Sharing a microphone audio stream on Linux - audio

Question

As much as it matters my scenario is developing an accessibility application not any kind of malicious eavesdropping, whereas also within this scenario there are various research and development implied scenarios, all of which should greatly benefit from being able to read the microphone audio stream by multiple simultaneously running unrelated processes such as recording tools and/or different versions of my own code.
Problem Statement
I am reading a microphone input stream using a high level python API like follows:
import sounddevice
audio_stream = sounddevice.InputStream(
device=self.microphone_device,
channels=max(self.channels),
samplerate=self.audio_props['sample_rate'],
blocksize=int(self.audio_props['frame_elements_size']),
callback=self.audio_callback)
I would like to learn whether it is possible (on linux) to read the microphone audio stream simultaneously to another program such as Google Meet / Zoom reading it. I.e. effectively share the audio stream.
As is with the mentioned python wrapper, it is no big surprise that when the above code is started while a video call is in progress, it will simply fail to open the stream:
Expression 'paInvalidSampleRate' failed in
'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 2043
Expression 'PaAlsaStreamComponent_InitialConfigure( &self->playback, outParams, self->primeBuffers, hwParamsPlayback, &realSr )'
failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 2716
Expression 'PaAlsaStream_Configure( stream, inputParameters, outputParameters, sampleRate, framesPerBuffer, &inputLatency, &outputLatency, &hostBufferSizeMode )'
failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 2837
Admittedly, I am not very well versed with ALSA terminology and in general the sound stack on linux yet.
My question is, can this be accomplished directly using ALSA library API, or otherwise via other sound stacks or sound system configuration? Or if all else is not meant to work, via a proxy program/driver that is able to expose an audio buffer to multiple consumers without incurring noticeable degradation in audio stream latency?

Answer 1

You can do this directly with ALSA. Dsnoop should do the trick. It is a plugin included with ALSA that allows sharing input streams.
From the page I linked above:
dsnoop is the equivalent of the dmix plugin, but for recording sound. The dsnoop plugin allows several applications to record from the same device simultaneously.
From the ALSA docs:
If you want to use multiple input(capture) clients you need to use the dsnoop plugin:
You can poke around there for details on how to use it. This issue on GitHub will also help you get started, it details how to configure the dsnoop interface so you can read from it with pyaudio.
Update
To configure ALSA, edit /etc/asound.conf with something like this (from the ALSA docs on dsnoop):
pcm.mixin {
type dsnoop
ipc_key 5978293 # must be unique for all dmix plugins!!!!
ipc_key_add_uid yes
slave {
pcm "hw:1,0"
channels 2
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
periods 0
period_time 0
}
bindings {
1 1
1 0
}
}
You can test to see if your configuration works with something like this:
arecord -d 30 -f cd -t wav -D pcm.mixin test.wav

Answer 2

So, this is more an audio question than a python question I guess. :)
Depending on the API, Streams can be device exclusive or not. ASIO for professional audio for example is often device exclusive, so just one application(like a DAW) has access to it. On Windows for example you can turn this on and off as seen here:
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209770485-Disabling-exclusive-mode-for-ASIO-interfaces
Most Python packages like pyaudio and so on are just providing bindings for portaudio, which does the heavy lifting, so also have a look at the portaudio documentation. Portaudio "combines" all the different APIs like ASIO,ALSA,WASAPI,Core Audio, and so on.
For ALSA to create more than one Stream at the same time you might need dmix, have a look at this Stackoverflow question:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/355662/alsa-doesnt-work-when-multiple-applications-are-opened