Explicit playback sessions

Applications that generate audio, stream it, select a device, or require fully explicit resource lifetimes can use the managed playback API directly:

from pyalsoft import PCM, open_playback, play, release, upload

pcm = PCM(
    samples=b"\0\0" * 22_050,
    channels=1,
    sample_rate=44_100,
)

with open_playback() as playback:
    clip = upload(playback, pcm)
    voice = play(playback, clip)
    # Query or control the voice here.
    release(playback, voice)
    release(playback, clip)

Calls using an explicit Playback are thread-safe. PyALSoft serializes each complete operation for that session, including context activation and managed state changes. Sessions backed by the same loaded OpenAL library are also serialized because they share process-wide current-context state; sessions on independent library instances may proceed concurrently.

close_playback() waits for an operation already in progress and makes later operations fail with PlaybackClosedError.

Device selection and HRTF

Playback devices can be enumerated and passed to open_playback(). Context preferences such as HRTF are requested with PlaybackConfig; query PlaybackInfo to see what the audio backend actually enabled:

from pyalsoft import (
    PlaybackConfig,
    get_playback_info,
    list_playback_devices,
    open_playback,
)

devices = list_playback_devices()
selected = next((device for device in devices if device.is_default), None)

with open_playback(selected, config=PlaybackConfig(hrtf=True)) as playback:
    info = get_playback_info(playback)
    print(info.device_name, info.hrtf_status.value, info.hrtf_name)

See the runnable play_sine.py, stream_sine.py, and select_device_hrtf.py examples.