TinySoundFont-pybind

This project is a Python package that provides Python bindings for TinySoundFont. This lets you generate audio using SoundFont instruments (.sf2 or .sf3) in Python.

Python bindings are created using pybind11. This package is self-contained and does not link to any other native libraries or have any external dependencies.

Installation

To install this package do:

pip install tinysoundfont

PyAudio

Note that this package just does audio data generation, it does not provide audio playback. To playback audio data you need a package that supplies that. Tests and examples for this package use PyAudio which supplies binding to PortAUdio.

Getting pyaudio working is somewhat platform specific. Basic installation:

Windows

python -m pip install pyaudio

macOS

brew install portaudio
pip install pyaudio

GNU/Linux (Ubuntu)

sudo apt install python3-pyaudio

Basic Usage

import tinysoundfont

Each SF2 instrument is loaded into its own object:

sf = tinysoundfont.SoundFont('test/example.sf2')

You can also load from a bytes object the same way.

sf = tinysoundfont.SoundFont(myfile.read())

Setup the output format and global volume:

sf.set_output(tinysoundfont.OutputMode.StereoInterleaved, 44100, -18.0)

The negative global gain here lets multiple notes mix without distortion. The correct value to use will depend on how many notes you expect to play and the gain settings of the particular sf2 instrument.

Play a note with:

# Play preset 0, MIDI note 80, at full velocity
sf.note_on(0, 80, 1.0)

Now create a buffer for the instrument to render to. This buffer can be anything that follows the Python buffer protocol. For example, this can be objects of type bytearray, numpy.ndarray, and many other things.

The buffer can be 1D or 2D. If it is 1D then it is expected to be a simple contiguous array of bytes that will be filled with audio samples. If it is 2D then it is expected to have correct format type float32 and dimensions (samples, channels) where channels will be 1 (mono) or 2 (stereo). Samples are always generated in float32 format.

# Create an empty 1 second buffer for stereo float32 at 44.1 KHz
buffer = bytearray(44100 * 4 * 2)

Generate samples using:

sf.render(buffer)

The buffer now contains audio data for the playing instrument.

Playing sound

To play actual sound you need something like pyaudio. This package just generates audio sample data for playback.

PyAudio can play back sound using "blocking mode" or "callback mode". This package is compatible with both mechanisms.

Blocking mode

Here is code showing simple setup of pyaudio and writing 1 second of audio data with a note playing.

import pyaudio
import tinysoundfont

p = pyaudio.PyAudio()
stream = p.open(format=pyaudio.paFloat32,
                channels=2,
                rate=44100,
                output=True)
sf = tinysoundfont.SoundFont('test/example.sf2')
sf.set_output(tinysoundfont.OutputMode.StereoInterleaved, 44100, -18.0)
sf.channel_set_preset_index(0, 0)
buffer = bytearray(44100 * 2 * 4)
sf.channel_note_on(0, 48, 1.0)
sf.render(buffer)
# PyAudio requires immutable `bytes`, not mutable `bytearray`, so convert it
stream.write(bytes(buffer))
stream.close()
p.terminate()

Some details from the example above:

• The format of the output stream opened must be pyaudio.paFloat32 to match float format of rendered audio buffer.
• The data written to pyaudio streams must be bytes, cannot be bytearray directly or numpy.ndarray.

Callback mode

Here is code showing callback mode in pyaudio.

import pyaudio
import time
import tinysoundfont
sf = tinysoundfont.SoundFont('test/example.sf2')
sf.set_output(tinysoundfont.OutputMode.StereoInterleaved, 44100, -18.0)
p = pyaudio.PyAudio()

def callback(in_data, frame_count, time_info, status):
    channels = 2
    bytes_per_sample = 4
    buffer = bytearray(frame_count * channels * bytes_per_sample)
    sf.render(buffer)
    return (bytes(buffer), pyaudio.paContinue)

stream = p.open(format=pyaudio.paFloat32,
                channels=2,
                rate=44100,
                output=True,
                stream_callback=callback)

time.sleep(0.5)
sf.channel_set_preset_index(0, 0)
sf.channel_note_on(0, 48, 1.0)
time.sleep(1)
stream.close()
p.terminate()

Some details from the example above:

• The callback function is provided frame_count which is used to create a buffer and fill it with rendered sound.
• Returning pyaudio.paContinue as the second part of the tuple in the return value keeps the callback active and being called.
• During the time.sleep(1) call, the callback is being called many times and continues rendering in a separate thread.

Audio organization

In general, interactive applications need to use the callback mode of pyaudio. Using blocking mode means that no interaction is possible during audio playback.

For applications that want to synchronize video rendering and audio playback there are a few choices. One choice is to handle audio callbacks as fast as possible with the smallest buffer possible. This is the pyaudio default configuration if no frames_per_buffer is passed to pyaudio.open. For this choice, in the callback you would output audio based on what is happening right at that point in time. This method will have the lowest latency. Because of the arbitrary nature of buffer sizes this method can introduce jitter to event timings. This jitter may be noticeable for steady periodic beats.

Another option is to request a buffer size that matches the "rhythm" of the game. For example a buffer of 441 samples at 44.1 kHz will be refilled exactly 100 times a second. If the game action happens at 120 BPM, that means each beat will span exactly 50 callback buffer fills. The idea here is to keep track of the number of audio callbacks as a master clock for actions and synchronization. Video frames can then be synchronized to the latest audio count taking into account any fixed playback or video synchronization delays. This method has higher latency but lower jitter and consistent delay.

A final option is to use the smallest buffer possible to minimize latency but also record timing information for every event. Then during audio rendering use the timing information to position the events to the correct sample. For example, a single noteon event might need to happen half way through a buffer in the callback. This can be accomplished with the following code:

# Assume we are inside a PyAudio callback
buffer = memoryview(bytearray(frame_count * 2 * 4))
start = frame_count * 2 * 4 // 2
# Render first half
sf.render(buffer[:start])
sf.channel_note_on(0, 48, 1.0)
# Render second half
sf.render(buffer[start:])
return (bytes(buffer), pyaudio.paContinue)

It is important to wrap the bytearray buffer with memoryview so that the slicing operations into the buffer do not copy memory in the buffer but instead refer to subsections of the buffer.

Local build and test

Build and install locally with:

python -m pip install .

Test in the root directory with:

pytest

You may want to build and test in a virtualenv environment.

The python -m pip install . will perform a compilation step for C++ code. Your environment must have access to a working C++ compiler as well as the Python development headers.

Packaging

Build packages with:

python -m build

This should produce a sdist output as a .tar.gz file in dist/ for source distribution.

It should also create a .whl file for binary distribution in dist/ for the current platform.

Compressed SoundFonts

This package also supports compressed SoundFont2 formats .sf3 and .sfo by using std_vorbis.c. The compressed formats are similar to regular .sf2 but the audio waveforms are stored with Ogg/Vorbis compression instead of being stored uncompressed. This is especially useful for large General MIDI soundbanks that contain many instruments in one file. For information about converting SoundFonts see SFOTool.

Compressed streams are decompressed into memory when the file is loaded. This means there will be more computation required when loading the instrument. This also means the total memory needed at runtime will not be less than the equivalent uncompressed .sf2 version. The compressed format is more for saving space when distributing or storing the instrument file.