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Publishing and receiving audio

You can publish audio, receive translated audio, and control the translation through either transport:

  • WebRTC — best for client applications (browsers, mobile apps). Handled by LiveKit.
  • WebSockets — convenient for server-side integrations. Authenticate with your API Key directly — see Translation management API for the connection details.

For WebRTC (or if you manage sessions yourself), start a streaming session first — Palabra returns two URLs and a JWT access token:

PurposeFieldTypical value
WebRTC (audio/control)webrtc_urlhttps://<STREAMING_SERVER>.palabra.ai/livekit/
WebSocket (audio/control)ws_urlwss://<STREAMING_SERVER>.palabra.ai/streaming-api/v1/speech-to-speech/stream
AuthenticationpublishereyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6…
Important
  • Regardless of the transport, you control the translation by sending JSON text messages — through the WebRTC data channel or the WebSocket connection respectively. See the Translation management API.
  • If you choose WebSockets as the audio transport, the audio chunks you push must match the format / sample_rate / channels declared in your set_task command.

Using the WebRTC transport​

Use any LiveKit client library to publish your audio track, then create a translation task using the Translation management API. Palabra will publish a translated audio track for each target language.

Code examples​

See the Quick Start Guide for code examples of publishing original audio (Step 4) and receiving translated audio (Step 5).

Using the WebSocket transport​

Connect to the WebSocket endpoint using your API Key (or to ws_url with a session publisher token — see Translation management API), create a translation task, then start sending and receiving audio chunks as described below.

Publishing​

Send base64-encoded audio chunks over the WebSocket. The chunks must match the format, sample_rate, and channels declared in your set_task command. The optimal chunk length is 320 ms.

Message format example:

{
  "message_type": "input_audio_data",
  "data": {
    "data": "base64 encoded data"
  }
}

Receiving​

Palabra sends TTS audio chunks as output_audio_data messages over the same WebSocket connection. The chunks are base64-encoded; the default format is 24 kHz 16-bit mono PCM (can be changed with the set_task command).

Message format example:

{
  "message_type": "output_audio_data",
  "data": {
    "transcription_id": "190983855fe3404e",
    "language": "es",     // TTS language
    "last_chunk": false,  // true on the last generated chunk for this `transcription_id`
    "data": "base64 string"
  }
}