A powerful and extensible cross-platform .NET audio engine. provides comprehensive audio processing capabilities including playback, recording, effects, analysis, and visualization, built with a modular and high-performance architecture.
A Powerful and Extensible .NET Audio Engine for Enterprise Applications
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Introduction
SoundFlow is a robust and versatile .NET audio engine designed for seamless cross-platform audio processing. It provides a comprehensive set of features for audio playback, recording, processing, analysis, and visualization, all within a well-structured and extensible framework. SoundFlow empowers developers to build sophisticated audio applications, from real-time communication systems to advanced non-linear audio editors.
Key Features:
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Runs seamlessly on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and FreeBSD, ensuring broad deployment options.
Modular Component Architecture: Build custom audio pipelines by connecting sources, modifiers, mixers, and analyzers.
Plug & Play Integrations: Extend SoundFlow's capabilities with official integration packages, such as the WebRTC Audio Processing Module for advanced noise suppression, echo cancellation, and automatic gain control.
Extensibility: Easily add custom audio components, effects, and visualizers to tailor the engine to your specific needs.
High Performance: Optimized for real-time audio processing with SIMD support and efficient memory management.
Playback: Play audio from various sources, including files, streams, and in-memory assets.
Recording: Capture audio input and save it to different encoding formats.
Mixing: Combine multiple audio streams with precise control over volume and panning.
Effects: Apply a wide range of audio effects, including reverb, chorus, delay, equalization, and more.
Analysis: Extract valuable information from audio data, such as RMS level, peak level, frequency spectrum, and voice activity.
Visualization: Create engaging visual representations of audio waveforms, spectrums, and level meters.
Surround Sound: Supports advanced surround sound configurations with customizable speaker positions, delays, and panning methods.
HLS Streaming Support: Integrate internet radio and online audio via HTTP Live Streaming.
Backend Agnostic: Supports the MiniAudio backend out of the box, with the ability to add others.
Non-Destructive Audio Editing & Persistence:
Compositions & Tracks: Organize audio projects into multi-track compositions, allowing flexible arrangement and mixing.
Audio Segments: Place and manipulate audio clips on a timeline with granular control over their playback, including volume, pan, fades (Linear, Logarithmic, S-Curve), reversal, and advanced looping (repetitions or target duration).
Pitch-Preserved Time Stretching: Modify the duration of audio segments without altering their pitch, ideal for adapting content to specific timeframes.
Project Save/Load: Persist entire audio compositions to disk, including media consolidation and embedding options, with support for relinking missing audio sources.
Timeline Manipulation: Programmatically insert, remove, replace, or silence audio sections on a track, with automatic shifting of subsequent content.
Getting Started
Installation
NuGet Package Manager:
Install-Package SoundFlow
.NET CLI:
dotnet add package SoundFlow
Basic Usage Example
This example demonstrates how to play an audio file using SoundFlow:
using SoundFlow.Abstracts;
using SoundFlow.Backends.MiniAudio;
using SoundFlow.Components;
using SoundFlow.Providers;
using SoundFlow.Enums;
// Initialize the audio engine with the MiniAudio backend
// Ensure a sample rate compatible with WebRTC APM (8k, 16k, 32k, or 48k Hz) if using the APM extension.
using var audioEngine = new MiniAudioEngine(48000, Capability.Playback);
// Create a SoundPlayer and load an audio file
var player = new SoundPlayer(new StreamDataProvider(File.OpenRead("path/to/your/audiofile.wav")));
// Add the player to the master mixer
Mixer.Master.AddComponent(player);
// Start playback
player.Play();
// Keep the console application running until playback finishes
Console.WriteLine("Playing audio... Press any key to stop.");
Console.ReadKey();
// Stop playback and remove the player from the mixer
player.Stop();
Mixer.Master.RemoveComponent(player);
Core Concepts
SoundFlow is built upon a few key concepts:
Audio Engine (AudioEngine): The central component that manages audio device initialization, data processing, and the audio graph.
Sound Components (SoundComponent): Modular units that process or generate audio, forming a directed graph through input and output connections.
Mixer (Mixer): Combines multiple audio streams into a single output.
Sound Modifiers (SoundModifier): Apply audio effects like reverb, chorus, delay, and equalization.
Audio Playback & Recording: Components for playing and capturing audio, including surround sound support.
Audio Providers: Standardized way to read audio data from various sources (files, streams, memory).
Audio Analysis & Visualization: Tools for extracting information from audio and creating visual representations.
Composition (Composition): The top-level project file that defines a multi-track audio timeline, applies master effects, and manages persistence.
Tracks (Track): Containers within a Composition that hold AudioSegments. Tracks have their own settings for volume, pan, mute, solo, and can host effects/analyzers.
Audio Segments (AudioSegment): Individual audio clips placed on a Track's timeline. Segments reference a portion of an ISoundDataProvider and can apply segment-specific settings like fades, looping, reversal, speed, and pitch-preserved time stretching.
Time Stretchers (WsolaTimeStretcher): An advanced internal component used by AudioSegment and SoundPlayerBase to perform high-quality, pitch-preserved time manipulation.
SoundFlow's architecture supports adding specialized audio processing capabilities via dedicated NuGet packages. These extensions integrate external libraries, making their features available within the SoundFlow ecosystem, often as SoundModifiers or utility components.
SoundFlow.Extensions.WebRtc.Apm
This package provides an integration with a native library based on the WebRTC Audio Processing Module (APM). The WebRTC APM is a high-quality suite of algorithms commonly used in voice communication applications to improve audio quality.
Features included in this extension:
Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC): Reduces echoes caused by playback audio being picked up by the microphone.
Automatic Gain Control (AGC): Automatically adjusts the audio signal level to a desired target.
High Pass Filter (HPF): Removes low-frequency components (like DC offset or rumble).
Pre-Amplifier: Applies a fixed gain before other processing.
These features are primarily exposed through a single WebRtcApmModifier component, which is designed for real-time audio graph processing. A separate NoiseSuppressor component is also available for offline/batch processing of audio data from an ISoundDataProvider.
Note: The WebRTC APM native library has specific requirements, notably supporting only certain sample rates (8000, 16000, 32000, or 48000 Hz). Ensure your AudioEngine is initialized with one of these rates when using this extension.
The Documentation provides a wide range of tutorials and examples to help you get started:
Playback: Playing audio files and streams, controlling playback.
Recording: Recording audio, using voice activity detection.
Effects: Applying various audio effects.
Analysis: Getting RMS level, analyzing frequency spectrum.
Visualization: Creating level meters, waveform displays, and spectrum analyzers.
Composition: Managing audio projects, including creating, editing, and saving multi-track compositions.
(Note: You can also find extensive example code in the Samples folder of the repository.)
Contributing
We welcome contributions to SoundFlow! If you'd like to contribute, please follow these guidelines:
Report Issues: If you find a bug or have a feature request, please open an issue on the GitHub repository.
Ask Questions and Seek Help: If you have questions about using SoundFlow or need help with a specific issue, please open a discussion on the GitHub repository to keep the issues section clean and focused.
Submit Pull Requests:
Fork the repository.
Create a new branch for your changes.
Make your changes, following the project's coding style and conventions.
Make sure your changes is well tested.
Submit a pull request to the master branch.
Coding Style:
Follow the .NET coding conventions.
Use clear and descriptive variable and method names.
Write concise and well-documented code.
Use XML documentation comments for public members.
Acknowledgments
We sincerely appreciate the foundational work provided by the following projects and modules:
miniaudio - Provides a lightweight and efficient audio I/O backend.
WebRTC Audio Processing Module (APM) - Offers advanced audio processing (AEC, AGC, Noise Suppression, etc) based on WebRTC's module, thanks to PulseAudio efforts.
Support This Project
SoundFlow is an open-source project driven by passion and community needs. Maintaining and developing a project of this scale, especially with thorough audio testing, requires significant time and resources.
Currently, development and testing are primarily done using built-in computer speakers. Your support will directly help improve the quality of SoundFlow by enabling the purchase of dedicated headphones and audio equipment for more accurate and comprehensive testing across different audio setups.
Beyond equipment, your contributions, no matter the size, help to:
Dedicate more time to development: Allowing for faster feature implementation, bug fixes, and improvements.
Enhance project quality: Enabling better testing, documentation, and overall project stability (including better audio testing with proper equipment!).
Sustain long-term maintenance: Ensuring SoundFlow remains actively maintained and relevant for the community.
You can directly support SoundFlow and help me get essential headphones through:
AirTM: For simple one-time donations with various payment options like Direct Bank Transfer (ACH), Debit / Credit Card via Moonpay, Stablecoins, and more than 500 banks and e-wallets.
You can also scan this QR code in your Camera app:
By becoming a sponsor or making a donation, you directly contribute to the future of SoundFlow and help ensure it sounds great for everyone. Thank you for your generosity!
