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ALSA Audio Capture

Capture audio from sound card using ALSA

Since R2021a

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Add-On Required: This feature requires the MATLAB Coder Support Package for NVIDIA Jetson and NVIDIA DRIVE Platforms add-on.

  • NVIDIA ALSA audio capture block

Libraries:
NVIDIA Jetson and NVIDIA DRIVE / Audio and Video

Description

The ALSA Audio Capture block reads audio data from the audio input device connected to the NVIDIA® hardware. The block uses the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) driver framework to read audio data.

The block outputs the audio data as an N-by-C matrix, where N is the samples per audio channel, and C is the number of channels supported by the audio device. Specify the values for N and C in the Samples per frame (N) and Number of channels (C) parameters, respectively.

Note

To use the ALSA Audio Capture block with audio devices that support more than two channels, you must have an Audio Toolbox™ license.

Algorithm

Consider a Simulink® model that includes an ALSA Audio Capture block and an ALSA Audio Playback block. At each sample time, the ALSA Audio Capture reads stereo audio data from the microphone connected to the audio input connector of the hardware. The block outputs data as a 3-by-2 matrix. The ALSA Audio Playback block accepts the audio matrix and sends audio to the headphones connected to the audio output jack of the hardware.

Sample workflow diagram for the audio blocks

The ALSA Audio Capture block determines the sample time (Ts) from the samples per audio channel (N) and sampling frequency (Fs).

Ts = N / Fs

For example, if N is 4410 samples and Fs is 44,100 Hz, the block sample time is 4410/44,100 = 0.1 seconds.

N is the number of samples per audio channel specified in the Number of channels (C) parameter. Fs is the sampling frequency of audio data specified in the Audio sampling frequency (Hz) parameter.

Examples

Keyword Spotting in Audio Using MFCC and LSTM Networks on NVIDIA Embedded Hardware from Simulink

Keyword Spotting in Audio Using MFCC and LSTM Networks on NVIDIA Embedded Hardware from Simulink

Deploy a Simulink® model on the NVIDIA® Jetson™ board for keyword spotting in audio data. This example identifies the keyword(YES) in the input audio data using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and a pretrained Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) network.

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Ports

Output

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The block outputs the audio data as an N-by-C matrix, where N is the samples per channel, and C is the number of channels supported by the audio. Specify the values of N and C in the Samples per frame (N) and Number of channels (C) parameters, respectively.

For example, for a stereo audio source file with three samples per channel, the block organizes the audio data into a 3-by-2 matrix.

Block diagram show data layout from ALSA audio capture block

The data type of the output matrix is of the type specified in the Device Bit depth parameter.

Data Types: int8 | int16 | int32

Parameters

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Specify the ALSA audio input device connected to the hardware from which the block reads audio data.

You can receive audio from an ALSA audio input device connected to the hardware. To get the list of audio input devices connected to the hardware, use the listAudioDevices function as described in List Available ALSA Audio Input Devices.

Programmatic Use

Block Parameter: deviceStr
Type: character vector
Values: valid name|
Default: 'hw:1,0'

Before performing analog-to-digital conversion, the audio data is cast to the data type specified in this parameter.

Programmatic Use

Block Parameter: DataBitDepth
Type: character vector
Values: '16-bit integer'|'8-bit integer''32-bit integer'
Default: '16-bit integer'

To find the number of channels supported by the audio input device, use the listAudioDevices function as described in List Available ALSA Audio Input Devices.

Programmatic Use

Block Parameter: numberofChannels
Type: character vector
Values: positive integer
Default: '2'

Specify the sample rate used by the audio input device to read audio data, in Hz. The sample rates listed in the Audio sampling frequency (Hz) parameter depends on the audio input device. To find the sample rates supported by the audio input device, use the listAudioDevices function as described in List Available ALSA Audio Input Devices.

Programmatic Use

Block Parameter: sampleRateEnum
Type: character vector
Values: positive integer
Default: '44100'

This parameter specifies the number of rows of the output matrix that the block outputs. The output matrix has dimensions N-by-C, where N is the number of samples per channel, and C is the number of channels.

Programmatic Use

Block Parameter: frameSize
Type: character vector
Values: positive integer
Default: '4410'

Version History

Introduced in R2021a

See Also

Blocks