The Python package audiofile handles all kind of audio files with a focus on reading speed.
It can read and request information on channels, duration, number of samples and sampling rate for all files that are supported by ffmpeg, sox, and mediainfo. In addition, it can write WAV, FLAC, MP3, and OGG files.
Have a look at the installation and usage instructions as a starting point.
Code example for reading a file:
import audiofile
signal, sampling_rate = audiofile.read("signal.wav")Under the hood it uses soundfile to read the audio files, converting non-supported formats first to WAV files. The same approach is applied when requesting duration for formats that need to be decoded to ensure that duration and number of samples match.