---
id: pedalboard
version: "0.9.24"
license: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 29 June 2007 Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <https://fsf.org/> Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: copyleft
maintenance: active
---

# pedalboard — A Python library for adding effects to audio.

License: copyleft · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 4.4M/mo

## What it is and what it does

pedalboard is a Python audio processing library built by Spotify's Audio Intelligence Lab that lets you read, write, and apply effects to audio files and streams. It provides built-in effects—reverb, distortion, compression, equalization, pitch shifting, and others—and can load third-party VST3 plugins (on macOS, Windows, and Linux) and Audio Units (on macOS). The library is designed for speed and thread-safety, releasing Python's GIL to enable multi-core processing without multiprocessing overhead.

The package is commonly used for audio data augmentation in machine learning pipelines, content creation without a Digital Audio Workstation, and real-time audio processing. It integrates with TensorFlow's tf.data pipelines and supports most common audio formats (WAV, FLAC, MP3, OGG, AIFF) natively on all platforms, with additional format support depending on the OS.

Use it for:

- Augment audio datasets for machine learning by applying random effects (reverb, compression, pitch shift) to training data.
- Build a guitar effects chain in Python by stacking effects like distortion, chorus, and reverb without a DAW.
- Load and automate VST3 plugins from Python to process audio in batch or real-time workflows.
- Resample and process large audio files efficiently with minimal memory overhead using on-the-fly resampling.
- Integrate audio processing into TensorFlow pipelines for end-to-end ML workflows with augmentation.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

pedalboard reads, writes, and processes audio files with built-in effects like reverb, distortion, and equalization, plus support for loading VST3 and Audio Unit plugins.

Yes, if you need to process audio with effects in Python. The library is actively maintained, well-documented, and widely used (top 5000 on PyPI). GPLv3 is a significant constraint: only install if your project can be GPLv3 or if you're using it internally. No known vulnerabilities. Medium install friction is acceptable for a compiled audio library.

## Install

pip install pedalboard
uv add pedalboard
poetry add pedalboard

## Installing pedalboard

Before you install: Medium install friction due to compiled wheels for multiple platforms and Python versions (3.10–3.14). Active maintenance with recent release (37 days ago). Requires only numpy as a runtime dependency.

License in practice: GPLv3 copyleft license: any derivative work or distribution must also be GPLv3. If you modify pedalboard or bundle it into a proprietary application, you must open-source that work under the same license.

Quickstart:

pip install pedalboard

from pedalboard import Pedalboard, Reverb
from pedalboard.io import AudioFile
import numpy as np

with AudioFile('input.wav') as f:
    audio = f.read(f.frames)
    board = Pedalboard([Reverb(room_size=0.25)])
    effected = board(audio, f.samplerate)

with AudioFile('output.wav', 'w', f.samplerate, effected.shape[0]) as o:
    o.write(effected)

Requires Python 3.10 or later. Platform wheels are provided for macOS (Intel and ARM), Linux (x86_64 and aarch64), and Windows (amd64); other platforms require compilation.

Verify before relying:

- Whether VST3 and Audio Unit plugin loading works reliably across all supported platforms in production use.
- Performance characteristics of GIL release and multi-threaded audio processing in real-world workloads.

## Package facts

- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 29 June 2007 Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <https://fsf.org/> Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license… (full text in the JSON record) (copyleft)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: medium
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 4.4M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

audio effects processing python, vst3 audio unit plugin loader, audio file read write effects, guitar effects pedalboard, audio augmentation machine learning, audio-effects, vst-plugin-loader, ml-augmentation

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/pedalboard) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/pedalboard/)