audio

Pure Go audio engine for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Zero CGO. PCM output. WAV decoding. Mixing. Platform-native drivers.

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Overview

audio is a Pure Go audio engine for the gogpu ecosystem. It provides low-latency PCM audio output, WAV decoding, and multi-channel mixing using platform-native APIs — without CGO.

Part of the gogpu GPU computing ecosystem (~800K+ LOC Pure Go).

Features

• Pure Go — zero CGO on all platforms. Uses goffi/syscall for platform calls
• Platform-native drivers — WASAPI (Windows), CoreAudio (macOS), PulseAudio (Linux)
• WAV decoder — Pure Go WAV file parsing and playback
• Mixer — multi-channel audio mixing with per-channel volume
• io.Reader streams — composable audio pipeline (decoder → mixer → driver)
• Non-blocking — audio runs in background goroutine, never blocks rendering

Status

Windows audio output working (WASAPI). macOS and Linux drivers planned.

Architecture

User Code
    │
    ▼
audio.Context (singleton, manages audio device)
    │
    ├── WAV Decoder (Pure Go)
    ├── Mixer (multi-channel, volume control)
    │       ↑ ReadFloat32er (pull model)
    ▼
Platform Driver (background goroutine → hardware)
    ├── WASAPI (Windows) ✅ — COM vtable via syscall.SyscallN
    ├── CoreAudio (macOS) — planned
    └── PulseAudio (Linux) — planned

API

package audio

// Create audio context (one per application)
ctx, err := audio.NewContext()
defer ctx.Close()

// Play a WAV file
player, err := ctx.PlayWAV(wavData)
player.SetVolume(0.8)

// Play from io.Reader stream
player, err := ctx.NewPlayer(pcmReader)
player.Play()

Examples

# Play 440Hz sine wave
go run ./examples/play_wav

# Play Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (Casio watch style)
go run ./examples/mozart

Platform Support

Platform	Driver	Status
Windows	WASAPI (COM vtable via syscall)	✅ Working
macOS	CoreAudio (AudioQueue via goffi)	Planned
Linux	PulseAudio (libpulse-simple via dlopen)	Planned

Ecosystem

Package	Description
gogpu	Application framework, windowing
gogpu/sound	UI system sounds (clicks, alerts)
gogpu/audio	Full audio engine (this package)
wgpu	Pure Go WebGPU
gg	2D graphics
ui	GUI toolkit

Related: gogpu/sound (UI System Sounds)

For simple UI feedback sounds (button clicks, notifications), use gogpu/sound — a thin platform delegation layer (~500 LOC) that plays OS system sounds via winmm.dll (Windows), NSSound (macOS), and PulseAudio (Linux).

gogpu/audio is for games, media apps, and audio visualization that need full PCM playback, mixing, and streaming.

License

MIT License — see LICENSE.