List all audio devices with Python's pyaudio (portaudio binding)

Question

I tried

import pyaudio
p = pyaudio.PyAudio()
for i in range(p.get_device_count()):
    print p.get_device_info_by_index(i)

but I don't get the full list of all devices : for example I don't get ASIO devices in this list. This is strange, because portaudio should give ASIO devices as well, right ?

How can I list all audio devices with pyaudio ?

I tried your code, with a pyaudio binary from: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pyaudio for me it prints all my ASIO devices — Emile Vrijdags, Sep 22 '14 at 17:37
Yes @EmileVrijdags, I contacted M. Gohlke a few months ago, and he updated his binaries with ASIO support. (my original post was in Dec 2013) — Basj, Sep 22 '14 at 18:25

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 09 '15 at 09:22

7

I've created (a while after this question was posted) the sounddevice module for Python, which includes its own DLLs with ASIO support (and all other host APIs, too). It can be installed with:

pip install sounddevice --user

After that, you can list all your devices with:

python -m sounddevice

Of course you can also do this within Python:

import sounddevice as sd
sd.query_devices()

answered Dec 09 '15 at 09:22

Matthias

4,524
2
31
50

python3.6 -m sounddevice (prints nothing) – Chris P Jun 07 '20 at 13:20
@ChrisP Please create an issue as described in https://python-sounddevice.readthedocs.io/en/latest/CONTRIBUTING.html. – Matthias Jun 08 '20 at 08:50

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 30 '13 at 06:19

I think your expectations are reasonable. The equivalent C code to enumerate PortAudio devices would give you all available devices. There are a couple of things that could be wrong:

Your build of PyAudio has not been compiled with ASIO support. PortAudio will only enumerate devices for the native host APIs that have been configured/compiled in at compile time.
You have a 64-bit build of Python/PyAudio and your ASIO device drivers are 32-bit, or vis-versa (64-bit ASIO drivers and 32-bit Python).

As Multimedia Mike suggests, you can eliminate PyAudio from the equation by enumerating PA devices from C. The pa_devs.c program in the PortAudio distribution does this.

Thank you for your answer. I spent hours and hours to try to compile PyAudio *with* ASIO support (thanks to the discussion https://github.com/bastibe/PyAudio/pull/4) but unfortunately I cannot finish the compile... If you have time to have a look at the procedure described here https://github.com/bastibe/PyAudio/pull/4 @RossBencina, thanks in advance! — Basj, Dec 30 '13 at 09:31

score -2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 24 '13 at 16:21

-2

I'm thinking that the problem could be in the underlying PortAudio library. Do you have (or can you write, in C) a simple utility that accesses the PortAudio library and tries to perform this same listing?

Also, googling for 'portaudio asio' reveals this tidbit from the official PortAudio docs:

There are cases where PortAudio is limited by the capabilities of the underlying native audio API... the ASIO SDK only allows one device to be open at a time, so PortAudio/ASIO doesn't currently support opening multiple ASIO devices simultaneously.

answered Dec 24 '13 at 16:21

Multimedia Mike

12,660
5
46
62

I need to study this. I don't have a C compiler/linker installed (and those libraries neither) right now, and quite no knowledge about this... Would you have such tools @MultimediaMike ? – Basj Dec 24 '13 at 23:54
The fact that PortAudio can't open *streams* to multiple ASIO devices simultaneously has no bearing on enumerating device info. – Ross Bencina Dec 30 '13 at 06:14
The `sounddevice` module also uses PortAudio which *can* find the correct device. – JakeD May 26 '17 at 15:32

List all audio devices with Python's pyaudio (portaudio binding)

3 Answers3

Linked