32-bit Wave Files in Python

Python 2.7 is seriously lacking in support of 32-bit float wave files – the wave file module is shooting for support in 3.4 and the scipy.io.wavefile module have support unless you build from source. Which requires a FORTRAN compiler. Not my idea of fun just to support a feature that should be included out of the box.

For my current project I’ve been using the scikits.audiolab module to deal with my wave files. You’ll need the numpy/scipy installed, as well as setup tools, but once installed it’s really easy to work with.

For example, to read in a file you can do:

from scikits.audiolab import wavread
data, sample_freq, encoding = wavread(path)

Easy.