pymad - a Python wrapper for the MPEG Audio Decoder library

pymad is a Python module that allows Python programs to use the MPEG Audio Decoder library. pymad provides a high-level API, similar to the pyogg module, which makes reading PCM data from MPEG audio streams a piece of cake.

MAD is available at http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/

Access this module via import mad. To decode an mp3 stream, you'll want to create a mad.MadFile object and read data from that. You can then write the data to a sound device. See the example program in test/ for a simple mp3 player that uses the python-pyao wrapper around libao for the sound device.

pymad wrapper isn't as low level as the C MAD API is, for example, you don't have to concern yourself with fixed point conversion -- this was done to make pymad easy to use.

import sys

import ao
import mad

mf = mad.MadFile(sys.argv[1])
dev = ao.AudioDevice(0, rate=mf.samplerate())
while 1:
    buf = mf.read()
    if buf is None:  # eof
        break
    dev.play(buf, len(buf))

To build, you need the distutils package, availible from http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/download.html (it comes with Python 2.0). Run python setup.py build to build and then as root run python setup.py install.

if you've installed your mad stuff someplace weird you may need to run the config_unix.py script, passing it a --prefix value to create a setup.cfg file with the correct include and link dirs:

# python config_unix.py --prefix /usr/local
# python setup.py build
# python setup.py install --prefix /usr/local

Remember to make sure /usr/local/python/site-packages/ is in your Python search path in that example.

Alternately, you can write setup.cfg yourself. E.g.:

[build_ext]
library_dirs=/opt/mad/lib
include_dirs=/opt/mad/include
libraries=name_of_library_mad_might_depend_on