pyaudio could not import _portaudio

Question

Trying to run python app that uses pyaudio. Using virtualenv and installations are working. However when running it can\'t find portaudio. But the _portaudio.so file exists.

Answer 1

The issue isn't that it can't find the library, but that the library is missing a function that is needed. (source code). I ran into the same problem, and believe the issue stems from building with the wrong version of portaudio-dev.

What you need to do:

1. Uninstall python-pyaudio with sudo apt-get purge --remove python-pyaudio if you have it (This is version 0.2.8)
2. Download the latest version (19) of PortAudio.
3. Untar and install PortAudio
   • ./configure
   • make
   • make install
4. Get the dependencies for pyaudio
   • portaudio19-dev
   • python-all-dev (python3-all-dev for Python 3)
5. sudo pip install pyaudio

After that, I was able to use pyaudio.