Skip to main content

libcsound

Python bindings for Csound (fork of ctcsound)

These bindings can be used with any version of csound >= 6.18. Csound 7 is explicitely supported and is the recommended version.

Installation

Csound

Csound needs to be installed in the system. See https://github.com/csound/csound/releases

In Linux / macOS:

curl -fsSL https://csound-plugins.github.io/installer/install.sh | bash

This installs the latest version of csound 7.

libcsound

pip install libcsound

Environment variables

The csound shared library is located and loaded when libcsound is imported, so these variables must be set before importing it.

  • LIBCSOUNDPATH: absolute path to the csound shared library to load. When set, no other search is performed. If unset, the library is searched in the system path.

  • LIBCSOUND_INSTALL: set to 0 or false to disable the automatic installation of csound when it cannot be found.


Quick Start

Rendering in real-time using a render thread

import libcsound
csound = libcsound.Csound()
csound.setOption('-odac')
csound.compileOrc(r'''

sr = 44100   ; Modify to fit your system
ksmps = 64
nchnls = 2
0dbfs = 1

instr 1
  kchan init -1
  kchan = (kchan + metro:k(1)) % nchnls
  if changed:k(kchan) == 1 then
    println "Channel: %d", kchan + 1
  endif
  asig = pinker() * 0.2
  outch kchan + 1, asig
endin

''')
csound.start()
thread = csound.performanceThread()
thread.play()
# Schedule an instance of instr 1 for 10 seconds
thread.scoreEvent(0, "i", [1, 0, 10])
input("Press any key to stop...\n")
thread.stop()

Render offline

import libcsound
csound = libcsound.Csound()
csound.setOption('-ooutfile.wav')
csound.compileOrc(r'''

sr = 44100
ksmps = 64
nchnls = 2
0dbfs = 1

instr 1
  kchan init -1
  kchan = (kchan + metro:k(1)) % nchnls
  if changed:k(kchan) == 1 then
    println "Channel: %d", kchan + 1
  endif
  asig = pinker() * 0.2
  outch kchan + 1, asig
endin

''')
csound.start()
csound.scoreEvent("i", [1, 0, 10])
csound.setEndMarker(10)
# Perform until the end of the score
while not csound.performKsmps():
    pass

Documentation

https://libcsound.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Metadata

Release files for libcsound 0.17.1

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for libcsound 0.17.1
File Size Uploaded
libcsound-0.17.1.tar.gz 1.3 MB Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for libcsound 0.17.1
File Interpreter ABI Platform
libcsound-0.17.1-py3-none-any.whl Python 3 none any Details

Total release size: 1.5 MB

Release files / libcsound-0.17.1.tar.gz

Download URL libcsound-0.17.1.tar.gz
Size 1.3 MB
Tags Source
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
c5077a6e7aec8492ff0c18e3c08611964d4173d9ee558d6f1c7358195deb197c
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
374f63cf5df7664113ed6cbf0efc8276175a4ae4fce17685601c5a7313eee1c4
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
No
Uploaded via uv/0.4.29

Release files / libcsound-0.17.1-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL libcsound-0.17.1-py3-none-any.whl
Size 202.7 kB
Tags Python 3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
8b78b19caa817363ebe240c5adf2291e62c82e6d6eef4f735ce752aed5f36da0
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
93f9e73d6c307d202e701de2aac50c62214acb8b9ebb53d721cdf4fc31acc628
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
No
Uploaded via uv/0.4.29

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page