FYI, I solved the problem building and installing audiolab on fedora. It was operator error: http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/scikits.audiolab/ built without a hitch once I installed two extra packages.

I didn't install 'numpy-f2py-1.3.0-7.fc12.x86_64' and only had 'numpy-f2py-1.3.0-7.fc12.x86_64' installed. Unfortunately, the error message wasn't exactly helpful until I realized numpy was only half-installed.

File "setup.py", line 32, in <module>
from numpy.distutils.core import setup
ImportError: No module named distutils.core

I finally realized it was dying, crypically, inside numpy itself (bug, IMHO). Once that hurdle was cleared, it was obvious only 'sndfile' binary package was installed, so I also installed libsndfile-devel-1.0.20-3.fc12.x86_64. With that all in-place, just follow http://www.ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp/members/david/softwares/audiolab/sphinx/installing.html#build  to compile and build your own AudioLab on Fedora 12. (next, trying it out, looks very interesting!!)

http://nielsmayer.com/audiolab-README-NPM.txt contains a log of my travails (if anybody sees additional things wrong, please let me know...)

Thanks,

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com