Installation

First of all, you’ll need Python. Any version where CFFI is supported should work. If you don’t have Python installed yet, you should get one of the distributions which already include CFFI and NumPy (and many other useful things), e.g. Anaconda or WinPython.

https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/python-sounddevice/badges/version.svg

If you are using the conda package manager (e.g. with Anaconda for Linux/macOS/Windows), you can install the sounddevice module from the conda-forge channel:

conda install -c conda-forge python-sounddevice

Note

The PortAudio package on conda-forge doesn’t have ASIO support, see https://github.com/conda-forge/portaudio-feedstock/issues/9.

There are also packages for several other package managers:

https://repology.org/badge/vertical-allrepos/python:sounddevice.svg

If you are using Windows, you can alternatively install one of the packages provided at https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#sounddevice. The PortAudio library (with ASIO support) is included in the package and you can get the rest of the dependencies on the same page.

Note that some of the aforementioned packages may be out-of-date. You can always get the newest sounddevice release from PyPI (using pip). If you want to try the latest development version, have a look at the section about Contributing.

https://badge.fury.io/py/sounddevice.svg

To install the latest release from PyPI, use:

python3 -m pip install sounddevice --user

If you want to install it system-wide for all users (assuming you have the necessary rights), you can just drop the --user option. If you have installed the module already, you can use the --upgrade flag to get the newest release.

To un-install, use:

python3 -m pip uninstall sounddevice

If you install the sounddevice module with pip on macOS or Windows, the PortAudio library (with ASIO support on Windows) will be installed automagically. On other platforms, you might have to install PortAudio with your package manager (the package might be called libportaudio2 or similar).

You might also have to install CFFI (from a package called python3-cffi or similar).

NumPy is only needed if you want to play back and record NumPy arrays. The classes sounddevice.RawStream, sounddevice.RawInputStream and sounddevice.RawOutputStream use plain Python buffer objects and don’t need NumPy at all. If you need NumPy, you should install it with your package manager (from a package named python3-numpy or similar) or use a Python distribution that already includes NumPy (see above). You can also install NumPy with pip, but depending on your platform, this might require a compiler and several additional libraries.