title: Maintain a streaming microphone input in Python
body: <p>I'm streaming microphone input from my laptop computer using Python. I'm currently using PyAudio and .wav to create a 2 second batches (code below) and then read out the frame representations of the newly created .wav file in a loop. </p>
  
  <p>However I really just want the <code>np.ndarray</code> represented by "signal" in the code that is the Int16 representation of the .wav file. Is there a way to bypass writing to .wav entirely and make my application appear to be "real-time" instead of micro-batch?</p>
  
  <pre><code>import pyaudio
  import wave
  
  #AUDIO INPUT
  FORMAT = pyaudio.paInt16
  CHANNELS = 1
  RATE = 44100
  CHUNK = 1024
  RECORD_SECONDS = 2
  WAVE_OUTPUT_FILENAME = "output.wav"
  
  audio = pyaudio.PyAudio()
  
  # start Recording
  stream = audio.open(format=FORMAT, channels=CHANNELS,
                  rate=RATE, input=True,
                  frames_per_buffer=CHUNK)
  while(1):
    print "recording"
    frames = []
    for i in range(0, int(RATE / CHUNK * RECORD_SECONDS)):
        data = stream.read(CHUNK)
        frames.append(data)
    waveFile = wave.open(WAVE_OUTPUT_FILENAME, 'wb')
    waveFile.setnchannels(CHANNELS)
    waveFile.setsampwidth(audio.get_sample_size(FORMAT))
    waveFile.setframerate(RATE)
    waveFile.writeframes(b''.join(frames))
    waveFile.close()
    spf = wave.open(WAVE_OUTPUT_FILENAME,'r')
  
    #Extract Raw Audio from Wav File
    signal = spf.readframes(-1)
    signal = np.fromstring(signal, 'Int16')   
    copy= signal.copy()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p># stop Recording
     stream.stop_stream()
     stream.close()
     audio.terminate()</p>