@@ -0,0 +1,224 @@
+---
+title: Advanced Audio Playing
+---
+
+# About
+
+Pycord provides built-in audio sources for common use cases, but complex bots often require greater
+control over audio streams or need to handle voice playback across hundreds of servers simultaneously.
+This guide covers advanced audio concepts, such as writing custom audio source implementations
+and offloading voice processing to standalone audio nodes, using Lavalink.
+
+## Starting out
+
+[Playing Audio in Voice Channels](./playing.md) has covered Pycord-provided standard audio sources. While
+these built-in classes cover most general needs, [`discord.AudioSource`](https://docs.pycord.dev/en/stable/api/voice.html#discord.AudioSource)
+can be subclassed to create custom audio pipelines, synthesizers, or memory stream handlers.
+
+However, as a bot grows larger, handling multiple local FFmpeg processes and real-time encoding on the
+same machine your bot is running on can quickly bottleneck CPU performance. To solve this, advanced
+bot architectures decouple playback entirely by relying on external audio servers such as Lavalink and
+interacting with them through lightweight client libraries like SonoLink.
+
+### Custom `AudioSource`s
+
+All audio sources covered in the previous guide derive from `discord.AudioSource`, and implement
+at least a custom `read` method.
+
+This method should return 20ms worth of audio, following the 16-bit 48kHz stereo PCM requirement.
+You may override `is_opus` when the audio returned by the `read` method is already Opus encoded.
+
+When no more audio is available, you can return an empty bytes-like object to tell the library the
+audio reading is over.
+
+You may also override `cleanup` when extra clean-up processes are needed if the reading is complete.
+
+A common use case for subclassing an `AudioSource` is when you want to implement an audio player that extracts audio from an online source, such as YouTube (using `youtube_dl`/`yt_dlp`).
+
+```py title="Implementing a custom audio source"
+import asyncio
+
+import discord
+import youtube_dl  # third-party library that requires installing
+
+ytdl = youtube_dl.YoutubeDL()
+
+
+# we will implement a basic YTDLSource
+class YTDLSource(discord.AudioSource):
+    # we will take a processed audio source, to simplify our handling
+    def __init__(self, processed_source: discord.AudioSource, *, data: dict) -> None:
+        self.processed_source: discord.AudioSource = processed_source
+        self.data: dict = data
+
+        self.title = data.get("title")
+        self.url = data.get("url")
+
+    # reading from this source is essentially reading from the processed source
+    def read(self) -> bytes:
+        return self.processed_source.read()
+
+    def is_opus(self) -> bool:
+        return self.processed_source.is_opus()
+
+    def cleanup(self) -> None:
+        self.processed_source.cleanup()
+
+    @classmethod
+    async def from_url(cls, url: str) -> YTDLSource:
+        # here, we will implement our logic for obtaining the youtube audio from an url
+        # we will be using asyncio.to_thread, because extracting the info is a sync operation
+        # and may block our bot for the duration it takes to finish
+        data = await asyncio.to_thread(ytdl.extract_info, url, download=True)
+
+        # playlists have an "entries" key, so grab the first item
+        if "entries" in data:
+            data = data["entries"][0]
+
+        filename = ytdl.prepare_filename(data)
+        return cls(discord.FFmpegPCMAudio(filename), data=data)
+```
+
+For a more advanced explanation and implementation of this source, check
+[the `basic_voice.py` example](https://github.com/Pycord-Development/pycord/blob/master/examples/basic_voice.py).
+
+### Using Lavalink
+
+Lavalink is the ultimate audio playback server tool, as it can handle both remote and local audio
+playing while being easy to handle and set up, and low-usage.
+
+First, you need to run a [Lavalink Server](https://github.com/lavalink-devs/Lavalink) to connect with.
+In case you do not know how, there are multiple documentation to do so that will not be covered here,
+but we recommend you the [SonoLink Lavalink Setup Guide](https://sonolink.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/lavalink-setup.html).
+
+To interact with your Lavalink server you must send HTTP requests, but here we will be using
+[SonoLink](https://github.com/sonolink/sonolink), an API wrapper for Lavalink.
+
+To install it, you can simply run:
+
+```sh title="Installing sonolink"
+pip install -U sonolink
+```
+
+Now, you will need to connect to your Lavalink server using a Node:
+
+```py title="Connecting to Lavalink"
+import discord
+import sonolink
+
+bot = discord.Bot()
+sl_client = sonolink.Client(bot)
+
+sl_client.create_node(
+    id="main-node",  # the unique ID for the node being created
+    uri="http://0.0.0.0:2333",  # HTTP(S) protocol is required when passing URI
+    password="youshallnotpass"
+)
+
+@bot.listen()
+async def on_connect() -> None:
+    await sl_client.start()  # starts connection to the created nodes
+    print("SonoLink nodes connected successfully!")
+```
+
+<br />
+
+Now you are finished making your node! Next, you will want to:
+
+1. Make a `play` command
+1. Add connection-handling events
+
+#### Making a `play` command
+
+The core functionality for a music bot using SonoLink is a `play` command, as it allows users to reproduce
+their own songs as they please.
+
+To do this, you need to create a command that ensures a `sonolink.Player` instance is connected
+and available to play audio.
+
+```py title="Creating a play command"
+@bot.slash_command()
+async def play(ctx: discord.ApplicationContext, *, search: str) -> None:
+    # Before proceeding with the logic, we must check the ctx.author is
+    # connected in a voice channel
+    if not ctx.author.voice or not ctx.author.voice.channel:
+        await ctx.respond("You must be in a voice channel first!")
+        return
+
+    # We need to check we are connected to a voice channel AND the
+    # voice client connected is a `sonolink.Player` instance.
+    vc = ctx.voice_client
+
+    # Connect to the voice channel if we are not yet
+    if not vc:
+        vc = await ctx.author.voice.channel.connect(
+            cls=sonolink.Player,
+        )
+    elif not isinstance(vc, sonolink.Player):
+        # And here, if there is a voice client connected, check it is
+        # a sonolink.Player instance.
+        # If not, reconnect with a sonolink.Player instance
+        await vc.disconnect(force=True)
+        vc = await ctx.author.voice.channel.connect(
+            cls=sonolink.Player,
+        )
+
+    # This check is not required, but creates a better experience for final users
+    # We will check that the channel the Player is connected is the same the ctx.author
+    # is in.
+    if ctx.author.voice.channel.id != vc.channel.id:
+        await ctx.respond("You must be in the same voice channel as the bot.")
+        return
+
+    # We will now search for the song the user provided in the `search` parameter
+    # We can optionally pass a `source` keyword argument to reduce the locations
+    # the song will be search from.
+    result = await sl_client.search_track(search)
+
+    # SonoLink returns a SearchResult instance when searching tracks
+    # so we will need to check that the result is not empty and is not an error
+    if result.is_empty() or result.is_error() or not result.result:
+        await ctx.respond("Song not found!")
+        return
+
+    # The fetched result can be a list of tracks, a playlist or a single track
+    # so we must check against all those possibilities
+    if isinstance(result.result, list):
+        track = result.result[0]
+    elif isinstance(result.result, sonolink.models.Playlist):
+        track = result.result.tracks[0]
+    else:
+        track = result.result
+
+    # And finally... we play the track we obtained
+    await vc.play(track)
+    await ctx.respond(f"Now playing: `{track.title}`")
+```
+
+<br />
+
+Now that this is done, the only thing left to do is make your connect events.
+
+#### Adding connect events
+
+The final step of this guide is connecting to the node to your server when the bot goes online.
+
+To make it, you will want to do the following:
+
+```py title="Adding connect events"
+@bot.event
+async def on_sonolink_node_ready(event: sonolink.gateway.ReadyEvent) -> None:
+    print(f"Node with ID {event.node.id!r} has connected!")
+    print(f"Resumed session: {event.resumed}")
+
+bot.run("token")
+```
+
+Congratulations! You are now able to create custom audio sources for advanced playback, and to offload
+the playback to an external node using Lavalink and interacting with it using SonoLink! Most bots and
+Discord API wrappers don't have this as a feature, so this is quite an accomplishment. Thankfully,
+Pycord makes it easy to make complex bots so that you can get the most advanced of ideas down.
+
+!!! info "Related Topics"
+
+    - [Rules and Common Practices](../getting-started/rules-and-common-practices.md)
@@ -20,6 +20,6 @@ The following features are optional:
     Some hosts may not come with it, though, so remember to always check if required dependencies are installed.
 
 - [`FFmpeg`](https://ffmpeg.org) - used for sending/receiving files other than `.pcm` and `.wav`
-- [`Pycord.Wavelink`](https://github.com/Pycord-Development/Pycord.Wavelink),
+- [`SonoLink`](https://github.com/sonolink/sonolink) - used for advanced audio playback
     [`Lavalink.py`](https://github.com/Devoxin/Lavalink.py),
     [`Wavelink`](https://github.com/PythonistaGuild/Wavelink) or any other Python LavaLink library for music playback.