I currently have some python code that constantly records 4-second chunks of audio:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sounddevice as sd
fs = 16000
while True:
print['Started listening']
myrecording = sd.rec[int[4 * fs], dtype='int16', channels=1, blocking=True]
However, instead of having a fixed 4-second chunk, I would like sounddevice
to record until the volume of the drops below a threshold of audio [ie, when the person with the microphone has stopped talking], and then start listening again.
Essentially, I want to mimic the behaviour of a command like sox
's rec recording.wav silence 1 0.1 3% 1 3.0 3%
, which does exactly this.
Is there an easy way to
do this with sounddevice
?
First, import the module:
Playback¶
Assuming you have a NumPy array named myarray
holding audio data with a sampling frequency of fs
[in the most cases this will be 44100 or 48000 frames per second], you can
play it back with sounddevice.play[]
:
This function returns immediately but continues playing the audio signal in the background. You can stop playback with sounddevice.stop[]
:
If you know that you will use the same sampling frequency for a
while, you can set it as default using sounddevice.default.samplerate
:
sd.default.samplerate = fs
After that, you can drop the samplerate argument:
Recording¶
To record audio
data from your sound device into a NumPy array, use sounddevice.rec[]
:
duration = 10.5 # seconds myrecording = sd.rec[int[duration * fs], samplerate=fs, channels=2]
Again, for repeated use you can set defaults using sounddevice.default
:
sd.default.samplerate = fs sd.default.channels = 2
After that, you can drop the additional arguments:
myrecording = sd.rec[int[duration * fs]]
This function also returns immediately but continues recording in the background. In the meantime, you can run other commands. If you want to check if the recording is finished, you should use sounddevice.wait[]
:
If the recording was already finished, this returns immediately; if not, it waits and returns as soon as the recording is finished.
Alternatively, you could have used the blocking argument in the first place:
myrecording = sd.rec[duration * fs, blocking=True]
By default, the recorded array has the data type 'float32'
[see sounddevice.default.dtype
], but this can be changed with the dtype argument:
myrecording = sd.rec[duration * fs, dtype='float64']
Simultaneous Playback and Recording¶
To play back an array and record at the same time, use sounddevice.playrec[]
:
myrecording = sd.playrec[myarray, fs, channels=2]
The number of output channels is obtained from myarray
, but the number of input channels
still has to be specified.
Again, default values can be used:
sd.default.samplerate = fs sd.default.channels = 2 myrecording = sd.playrec[myarray]
In this case the number of output channels is still taken from myarray
[which may or may not have 2 channels], but the number of input channels is taken from sounddevice.default.channels
.
Device Selection¶
In many cases, the default input/output device[s] will be the one[s] you want, but it is of course possible to choose a different device. Use sounddevice.query_devices[]
to get a list of supported devices.
The same list can be obtained from a terminal by typing the command
You can use the corresponding device ID to select a desired device by assigning to sounddevice.default.device
or by passing it as device argument to
sounddevice.play[]
, sounddevice.Stream[]
etc.
Instead of the numerical device ID, you can also use a space-separated list of case-insensitive substrings of the device name [and the host API name, if needed].
See sounddevice.default.device
for details.
import sounddevice as sd sd.default.samplerate = 44100 sd.default.device = 'digital output' sd.play[myarray]
Callback Streams¶
Callback “wire” with
sounddevice.Stream
:
import sounddevice as sd duration = 5.5 # seconds def callback[indata, outdata, frames, time, status]: if status: print[status] outdata[:] = indata with sd.Stream[channels=2, callback=callback]: sd.sleep[int[duration * 1000]]
Same thing with sounddevice.RawStream
:
import sounddevice as sd duration = 5.5 # seconds def callback[indata, outdata, frames, time, status]: if status: print[status] outdata[:] = indata with sd.RawStream[channels=2, dtype='int24', callback=callback]: sd.sleep[int[duration * 1000]]
Note
We are using 24-bit samples here for no particular reason [just because we can].