NAudio

NAudio is an open source .NET audio library written by Mark Heath and contributors.

This is the main NAudio meta-package. Installing it pulls in what you need to play, record and manipulate audio on Windows, and adds AudioFileReader — the one-line "just open this audio file" reader that picks the right decoder for you — along with Mp3FileReader.

Requires net9.0 or later. If you need .NET Framework or .NET Standard 2.0, use NAudio 2.x.

What it pulls in

On any target framework (net9.0 or later, with or without -windows):

• NAudio.Core — the format-independent core: WaveStream, IWaveProvider / ISampleProvider, WAV and AIFF readers and writers, mixing, resampling, DSP, and the NAudio.Effects framework
• NAudio.Midi — the MIDI event model and Standard MIDI File reading and writing (plus WinRT live MIDI I/O when your project targets net9.0-windows10.0.19041.0 or later)
• NAudio.Wasapi — WASAPI playback, capture and loopback (WasapiPlayer / WasapiRecorder), plus Media Foundation codecs
• NAudio.WinMM — WaveOut / WaveIn, classic MIDI I/O, ACM codecs and mixer controls via winmm.dll

NAudio.Wasapi and NAudio.WinMM are Windows-only at runtime. They're marked [SupportedOSPlatform("windows")], so the platform compatibility analyzer (CA1416) flags unguarded calls from code that isn't Windows-specific. AudioFileReader reads PCM/float WAV and AIFF everywhere, and uses Media Foundation (MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC…) and ACM (compressed WAV) when running on Windows.

If you're targeting Linux or macOS, you probably want the individual packages (NAudio.Core plus NAudio.Alsa, NAudio.MacOS or NAudio.SoundFile) rather than this meta-package.

Optional packages

These are not pulled in by the meta-package — add them explicitly if you want them:

NAudio 3.0–3.2 included NAudio.Asio, NAudio.Dmo and NAudio.WinForms in this meta-package on Windows target frameworks. If you're upgrading and use any of them, add the package reference.

Getting started

using NAudio.Wave;

using var audioFile = new AudioFileReader("myfile.mp3");
using var player = new WasapiPlayerBuilder().Build();
player.Init(audioFile);
player.Play();
while (player.PlaybackState == PlaybackState.Playing)
{
    Thread.Sleep(500);
}

• Documentation site — tutorials and the full API reference
• GitHub repository — source, issues, and the demo applications (NAudioDemo, NAudioWpfDemo)
• Migrating from NAudio 2 to NAudio 3 — every breaking change, with before/after code

License

MIT. See the project site for source, issues, and contribution guidelines.