Python package installation issues: PyAudio, PortA

Question

First off I am new to python development. I have watched many tutorials and now I am trying to get started. I am having issues installing PyAudio and portaudio.

Here are the errors.

When I do the following command python -m pip install pyaudio I get the following error.

src/_portaudiomodule.c(29): fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'portaudio.h': No such file or directory error: command 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.14.26428\bin\HostX86\x86\cl.exe' failed with exit status 2

---------------------------------------- Command ""C:\Users\This PC\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\python.exe" -u -c "import

setuptools, tokenize;file='C:\Users\THISPC~1\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-install-3ock7jqh\pyaudio\setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(file);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, file, 'exec'))" install --record C:\Users\THISPC~1\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-record-14pe9p6y\install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile" failed with error code 1 in C:\Users\THISPC~1\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-install-3ock7jqh\pyaudio\

So after looking that error up, I read I need to install portaudio. So I did the following command. python -m pip install portaudio and I got the following error.

Collecting portaudio Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement portaudio (from versions: ) No matching distribution found for portaudio

I have no idea where to go from here now. Honestly, this is making python seem really annoying. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

PyAudio 0.2.11 is not supported for Python 3.7, and trying to install results in the error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'portaudio.h'.

You must use Python 3.6 with PyAudio 0.2.11.

See http://people.csail.mit.edu/hubert/pyaudio/

Answer 2

portaudio is not a Python package, it's a C library that's entirely independent of Python, so you can't install it via pip.

See the PortAudio for website for details on the official way to get it and install it on your platform.

AFAIK, the official way to get it on Windows is to download the source and then follow the instructions in the Tutorial for compiling it yourself. You probably want to build it with the same compiler you use for Python C extensions, although I'm not sure if that's required.

Or, if you're using a third-party package manager like Chocolatey on Windows, there's a good chance it can install PortAudio.

Or, if you use Anaconda or Miniconda for your Python, the conda package manager knows how to install non-Python packages that Python packages depend on, including portaudio.

Finally, there seem to be a number of people providing unofficial pre-compiled PortAudio binaries for Windows. If you search for "portaudio windows binary" or "portaudio windows pre-compiled" you'll find a number of them. I have no idea how well-tested, up-to-date, etc. any of these are.

---

If you're using Anaconda/Miniconda, you should have used conda install pyaudio rather than pip install pyaudio in the first place. You should really only use pip for packages that aren't available on conda or conda-forge.

If you haven't set up conda-forge yet, you probably want to do that first:

conda config --add channels conda-forge 

And then, this should be all you need:

conda install pyaudio

Unlike the pip package, which just assumes you have portaudio installed properly, the conda package will either automatically install portaudio as a dependency for pyaudio, or tell you why it can't.