is kept open for as long as the SoundFile object exists. The file closes when the object is garbage collected, but you should use the SoundFile.close() method or the context manager to close the file explicitly:
import soundfile as sf
with sf.SoundFile('myfile.wav', 'r+') as f:
while f.tell() < f.frames:
pos = f.tell()
data = f.read(1024)
f.seek(pos)
f.write(data*2)
All data access uses frames as index. A frame is one discrete time-step in the sound file. Every frame contains as many samples as there are channels in the file.
Pysoundfile can usually auto-detect the file type of sound files. This is not possible for RAW files, though:
import soundfile as sf
data, samplerate = sf.read('myfile.raw', channels=1, samplerate=44100,
subtype='FLOAT')
Note that on x86, this defaults to endian='LITTLE'
. If you are reading big endian data (mostly old PowerPC/6800-based files), you have to set endian='BIG'
accordingly.
You can write RAW files in a similar way, but be advised that in most cases, a more expressive format is better and should be used instead.
If you have an open file-like object, Pysoundfile can open it just like regular files:
import soundfile as sf
with open('filename.flac', 'rb') as f:
data, samplerate = sf.read(f)
Here is an example using an HTTP request:
import io
import soundfile as sf
from urllib.request import urlopen
url = "http://tinyurl.com/shepard-risset"
data, samplerate = sf.read(io.BytesIO(urlopen(url).read()))
Note that the above example only works with Python 3.x. For Python 2.x support, replace the third line with:
from urllib2 import urlopen
Writing to OGG files can result in empty files with certain versions of libsndfile. See #130 for news on this issue.
- 2013-08-27 V0.1.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Initial prototype. A simple wrapper for libsndfile in Python
- 2013-08-30 V0.2.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Bugfixes and more consistency with PySoundCard
- 2013-08-30 V0.2.1 Bastian Bechtold:
Bugfixes
- 2013-09-27 V0.3.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Added binary installer for Windows, and context manager
- 2013-11-06 V0.3.1 Bastian Bechtold:
Switched from distutils to setuptools for easier installation
- 2013-11-29 V0.4.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Thanks to David Blewett, now with Virtual IO!
- 2013-12-08 V0.4.1 Bastian Bechtold:
Thanks to Xidorn Quan, FLAC files are not float32 any more.
- 2014-02-26 V0.5.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Thanks to Matthias Geier, improved seeking and a flush() method.
- 2015-01-19 V0.6.0 Bastian Bechtold:
A big, big thank you to Matthias Geier, who did most of the work!
- Switched to
float64
as default data type. - Function arguments changed for consistency.
- Added unit tests.
- Added global read(), write(), blocks() convenience functions.
- Documentation overhaul and hosting on readthedocs.
- Added
'x'
open mode. - Added tell() method.
- Added
__repr__()
method.
- Switched to
- 2015-04-12 V0.7.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Again, thanks to Matthias Geier for all of his hard work, but also Nils Werner and Whistler7 for their many suggestions and help.
- Renamed
import pysoundfile
toimport soundfile
. - Installation through pip wheels that contain the necessary libraries for OS X and Windows.
- Removed
exclusive_creation
argument to write(). - Added truncate() method.
- Renamed
- 2015-10-20 V0.8.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Again, Matthias Geier contributed a whole lot of hard work to this release.
- Changed the default value of
always_2d
fromTrue
toFalse
. - Numpy is now optional, and only loaded for
read
andwrite
. - Added SoundFile.buffer_read() and SoundFile.buffer_read_into() and SoundFile.buffer_write(), which read/write raw data without involving Numpy.
- Added info() function that returns metadata of a sound file.
- Changed the argument order of the write() function from
write(data, file, ...)
towrite(file, data, ...)
And many more minor bug fixes.
- Changed the default value of
- 2017-02-02 V0.9.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Thank you, Matthias Geier, Tomas Garcia, and Todd, for contributions for this release.
- Adds support for ALAC files.
- Adds new member
__libsndfile_version__
- Adds number of frames to
info
class - Adds
dtype
argument tobuffer_*
methods - Deprecates
ctype
argument tobuffer_*
methods - Adds official support for Python 3.6
And some minor bug fixes.
- 2017-11-12 V0.10.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Thank you, Matthias Geier, Toni Barth, Jon Peirce, Till Hoffmann, and Tomas Garcia, for contributions to this release.
- Should now work with cx_freeze.
- Several documentation fixes in the README.
- Removes deprecated
ctype
argument in favor ofdtype
inbuffer_*()
. - Adds SoundFile.frames in favor of now-deprecated
__len__()
. - Improves performance of blocks() and SoundFile.blocks().
- Improves import time by using CFFI's out of line mode.
- Adds a build script for building distributions.