audio-blocks

Real-time safe abstractions over audio data with support for all common layouts.

Quick Start

Install:

cargo add audio-blocks

Basic planar usage (most common for DSP):

use audio_blocks::*;

// Create a planar block - each channel gets its own buffer
let mut block = Planar::<f32>::new(2, 512); // 2 channels, 512 frames

// Process per channel
for channel in block.channels_mut() {
    for sample in channel {
        *sample *= 0.5;
    }
}

Generic function that accepts any layout:

fn process(block: &mut impl AudioBlockMut<f32>) {
    for channel in block.channels_iter_mut() {
        for sample in channel {
            *sample *= 0.5;
        }
    }
}

Block Types

Three multi-channel layouts supported:

Planar - [[ch0, ch0, ch0], [ch1, ch1, ch1]] Each channel has its own separate buffer. Standard for real-time DSP. Optimal for SIMD/vectorization.

Sequential - [ch0, ch0, ch0, ch1, ch1, ch1] Single contiguous buffer with all samples for channel 0, then all samples for channel 1. Channel-contiguous in one allocation.

Interleaved - [ch0, ch1, ch0, ch1, ch0, ch1] Channels alternate sample-by-sample. Common in audio APIs and hardware interfaces.

Plus a dedicated mono type:

Mono - [sample0, sample1, sample2, ...] Simplified single-channel block with a streamlined API that doesn't require channel indexing.

Creating Blocks

Owned blocks allocate via new() — never do this in real-time contexts. Views borrow existing data via from_slice() or from_ptr() and are always real-time safe.

Owned (allocates)	View (borrows data)
[Planar]	[PlanarView] / [PlanarViewMut]
[Sequential]	[SequentialView] / [SequentialViewMut]
[Interleaved]	[InterleavedView] / [InterleavedViewMut]
[Mono]	[MonoView] / [MonoViewMut]

Views can also be created from raw pointers (from_ptr). For planar pointer data, use [PlanarPtrAdapter].

Traits

Use impl AudioBlock<f32> / impl AudioBlockMut<f32> to write layout-generic functions (as shown above). These traits are also generic over the sample type (f32, f64, i16, etc.).

Trait	Purpose
[AudioBlock]	Read-only access: sample access, channel/frame iteration, layout info
[AudioBlockMut]	Mutable access: sample mutation, resizing visible region, mutable iteration
[AudioBlockOps]	Read-only operations: mono mixdown, channel extraction
[AudioBlockOpsMut]	Mutable operations: block copy, gain, clear, fill, per-sample processing

Blocks also separate allocated capacity from visible size — see [AudioBlockMut::set_num_frames_visible] for real-time safe buffer resizing without reallocation.

no_std Support

Disable default features. Owned blocks require alloc or std feature.