torchaudio has no attribute 'info' (fix)

torchaudio.info(path) raises AttributeError: module 'torchaudio' has no attribute 'info' on torchaudio 2.9 and newer. Tested fixes: read metadata with soundfile.info, or pin torch==2.8.0 and torchaudio==2.8.0.

1. The error

A one-second test file made with the standard library:

import math, struct, wave
with wave.open("tone.wav", "wb") as w:          # 1 s, 16 kHz, mono 440 Hz
    w.setnchannels(1); w.setsampwidth(2); w.setframerate(16000)
    w.writeframes(b"".join(struct.pack("<h", int(8000 * math.sin(2 * math.pi * 440 * i / 16000))) for i in range(16000)))
print("wrote tone.wav")

wrote tone.wav

On torch and torchaudio 2.9.0:

import torchaudio
print("torchaudio", torchaudio.__version__)
info = torchaudio.info("tone.wav")

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/ti442/b1.py", line 3, in <module>
    info = torchaudio.info("tone.wav")
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: module 'torchaudio' has no attribute 'info'

In our test torchaudio 2.9.0 still has load and save, but info, AudioMetaData and list_audio_backends are gone. On 2.8.0 all of them exist.

2. Fix: read the metadata with soundfile

pip install soundfile (it ships libsndfile in its wheels):

import soundfile as sf
info = sf.info("tone.wav")
print(info.samplerate, info.frames, info.channels, info.duration)

16000 16000 1 1.0

Field names differ: samplerate, frames, channels instead of torchaudio's sample_rate, num_frames, num_channels.

3. Fix: pin torch and torchaudio to 2.8.0

If the call is inside a library you can't edit:

pip install "torch==2.8.0" "torchaudio==2.8.0"

import torchaudio
print("torchaudio", torchaudio.__version__)
info = torchaudio.info("tone.wav")
print(info.sample_rate, info.num_frames, info.num_channels)

torchaudio 2.8.0+cpu
/tmp/ti442/b5.py:3: UserWarning: torchaudio._backend.utils.info has been deprecated. This deprecation is part of a large refactoring effort to transition TorchAudio into a maintenance phase. The decoding and encoding capabilities of PyTorch for both audio and video are being consolidated into TorchCodec. Please see https://github.com/pytorch/audio/issues/3902 for more information. It will be removed from the 2.9 release. 
  info = torchaudio.info("tone.wav")
.../site-packages/torchaudio/_backend/soundfile_backend.py:120: UserWarning: torchaudio._backend.common.AudioMetaData has been deprecated. This deprecation is part of a large refactoring effort to transition TorchAudio into a maintenance phase. The decoding and encoding capabilities of PyTorch for both audio and video are being consolidated into TorchCodec. Please see https://github.com/pytorch/audio/issues/3902 for more information. It will be removed from the 2.9 release. 
  return AudioMetaData(
16000 16000 1

It works, with deprecation warnings announcing the removal.

Also: torchaudio.load may fail next

On 2.9.0, torchaudio.load still exists but decodes through TorchCodec. On our box (no FFmpeg installed, torchcodec 0.17.0) it failed:

import torchaudio
waveform, sr = torchaudio.load("tone.wav")
print(waveform.shape, sr)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
OSError: Could not load this library: .../site-packages/torchcodec/libtorchcodec_image.so

Install FFmpeg for TorchCodec, or load with soundfile and convert to the same (channels, frames) tensor layout:

import soundfile as sf, torch
data, sr = sf.read("tone.wav", dtype="float32", always_2d=True)
waveform = torch.from_numpy(data.T)        # (channels, frames), like torchaudio.load
print(waveform.shape, sr)

torch.Size([1, 16000]) 16000

Related: torchaudio has no attribute AudioMetaData (pyannote.audio 3.x) · Could not load libtorchcodec (FFmpeg / version mismatch) · No module named torchaudio.backend · No module named torchaudio.io · libtorchaudio.so undefined symbol

Written with AI assistance. Measured on 2026-10-24 on Linux with CPython 3.11.17, CPU wheels of torch/torchaudio 2.8.0 and 2.9.0, soundfile 0.14.0. Output pasted unedited except shortened site-packages paths and cut tracebacks. PlainTables is our extension; torchaudio and soundfile are free.