miniaudio (formerly mini_al) is a single file library for audio playback and capture. It's written in C89 (compilable as C++) and released into the public domain.

• A simple build system.
  • It should Just Work out of the box, without the need to download and install any dependencies.
• A simple API.
• Supports playback, capture and full-duplex.
• Data conversion.
  • Sample format conversion, with optional dithering.
  • Sample rate conversion.
  • Channel mapping and channel conversion (stereo to 5.1, etc.)
• MP3, Vorbis, FLAC and WAV decoding.
  • This depends on external single file libraries which can be found in the "extras" folder.

• Windows (XP+), UWP
• macOS, iOS
• Linux
• BSD
• Android
• Raspberry Pi
• Emscripten / HTML5

• WASAPI
• DirectSound
• WinMM
• Core Audio (Apple)
• ALSA
• PulseAudio
• JACK
• sndio (OpenBSD)
• audio(4) (NetBSD and OpenBSD)
• OSS (FreeBSD)
• AAudio (Android 8.0+)
• OpenSL|ES (Android only)
• Web Audio (Emscripten)
• Null (Silence)

Do the following in one source file:

#define MINIAUDIO_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "miniaudio.h"

Then just compile. There's no need to install any dependencies. On Windows and macOS there's no need to link to anything. On Linux and BSD, just link to -lpthread, -lm and -ldl.

#define DR_FLAC_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "../extras/dr_flac.h"  /* Enables FLAC decoding. */
#define DR_MP3_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "../extras/dr_mp3.h"   /* Enables MP3 decoding. */
#define DR_WAV_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "../extras/dr_wav.h"   /* Enables WAV decoding. */

#define MINIAUDIO_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "../miniaudio.h"

#include <stdio.h>

void data_callback(ma_device* pDevice, void* pOutput, const void* pInput, ma_uint32 frameCount)
{
    ma_decoder* pDecoder = (ma_decoder*)pDevice->pUserData;
    if (pDecoder == NULL) {
        return;
    }

    ma_decoder_read_pcm_frames(pDecoder, pOutput, frameCount);

    (void)pInput;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    ma_result result;
    ma_decoder decoder;
    ma_device_config deviceConfig;
    ma_device device;

    if (argc < 2) {
        printf("No input file.\n");
        return -1;
    }

    result = ma_decoder_init_file(argv[1], NULL, &decoder);
    if (result != MA_SUCCESS) {
        return -2;
    }

    deviceConfig = ma_device_config_init(ma_device_type_playback);
    deviceConfig.playback.format   = decoder.outputFormat;
    deviceConfig.playback.channels = decoder.outputChannels;
    deviceConfig.sampleRate        = decoder.outputSampleRate;
    deviceConfig.dataCallback      = data_callback;
    deviceConfig.pUserData         = &decoder;

    if (ma_device_init(NULL, &deviceConfig, &device) != MA_SUCCESS) {
        printf("Failed to open playback device.\n");
        ma_decoder_uninit(&decoder);
        return -3;
    }

    if (ma_device_start(&device) != MA_SUCCESS) {
        printf("Failed to start playback device.\n");
        ma_device_uninit(&device);
        ma_decoder_uninit(&decoder);
        return -4;
    }

    printf("Press Enter to quit...");
    getchar();

    ma_device_uninit(&device);
    ma_decoder_uninit(&decoder);

    return 0;
}

miniaudio includes a decoding API which supports the following backends:

• FLAC via dr_flac
• MP3 via dr_mp3
• WAV via dr_wav
• Vorbis via stb_vorbis

Copies of these libraries can be found in the "extras" folder.

To enable support for a decoding backend, all you need to do is #include the header section of the relevant backend library before the implementation of miniaudio, like so:

#include "dr_flac.h"    // Enables FLAC decoding.
#include "dr_mp3.h"     // Enables MP3 decoding.
#include "dr_wav.h"     // Enables WAV decoding.

#define MINIAUDIO_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "miniaudio.h"

A decoder can be initialized from a file with ma_decoder_init_file(), a block of memory with ma_decoder_init_memory(), or from data delivered via callbacks with ma_decoder_init(). Here is an example for loading a decoder from a file:

ma_decoder decoder;
ma_result result = ma_decoder_init_file("MySong.mp3", NULL, &decoder);
if (result != MA_SUCCESS) {
    return false;   // An error occurred.
}

...

ma_decoder_uninit(&decoder);

When initializing a decoder, you can optionally pass in a pointer to a ma_decoder_config object (the NULL argument in the example above) which allows you to configure the output format, channel count, sample rate and channel map:

ma_decoder_config config = ma_decoder_config_init(ma_format_f32, 2, 48000);

When passing in NULL for this parameter, the output format will be the same as that defined by the decoding backend.

Data is read from the decoder as PCM frames:

ma_uint64 framesRead = ma_decoder_read_pcm_frames(pDecoder, pFrames, framesToRead);

You can also seek to a specific frame like so:

ma_result result = ma_decoder_seek_to_pcm_frame(pDecoder, targetFrame);
if (result != MA_SUCCESS) {
    return false;   // An error occurred.
}

When loading a decoder, miniaudio uses a trial and error technique to find the appropriate decoding backend. This can be unnecessarily inefficient if the type is already known. In this case you can use the _wav, _mp3, etc. varients of the aforementioned initialization APIs:

ma_decoder_init_wav()
ma_decoder_init_mp3()
ma_decoder_init_memory_wav()
ma_decoder_init_memory_mp3()
ma_decoder_init_file_wav()
ma_decoder_init_file_mp3()
etc.

The ma_decoder_init_file() API will try using the file extension to determine which decoding backend to prefer.

The projects below offer bindings for other languages which you may be interested in. Note that these are unofficial and are not maintained as part of this repository. If you encounter a binding-specific bug, please post a bug report to the specific project. If you've written your own bindings let me know and I'll consider adding it to this list.