Using USB sound in Ubuntu

[Tony Baechler]

Jerry Matheny wrote:
> I'm not sure. I just connected the USB headset to the computer and 
> booted up the live cd with accessibility support so Orca should have 
> come up talking through it. Not sure what else I should try. Any help 
> would be appreciated.
>

Hi,

I'm not sure what you mean by the above statement, but I posted on this 
list that the Ubuntu 7.10 instructions for starting Orca are wrong and 
won't work.  I hope they fixed this in 8.04.  I gave instructions for 
the correct keys to hit but I don't remember what they are anymore.  You 
would have to search the list archives.  Just booting up the CD and not 
doing anything won't work.  You either have to hit some keys (arros and 
something else I think) at the boot menu or manually run Orca from 
within Gnome after it finishes booting in order to get Orca to actually 
work.  Also, on my system, the volume was very low so I could hardly 
hear it until I figured out how to change the mixer settings.  It could 
be working but you might not be hearing anything.  If you have sighted 
help, that might get you started as that was the only way I found out 
that the instructions were wrong.  On one computer I tried, Orca still 
wouldn't start even with the correct instructions.  I still had to 
manually start it from within Gnome.  To manually start it, wait about 
10 minutes (yes, it takes a long time to boot), press Alt+F2, wait a few 
seconds, type "orca" and press Enter.  That should start speech.