Audio.cast_column() or Audio.decode_example() causes Colab kernel crash (std::bad_alloc)
Author: rachidio
State: open

### Describe the bug

When using the huggingface datasets.Audio feature to decode a local or remote (public HF dataset) audio file inside Google Colab, the notebook kernel crashes with std::bad_alloc (C++ memory allocation failure).
The crash happens even with a minimal code example and valid .wav file that can be read successfully using soundfile.

Here is a sample Collab notebook to reproduce the problem.
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1nnb-GC5748Tux3xcYRussCGp2x-zM9Id?usp=sharing

code sample:
```
...
audio_dataset = audio_dataset.cast_column("audio", Audio(sampling_rate=16000))

# Accessing the first element crashes the Colab kernel
print(audio_dataset[0]["audio"])
```

Error log 
```
WARNING what(): std::bad_alloc
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
```

Environment

Platform: Google Colab (Python 3.12.12)
datasets Version: 4.3.0
soundfile Version: 0.13.1
torchaudio Version: 2.8.0+cu126

Thanks in advance to help me on this error I get approx two weeks now after it was working before.

Regards

### Steps to reproduce the bug

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1nnb-GC5748Tux3xcYRussCGp2x-zM9Id?usp=sharing

### Expected behavior

Loading the audio and decode it.
It should safely return:

{
  "path": "path/filaname.wav",
  "array": np.ndarray([...]),
  "sampling_rate": 16000
}

### Environment info

Environment

Platform: Google Colab (Python 3.12.12)
datasets Version: 4.3.0
soundfile Version: 0.13.1
torchaudio Version: 2.8.0+cu126

Comments: Hi ! `datasets` v4 uses `torchcodec` for audio decoding (previous versions were using `soundfile`). What is your `torchcodec` version ? Can you try other versions of `torchcodec` and see if it works ?

When I install `datasets` with `pip install datasets[audio]` it install this version of `torchcodec`:
```
Name: torchcodec
Version: 0.8.1
```
Can you please point to a working version of `torchcodec`?

Thanks for your help

I believe you simply need to make sure the torchcodec and torch versions work together. Here is how to fix it:

```python
!pip install -U torchcodec torch
```

I am also encountering this same issue when i run `print(ug_court["train"][0])` to view the features of the first row of my audio data

the problem still goes on to when i force training with seeing these features

Thank you @lhoestq I've reinstalled the packages an the error is gone.
My new versions are:
```
Name: torch
Version: 2.8.0
---
Name: torchaudio
Version: 2.8.0
---
Name: torchcodec
Version: 0.8.1
```

Regards

mine too has worked 

Hi,

I encounter the same problem when trying to inspect the first element in the dataset. My environment is:
```
root@3ac6f9f8c6c4:/workspace# pip3 list | grep torch
pytorch-lightning         2.5.6
pytorch-metric-learning   2.9.0
torch                     2.8.0+cu126
torch-audiomentations     0.12.0
torch_pitch_shift         1.2.5
torchaudio                2.8.0+cu126
torchcodec                0.8.1
torchelastic              0.2.2
torchmetrics              1.8.2
torchvision               0.23.0+cu126
```
the same as @rachidio 's new version that works.

I am in a Docker container environment, and here is the code I am working with:

<img width="1350" height="388" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4cf0400f-9ee7-47c7-ba57-c4ef3c1e7fd6" />