Problems with software speech

[Erik Heil]

Hi their.  This isn't related to Intel hardware, but this is actually 
something in my opion they should implement.  It wouldn't require much 
cost up-front at all.  On my Sun workstation, their is actually a 
dedicated headphone output on the back of the machine.  Also, to make 
things better, their is actually a real speaker embedded in the front.  So 
this means that even if you didn't have a set of speakers, flite, 
festival, etc. will by default use /dev/audio which in this case by 
default accesses the system's speaker.  No of course if you want to use 
speakers, go right head, the capability is there.  No sorround sound, but 
certainly CD-quality audio.  Along with this, you have your standard 
line-in and MIC inputs.

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007, Michael Whapples wrote:

> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 11:23:17 +0000
> From: Michael Whapples <mikster4 at msn.com>
> Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
>     <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Subject: Re: Problems with software speech
> 
> On Sat, 2007-03-10 at 23:08 -0600, Farhan wrote:
>> Hello, i'm not sure about your second question about the headphone issues, but most laptop soundcards now a days are cingle channel only, they don't do multichannel, sinse Windows xp has some weird kernel implementation to do that all for you, I think the only true multichannel soundcards you can get for laptops are the soundblaster external pcmcia cards.
>>
> Let's be helpful here, now the reason may be known, but how to solve it.
> Well as far as I know, alsa can do software mixing as well, you will
> need to use a dmix device in the alsa configuration files. All the
> possibilities with alsa configuration is quite wide, so it would be best
> to read about it in the alsa documentation or search the internet for a
> suitable solution. Also make sure that the software itself is really
> using alsa, some programs still use OSS (trplayer, realplayer, flite,
> freetts (so firevox plugin if you are using freetts), etc). If you need
> to use something which uses OSS then it is still possible to use
> software mixing, get it to use the alsa-OSS compatibility system by
> putting the aoss command at the beginning of your command for the app
> which uses OSS (eg. "aoss realplayer" will run realplayer with OSS
> output going through alsa-OSS compatibility layer).
>
> I don't actually know about your headphone issue, but it sounds like
> alsa doesn't know about configuring (or it isn't configuring) a setting
> for muting speakers when using headphones (it sounds like the switch is
> software based rather than being a simple switch system. I think due to
> the comment about the behaviour when using windows). Guesses at a
> possible fix:
> Check that alsa doesn't have a control for it somewhere.
> See if the problem is solved in updated versions of alsa (if you are not
> using the latest).
> Last resort might be to find out if headphone and speaker volume can be
> set separately (I know my laptop soundcard alsa gives a headphone
> volume), and then you create two scripts (or one which either takes
> options or knows how to toggle) that you run to mute speakers but not
> headphones and to unmute speakers, and then you run this/these when
> connecting and disconnecting headphones.
>
> Hope some (if not all) of this is useful.
>
> From
> Michael Whapples
>
>
>
>
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eheil at sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org