C# Audio Library

Question

I am looking to develop an audio player in C#, but was wondering what libraries are available for playback. I am looking for a free library that allows for an extensive list of audio formats to be played (for example mp3, wma, wav, ogg, etc.) Thats pretty much the basic functionality I would need. But if I could get picky, a library that can convert audio files between the formats would be handy. Doing a google search I came across the alvas.audio library, but it wasn't free. The VLC library would be nice too, but I couldn't get it to work, and I'd prefer to just package my application with a dll instead of having my users have the VLC software installed on their machine as well.

Thanks for any tips or advice on this.

score 48 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 23 '23 at 07:42

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NAudio is an open source .NET audio library that can play back WAV, MP3, WMA, AAC and AIFF files, making use of ACM or Media Foundation codecs installed on your computer for decompression purposes. For ogg support, there is an add-on nuget package you can use.

(Edit: updated with details of supported audio file types in NAudio 1.7. Also, full disclosure: I am the author of this library)

edited Aug 23 '23 at 07:42

Piotr Kula

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answered Jan 23 '09 at 07:45

Mark Heath

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Can I sell my game which plays audio with naudio? – Sri Harsha Chilakapati Jan 16 '13 at 10:50
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@SriHarshaChilakapati yes, MS-PL is commercial product friendly. – Mark Heath Jan 16 '13 at 15:41
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Does this work with Mono / OpenTK? – jjxtra Feb 12 '13 at 19:47
@PsychoDad unlikely to - a large part of NAudio is wrappers for Windows APIs. – Mark Heath Feb 13 '13 at 07:46
@PsychoDad MonoGame uses OpenAL (see my answer). You can try that. – ashes999 Jul 22 '13 at 18:08
@MarkHeath can i convert .M4A file to .FLAC? – adnan Jun 13 '19 at 06:19

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 21 '09 at 18:56

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Bass Audio Library is one option.

answered Jan 21 '09 at 18:56

Joel Coehoorn

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Thank you for the link. I will definitely look into this. – Nick Jan 21 '09 at 20:39
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I was successful making a toy audio player myself with this library. It's pretty easy to use. – Nick Jun 20 '09 at 16:30
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Bass is no longer free (for commercial use). – ashes999 Dec 06 '12 at 21:15

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 08 '12 at 21:46

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Alvas.Audio

This library doesn't seem to be developed any further, I purchased a lifetime team license and haven't been able to get in touch with the developer since November 2011, no answer after many emails, and no new versions despite the promise to create new versions quarterly. Also didn't get any kind of message from the developer that he is abandoning the project.

edited Sep 08 '12 at 21:46

Community

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answered Feb 07 '10 at 21:34

Alex

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This isn't free library! – RredCat Aug 28 '12 at 09:56
New versions http://alvas.net/alvas.audio,news.aspx – user2217261 Jan 30 '14 at 19:18

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 21 '09 at 19:00

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You will want to take a look at DirectShow. DirectShow is an unmanaged library which depends on the codecs installed on the user's system for which you can create render graphs. DirectShow is free and usually installed on most Windows machines.

There is a managed wrapper for DirectShow titled DirectShow.NET, which you can find here:

http://directshownet.sourceforge.net/

answered Jan 21 '09 at 19:00

casperOne

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I will look into this as an option. Thank you for the information. – Nick Jan 21 '09 at 20:40

ashes999 · Answer 5 · 2013-09-29T10:46:01.140

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As of 2012, OpenAL seems to be a viable library -- and something of a standard. It works on a range of OSes (from XP to Windows 8), and integrates with (is already integrated with) MonoGame.

Since the Creative Labs link (above) is down, you can try one of these instead:

edited Sep 29 '13 at 10:46

answered Dec 06 '12 at 21:14

ashes999

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It looks like the link is dead. – Kevin Sep 29 '13 at 10:29
@Kevin I'm pretty sure that's the official site. I tried adding two more links that look about right. – ashes999 Sep 29 '13 at 10:46

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 02 '11 at 14:08

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irrKlang is a C++ audio library with a .NET API. It is free for non-commercial use.

answered Dec 02 '11 at 14:08

sourcenouveau

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C# Audio Library

6 Answers6

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