python-soundfile

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The soundfile <https://github.com/bastibe/python-soundfile>__ module is an audio
library based on libsndfile, CFFI and NumPy. Full documentation is
available on https://python-soundfile.readthedocs.io/.

The soundfile module can read and write sound files. File reading/writing is
supported through libsndfile <http://www.mega-nerd.com/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 <https://cffi.readthedocs.io/>, which is a foreign function
interface for Python calling C code. CFFI is supported for CPython 2.6+,
3.x and PyPy 2.0+. The soundfile module represents audio data as NumPy arrays.

| python-soundfile is BSD licensed (BSD 3-Clause License).
| (c) 2013, Bastian Bechtold

Breaking Changes

The soundfile module has evolved rapidly in the past. 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.

In 0.12.0, we changed the load order of the libsndfile library. Now,
the packaged libsndfile in the platform-specific wheels is tried
before falling back to any system-provided libsndfile. If you would
prefer using the system-provided libsndfile, install the source
package or source wheel instead of the platform-specific wheels.

Installation

The soundfile module depends on the Python packages CFFI and NumPy, and the
library libsndfile.

In a modern Python, you can use pip install soundfile to download
and install the latest release of the soundfile module and its
dependencies. On Windows (64/32) and OS X (Intel/ARM) and Linux 64,
this will also install a current version of the library libsndfile. If
you install the source module, you need to install libsndfile using
your distribution's package manager, for example sudo apt 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.

.. _Anaconda: https://www.continuum.io/downloads

Building

Soundfile itself does not contain any compiled code and can be
bundled into a wheel with the usual python setup.py bdist_wheel.
However, soundfile relies on libsndfile, and optionally ships its
own copy of libsndfile in the wheel.

To build a binary wheel that contains libsndfile, make sure to
checkout and update the _soundfile_data submodule, then run
python setup.py bdist_wheel as usual. If the resulting file size
of the wheel is around one megabyte, a matching libsndfile has been
bundled (without libsndfile, it's around 25 KB).

To build binary wheels for all supported platforms, run python build_wheels.py, which will python setup.py bdist_wheel for each
of the platforms we have precompiled libsndfiles for.

Error Reporting

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.

Read/Write Functions

Data can be written to the file using soundfile.write(), or read from
the file using soundfile.read(). The soundfile module can open all file formats
that libsndfile supports <http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/#Features>, for example WAV,
FLAC, OGG and MAT files (see Known Issues <https://github.com/bastibe/python-soundfile#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:

.. code:: python

import soundfile as sf

data, samplerate = sf.read('existing_file.wav')
sf.write('new_file.flac', data, samplerate)

Block Processing

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:

.. code:: python

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)]

`SoundFile` Objects

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:

.. code:: python

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.

RAW Files

soundfile.read() can usually auto-detect the file type of sound files. This
is not possible for RAW files, though:

.. code:: python

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.

Virtual IO

If you have an open file-like object, soundfile.read() can open it just like
regular files:

.. code:: python

import soundfile as sf
with open('filename.flac', 'rb') as f:
    data, samplerate = sf.read(f)

Here is an example using an HTTP request:

.. code:: python

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:

.. code:: python

from urllib2 import urlopen

In-memory files
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Chunks of audio, i.e. bytes, can also be read and written without touching the filesystem.
In the following example OGG is converted to WAV entirely in memory (without writing files to the disk):

.. code:: python

import io
import soundfile as sf

def ogg2wav(ogg: bytes):
    ogg_buf = io.BytesIO(ogg)
    ogg_buf.name = 'file.ogg'
    data, samplerate = sf.read(ogg_buf)
    wav_buf = io.BytesIO()
    wav_buf.name = 'file.wav'
    sf.write(wav_buf, data, samplerate)
    wav_buf.seek(0)  # Necessary for `.read()` to return all bytes
    return wav_buf.read()

Controlling bitrate mode and compression level
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
For some audio formats, you can control the bitrate and compression level.

compression_level is a float between 0 and 1, with 1 being the highest compression,
and bitrate_mode is 'VARIABLE', 'CONSTANT', or 'AVERAGE'.

.. code:: python

import soundfile as sf

# for example, this uncompressed 5 minute wav file with 32 kHz sample rate is 18 Mb
data, samplerate = sf.read('5min_32kHz.wav') 

# maximum mp3 compression results in 1.1 Mb file, with either CONSTANT or VARIABLE bit rate
sf.write('max_compression_vbr.mp3', data, samplerate, bitrate_mode='VARIABLE', compression_level=.99) 
sf.write('max_compression_cbr.mp3', data, samplerate, bitrate_mode='CONSTANT', compression_level=.99)

# minimum mp3 compression results in 3.5 Mb file
sf.write('min_compression_vbr.mp3', data, samplerate, bitrate_mode='VARIABLE', compression_level=0)

Known Issues

Writing to OGG files can result in empty files with certain versions of libsndfile. See #130 <https://github.com/bastibe/python-soundfile/issues/130>__ for news on this issue.

If using a Buildroot style system, Python has trouble locating libsndfile.so file, which causes python-soundfile to not be loaded. This is apparently a bug in python <https://bugs.python.org/issue13508>__. For the time being, in soundfile.py, you can remove the call to _find_library and hardcode the location of the libsndfile.so in _ffi.dlopen. See #258 <https://github.com/bastibe/python-soundfile/issues/258>__ for discussion on this issue.

News

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.

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`` to ``import soundfile``.
- Installation through pip wheels that contain the necessary
  libraries for OS X and Windows.
- Removed ``exclusive_creation`` argument to `write()`.
- Added `truncate()` method.

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`` from ``True`` to
  ``False``.
- Numpy is now optional, and only loaded for ``read`` and
  ``write``.
- 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, ...)`` to ``write(file, data, ...)``

And many more minor bug fixes.

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 to ``buffer_*`` methods
- Deprecates ``ctype`` argument to ``buffer_*`` 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 of ``dtype`` in ``buffer_*()``.
- 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.

2022-06-02 V0.11.0 Bastian Bechtold:
Thank you, tennies, Hannes Helmholz, Christoph Boeddeker, Matt
Vollrath, Matthias Geier, Jacek Konieczny, Boris Verkhovskiy,
Jonas Haag, Eduardo Moguillansky, Panos Laganakos, Jarvy Jarvison,
Domingo Ramirez, Tim Chagnon, Kyle Benesch, Fabian-Robert Stöter,
Joe Todd

- MP3 support
- Adds binary wheels for macOS M1
- Improves compatibility with macOS, specifically for M1 machines
- Fixes file descriptor open for binary wheels on Windows and Python 3.5+
- Updates libsndfile to v1.1.0
- Adds get_strings method for retrieving all metadata at once
- Improves documentation, error messages and tests
- Displays length of very short files in samples
- Supports the file system path protocol (pathlib et al)

2023-02-02 V0.12.0 Bastian Bechtold
Thank you, Barabazs, Andrew Murray, Jon Peirce, for contributions
to this release.

- Updated libsndfile to v1.2.0
- Improves precompiled library location, especially with py2app or cx-freeze.
- Now provide binary wheels for Linux x86_64
- Now prefers packaged libsndfile over system-installed libsndfile

2023-02-15 V0.12.1 Bastian Bechtold
Thank you, funnypig, for the bug report

- Fixed typo on library location detection if no packaged lib and
  no system lib was found

2025-01-02 V0.13.0 Bastian Bechtold
Thank you, Zhong Jianxin, mcclure, jneuendorf-i4h, aoirint, endolith, Guy Illes, ytya, Sam Lapp, Benjamin Moody

- Updated libsndfile to v1.2.2
- Linux arm64 builds added
- Numpy is now a dependency
- Fixed error in blocks, if file is very short
- Compression level and bitrate controls added for compressed files
- Various README improvements
- Various build system improvements
- Various improvements to error messages

2025-01-25 V0.13.1 Bastian Bechtold
Thank you, Brian McFee and Guy Illes

- Fixed regression in blocks

Dependencies of soundfile (2).
Dependency	Optional
cffi	false
numpy	false

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