What's Changed
This release patches lhotse to handle cases when libsox is not available for torchaudio. The audio backend code went through additional round of refactoring, and `libsndfile` is now preferred as a default since it showed faster audio decoding performance in our testing. Going forward, when `LHOTSE_AUDIO_BACKEND` is set, we will use the same backend for audio loading, audio saving, and reading audio metadata (if possible). This release also adds support for Python 3.12 and PyTorch 2.2.
* Add VAD to Supervisions in LibriLight Recipe by yfyeung in https://github.com/lhotse-speech/lhotse/pull/1280
* Fixes for manifest validation and fixing by pzelasko in https://github.com/lhotse-speech/lhotse/pull/1284
* Handle error with cachedir creation gracefully by pzelasko in https://github.com/lhotse-speech/lhotse/pull/1287
* `AudioBackend` specific `save_audio` and `info`, managing missing SoX in torchaudio, Python 3.12 / PyTorch 2.2 support, using `libsndfile` as preferred audio backend by pzelasko in https://github.com/lhotse-speech/lhotse/pull/1288
**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/lhotse-speech/lhotse/compare/v1.20...v1.21