Sound generation / synthesis with python?

Question

Is it possible to get python to generate a simple sound like a sine wave?

Is there a module available for this? If not, how would you go about creating your own?

Also, would you need some kind of host environment for python to run in in order to play sound, or can it be achieved just from making calls from the terminal?

If the answer is OS-dependent, I'm using a mac.

Answer 1

I was looking for the same thing, In the end, I wrote this code which is working fine.

import math        #import needed modules
import pyaudio     #sudo apt-get install python-pyaudio

PyAudio = pyaudio.PyAudio     #initialize pyaudio

#See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate#Audio
BITRATE = 16000     #number of frames per second/frameset.      

FREQUENCY = 500     #Hz, waves per second, 261.63=C4-note.
LENGTH = 1     #seconds to play sound

if FREQUENCY > BITRATE:
    BITRATE = FREQUENCY+100

NUMBEROFFRAMES = int(BITRATE * LENGTH)
RESTFRAMES = NUMBEROFFRAMES % BITRATE
WAVEDATA = ''    

#generating wawes
for x in xrange(NUMBEROFFRAMES):
 WAVEDATA = WAVEDATA+chr(int(math.sin(x/((BITRATE/FREQUENCY)/math.pi))*127+128))    

for x in xrange(RESTFRAMES): 
 WAVEDATA = WAVEDATA+chr(128)

p = PyAudio()
stream = p.open(format = p.get_format_from_width(1), 
                channels = 1, 
                rate = BITRATE, 
                output = True)

stream.write(WAVEDATA)
stream.stop_stream()
stream.close()
p.terminate()