Difficulty installing PyAudio on Mac M1

Question

Please note the answers already provided on Stack Overflow have not worked for me. Including, but not limited to:

brew update
brew install portaudio
brew link --overwrite portaudio
pip install pyaudio

I could use some help from someone who is actually willing to help.

When I run the functions above, everything works fine until I hit the pip install pyaudio line and then the error below occurs:

WARNING: Discarding https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/d0/dc/ffb9ce5e3f19bd289902915a9f68b7d199216065f8ea17d5b5e8e4ad86ee/PyAudio-0.2.9.tar.gz#sha256=bfd694272b3d1efc51726d0c27650b3c3ba1345f7f8fdada7e86c9751ce0f2a1 (from https://pypi.org/simple/pyaudio/). Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output.
  Using cached pyaudio-0.2.8.tar.gz (235 kB)
  Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... error
  ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
   command: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/python3 -c 'import io, os, sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/private/var/folders/lw/_gcm85s107z9sbgqyrw5pw700000gn/T/pip-install-vvvb_ho8/pyaudio_ebec704a423648cfb3b175c8def295f6/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/private/var/folders/lw/_gcm85s107z9sbgqyrw5pw700000gn/T/pip-install-vvvb_ho8/pyaudio_ebec704a423648cfb3b175c8def295f6/setup.py'"'"';f = getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__) if os.path.exists(__file__) else io.StringIO('"'"'from setuptools import setup; setup()'"'"');code = f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' egg_info --egg-base /private/var/folders/lw/_gcm85s107z9sbgqyrw5pw700000gn/T/pip-pip-egg-info-j7szc61a
       cwd: /private/var/folders/lw/_gcm85s107z9sbgqyrw5pw700000gn/T/pip-install-vvvb_ho8/pyaudio_ebec704a423648cfb3b175c8def295f6/
  Complete output (15 lines):
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
    File "/private/var/folders/lw/_gcm85s107z9sbgqyrw5pw700000gn/T/pip-install-vvvb_ho8/pyaudio_ebec704a423648cfb3b175c8def295f6/setup.py", line 124, in <module>
      setup(name = 'PyAudio',
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/distutils/core.py", line 121, in setup
      dist.parse_config_files()
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 796, in parse_config_files
      self._parse_config_files(filenames=filenames)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 664, in _parse_config_files
      parser.read_file(reader)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/configparser.py", line 719, in read_file
      self._read(f, source)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/configparser.py", line 1097, in _read
      raise DuplicateOptionError(sectname, optname,
  configparser.DuplicateOptionError: While reading from '/Users/evvolvx/.pydistutils.cfg' [line  3]: option 'include_dirs' in section 'build_ext' already exists
  ----------------------------------------
WARNING: Discarding https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/06/d1/3d202c9187fb78ad6d4f8b476a8cc0ded7c1b47ca33d5dab73b959faf123/pyaudio-0.2.8.tar.gz#sha256=4f85367cf79657616684487037957ac38582ecc5389b89420fe61d901b719551 (from https://pypi.org/simple/pyaudio/). Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output.
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pyaudio (from versions: 0.2.8, 0.2.9, 0.2.10, 0.2.11)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for pyaudio

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

I see you are using Python 3.10. Have you tried using a lower, more stable version, such as Python 3.9 or 3.8? — Gino Mempin, Nov 22 '21 at 03:28

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 23 '21 at 03:29

this is my first response on Stack Overflow so forgive me for any lack of clarity. I tried running this using Python3.10 pip on Apple Silicon and noticed that the installer attempts to build the module from source. You should see output like this in the complete error message.

Complete output (16 lines):
  running bdist_wheel
  running build
  running build_py
  creating build
  creating build/lib.macosx-11-x86_64-3.9
  copying src/pyaudio.py -> build/lib.macosx-11-x86_64-3.9
  running build_ext
  building '_portaudio' extension
  creating build/temp.macosx-11-x86_64-3.9
  creating build/temp.macosx-11-x86_64-3.9/src
  clang -Wno-unused-result -Wsign-compare -Wunreachable-code -fno-common -dynamic -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -isysroot /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk -DMACOSX=1 -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/include -I/usr/local/opt/sqlite/include -I/usr/local/opt/python@3.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/include/python3.9 -c src/_portaudiomodule.c -o build/temp.macosx-11-x86_64-3.9/src/_portaudiomodule.o
  src/_portaudiomodule.c:29:10: fatal error: 'portaudio.h' file not found
  #include "portaudio.h"
           ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
  1 error generated.
  error: command '/usr/bin/clang' failed with exit code 1
  ----------------------------------------
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for pyaudio

I just ran into this issue when installing psycopg2 and when I installed it as a prebuilt binary, without issue.

At the time I wrote this reply, compiling from source on Apple Silicon is unsupported for a few modules like PIL, which requires a native build and won't run without it. As far as I know, here are your options:

Download the wheel manually and find a way to compile (not recommended)
Install a prebuilt binary made for Apple Silicon (not in existence, that I'm aware of)
Install the 64-bit pyaudio build which is Rosetta compatible (simplest)

There are helpful responses on this question that describe the process to install the 64-bit version.

Difficulty installing PyAudio on Mac M1

1 Answers1