PortAudio - an Open Source Cross Platform Audio API

ndio Abstract This paper describes a new open-source cross-platform ‘C’ library for audio input and output. It is designed to simplify the porting of audio applications between various platforms, and also to simplify the development of audio programs in general by hiding the complexities of device interfacing. The API was worked out through community discussions on the music-dsp mailing list. A number of people have contributed to the development of the API and are listed on the web-site. Implementations of PortAudio for Windows MME and DirectSound, the Macintosh Sound Manager, and Unix OSS have been developed and are freely available on the web. Support for other platforms is being planned. The paper describes the use of PortAudio and discusses the issues involved in its development including the design philosophy, latency, callbacks versus blocking read/write calls, and efficiency.