discord-ext-songbird

High-performance voice backend for discord.py, powered by Songbird and written in Rust.

discord-ext-songbird provides a native VoiceProtocol implementation for discord.py, exposing Songbird's Rust audio pipeline through PyO3.

Highlights

• Drop-in VoiceProtocol via SongbirdClient
• Low-latency playback backed by Songbird
• Voice receive APIs (BufferSink, StreamSink)
• Native input types for raw PCM, encoded audio, and streaming
• PyO3/maturin extension with Python 3.13+ support
• Beta release series (API may evolve)

Installation

pip install discord-ext-songbird

uv add discord-ext-songbird

Quickstart

import pyarrow as pa
import discord
from discord.ext import songbird
from discord.ext.songbird import player

client = discord.Client(intents=discord.Intents.default())

@client.event
async def on_ready():
    channel = client.get_channel(int(CHANNEL_ID))
    if isinstance(channel, discord.VoiceChannel):
        vc = await channel.connect(cls=songbird.SongbirdClient)

        samples = pa.array([0.0, 0.1, 0.0, -0.1], type=pa.float32())
        source = player.input.RawPCMInput(samples, sample_rate=48000, channels=2)
        track = player.Track(source).volume(0.8)
        await vc.play(track)

client.run(DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN)

Features

Playback

Use SongbirdClient as your voice client. Playback is driven by Track and TrackHandle.

from discord.ext import songbird
from discord.ext.songbird import player

vc = await channel.connect(cls=songbird.SongbirdClient)
track = player.Track(source)
handle = await vc.play(track)
handle.pause()

Inputs

Native input types live under discord.ext.songbird.player.input.

• RawPCMInput: pyarrow.Float32Array PCM input
• AudioInput: encoded audio in a pyarrow.Array with a SupportedCodec
• StreamInput: asyncio.StreamReader with a SupportedCodec

Supported codecs: MP3, WAVE, MKV, FLAC, AAC.

import asyncio
from discord.ext.songbird import player

buffer = asyncio.StreamReader()
source = player.input.StreamInput(buffer, player.input.SupportedCodec.AAC)
track = player.Track(source)

Voice receive

Receive decoded PCM via BufferSink or StreamSink.

from discord.ext.songbird import receive

sink = receive.BufferSink(max_duration_secs=5)
vc.listen(sink)

async for tick in sink:
    pcm = tick.get(receive.VoiceKey.User(user_id))
    if pcm is not None:
        handle_pcm(pcm)

VoiceTick.get() returns pyarrow.Int16Array (PCM).

Examples

See examples/ for runnable bots:

• examples/basic.py (PCM playback)
• examples/send_stream.py (stream input)
• examples/receive_stream.py (voice receive)

Set DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN and CHANNEL_ID before running the examples.

Requirements

• Python 3.13+
• discord.py[voice]
• pyarrow

Development

uv sync --all-extras --dev --no-install-project
uvx maturin develop

just build
just fmt
just check

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please keep changes focused and avoid committing build artifacts.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Acknowledgements

• Songbird (Rust voice library)
• discord.py (Python Discord API wrapper)
• PyO3 (Rust bindings for Python)