Edit Audio Using Python?

[Ultrus]

Hello Python Gurus,
I picked up a book the other day on Python programming. Python rocks!
I'm learning Python as I want to call upon it to handle some intensive
tasks from PHP/web server.

The top goal right now is automating audio editing using Python. Is it
possible? I was able to do this directly through php, but it was
reaaaallllyyyyy slowwwwwwww. PHP is not designed for that sort of
thing.

So far I googled the Snack Sound Toolkit at http://www.speech.kth.se/snack/
. It seems to have potential, but is very limited, and has not been a
very active project lately from what I can tell. I'm not sure I can
use it without learning C or C++ to make it do what I want (fading
ends, appending - there but not working?, mixing). It may work once I
learn more about it.

Do you know of any other modules, scripts, or whatnot that allows for
fast .wav audio editing from a Python script (not through a visual
interface)? Would it be better to start from scratch?

Thank you much for the advise :)