python - Playing a Lot of Sounds at Once

Question

I am attempting to create a program in python that plays a particular harpsichord note when a certain key is pressed. I want it to remain responsive so you can continue to play more notes (kind of like a normal electric piano.) However, because the wav files that the notes are stored in are about 7-10 seconds long I am experiencing some issues. I can press at least 10 keys per second. So, over the duration of one note I could have around 100 different wav files playing at once. I tried to use winsound, but it was unable to play multiple wav files at once. I then moved on to PyAudio and it works kind of. The only way that I found to accomplish what I wanted was this:

from msvcrt import getch
import pyaudio
import wave
import multiprocessing as mp

#This function is just code for playing a sound in PyAudio
def playNote(filename):

    CHUNK = 1024

    wf = wave.open(filename, 'rb')


    p = pyaudio.PyAudio()

    stream = p.open(format=p.get_format_from_width(wf.getsampwidth()),
                    channels=wf.getnchannels(),
                    rate=wf.getframerate(),
                    output=True)

    data = wf.readframes(CHUNK)

    while data != '':
        stream.write(data)
        data = wf.readframes(CHUNK)

    stream.stop_stream()
    stream.close()

    p.terminate()


if __name__ == "__main__":

    while True:
        #If the 'a' key is pressed: start a new process that calls playNote
        #and pass in the file name for a note. 
        if ord(getch()) == 97: #a

            mp.Process(target=playNote, args=("F:Project HarpsichordThe wavsA1.wav",)).start()

        #If the 's' key is pressed: start a new process that calls playNote
        #and pass in the file name for another note. 
        if ord(getch()) == 115: #s

            mp.Process(target=playNote, args=("F:Project HarpsichordThe wavsA0.wav",)).start()

Basically whenever I want to play a new wav, I have to start a new process that runs the code in the playNote function. As I already stated I can potentially have up to 100 of these playing at once. Suffice it to say, one hundred copies of the python interpreter all running at once almost crashed my computer. I also tried a similar approach with multi-threading, but had the same problems.

This post shows a way to mix multiple wav files together so they can be played at the same time, but since my program will not necessarily be starting the sounds at the same time I am unsure if this will work. I need an efficient way to play multiple notes at the same time. Whether this comes in the form of another library, or even a different language I really don't care.

Answer 1

I checked out pygame like J.F Sebastian suggested. It ended up being exactly what I needed. I used pygame.mixer.Sound() in conjunction with pygame.mixer.set_num_channels(). Here's what I came up with.

import pygame as pg
import time

pg.mixer.init()
pg.init()

a1Note = pg.mixer.Sound("F:Project HarpsichordThe wavsA1.wav")
a2Note = pg.mixer.Sound("F:Project HarpsichordThe wavsA0.wav")

pg.mixer.set_num_channels(50)

for i in range(25):
    a1Note.play()
    time.sleep(0.3)
    a2Note.play()
    time.sleep(0.3)