pulseaudio-simple-rs

• Idiomatic Rust wrapper around pa_simple_*

A small, minimal, and type-safe Rust wrapper around the PulseAudio Simple API (libpulse-simple).
This crate provides an ergonomic interface for basic audio playback without requiring the full asynchronous PulseAudio API.

Status: Experimental - covers only the Simple API.
Use case: Quick audio output/input where low latency or advanced routing is not required.

Requirements

PulseAudio development headers must be installed.

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libpulse-dev

Fedora:

sudo dnf install pulseaudio-libs-devel

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio

Add to Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
pulseaudio-simple = "0.1"

Example: Playback (i16 stereo, 44.1 kHz)

use pulseaudio_simple::{Simple, SampleSpec, StreamDirection};

fn main() -> Result<(), String> {
    let spec = SampleSpec::new(44_100, 2);

    let mut pa = Simple::<i16>::new(
        "example-playback",
        StreamDirection::Playback,
        spec,
    )?;

    let mut buffer = [0i16; 44100];
    for (i, sample) in buffer.iter_mut().enumerate() {
        let t = i as f32 / 44100.0;
        *sample = (t * 440.0 * std::f32::consts::TAU).sin() as f32 as i16;
    }

    pa.write(&mut buffer)?;
    pa.drain()?;

    Ok(())
}

Safety Notes

• Uses unsafe FFI calls internally.
• Safe API ensures:
  • RAII cleanup via Drop
  • Correct lifetimes for C strings and structures

TODO

• Capture API

License

MIT