How do I get a list of my device's audio sample rates using PyAudio or PortAudio?

Question

I\'d like to query my audio device and get all its available sample rates. I\'m using PyAudio 0.2, which runs on top of PortAudio v19, on an Ubuntu machine with Python 2.6.

Answer 1

With the sounddevice module, you can do it like that:

import sounddevice as sd

samplerates = 32000, 44100, 48000, 96000, 128000
device = 0

supported_samplerates = []
for fs in samplerates:
    try:
        sd.check_output_settings(device=device, samplerate=fs)
    except Exception as e:
        print(fs, e)
    else:
        supported_samplerates.append(fs)
print(supported_samplerates)

When I tried this, I got:

32000 Invalid sample rate
128000 Invalid sample rate
[44100, 48000, 96000]

You can also check if a certain number of channels or a certain data type is supported. For more details, check the documentation: check_output_settings(). You can of course also check if a device is a supported input device with check_input_settings().

If you don't know the device ID, have a look at query_devices().

I don't think that's still relevant, but this also works with Python 2.6, you just have to remove the parentheses from the print statements and replace except Exception as e: with except Exception, e:.

Answer 2

In the pyaudio distribution, test/system_info.py shows how to determine supported sample rates for devices. See the section that starts at line 49.

In short, you use the PyAudio.is_format_supported method, e.g.

devinfo = p.get_device_info_by_index(1)  # Or whatever device you care about.
if p.is_format_supported(44100.0,  # Sample rate
                         input_device=devinfo['index'],
                         input_channels=devinfo['maxInputChannels'],
                         input_format=pyaudio.paInt16):
  print 'Yay!'

Answer 3

Directly using Portaudio you can run the command below:

for (int i = 0, end = Pa_GetDeviceCount(); i != end; ++i) {
    PaDeviceInfo const* info = Pa_GetDeviceInfo(i);
    if (!info) continue;
    printf("%d: %s\n", i, info->name);
}

Thanks to another thread