PyWave

Open and read Wave files

PyWave is a small extension that enables you to open and read the data of any WAVE-RIFF file.
It supports PCM, IEEE-FLOAT, EXTENSIBLE and a few other wave formats (including 32 and 64 bit waves).

Tiny documentation

About PyWave

PyWave is supposed to replace the builtin Python extension wave, which doesn't support >16-bit wave files.

Using PyWave

To install PyWave you can use the PyPI:

pip install PyWave

To use PyWave in a script, you have to import the package PyWave using

import PyWave

or a wildcard import:

from PyWave import *

The Wave class

You can use open(path) to open and read a wave file.
It will return an instance of the Wave class.

The following methods are provided by the Wave class:

Wave.read([max_bytes = None]) -> <bytes> data
    Reads and returns at most <max_bytes> bytes of data.
    If <max_bytes> is None, reads until the end.

Wave.read_samples(number_of_samples) -> <bytes> data
    Reads and returns at most <number_of_samples> samples of data.

Wave.seek(offset[, whence = 0]) -> None
    Sets the current position in the data stream.
    If <whence> is 0, <offset> is the absolute position of the
    data stream in bytes.
    If <whence> is 1, <offset> is added to the current position
    in the data stream in bytes.
    If <whence> is 2, the position will be set to the end of
    the file plus <offset>.

Wave.tell() -> <int> position
    Returns the current position in the data stream.

Wave.close() -> None
    Closes the file handle.

And it has the following members:

Wave.format <int>
    Format of the audio data. Can be any of:
    - WAVE_FORMAT_PCM
    - WAVE_FORMAT_IEEE_FLOAT
    - WAVE_FORMAT_ALAW
    - WAVE_FORMAT_MULAW
    - WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE
    Otherwise the format is unknown

Wave.channels <int>
    The number of audio channels present in the audio stream

Wave.frequency <int>
    Sample rate of the audio stream

Wave.bitrate <int>
    Number of bits per second

Wave.bits_per_sample <int>
    Number of bits per sample (usually 8, 16 or 32)

Wave.samples <int>
    Total number of samples in the audio data

Wave.data <bytes>
    (only if <auto_read> was set to True)
    Audio data as bytes

Wave.metadata <dict>
    A dictionary containing metadata specified in the wave file

Example

import PyWave

PATH = "path/to/a/wave/file.wav"

wf = PyWave.open(PATH)

print("This WAVE file has the following properties:")
print(wf.channels, "channels")
print(wf.frequency, "Hz sample rate")
print(wf.bitrate, "bits per second")
print(wf.samples, "total samples")