speakup & orca in debian 7

Fri Nov 1 20:22:21 EDT 2013

Here is what I did:

Edit the Makefile and find the section which reads like this:

# 'runtime' uses pulseaudio if it is running, else uses portaudio
#AUDIO = runtime
AUDIO = portaudio
#AUDIO = portaudio0
#AUDIO = portaudio2
#AUDIO = pulseaudio
#AUDIO = sada

And simply change it to read thusly:

# 'runtime' uses pulseaudio if it is running, else uses portaudio
#AUDIO = runtime
#AUDIO = portaudio
#AUDIO = portaudio0
#AUDIO = portaudio2
AUDIO = pulseaudio
#AUDIO = sada

As you can see I just commented out portaudio and uncommented pulseaudio.

I'm pretty sure that's all I did.  If you get errors about libraries 
just install what you have missing.

I am currently having trouble configuring pulseaudio to autospawn 
properly on the Raspberry Pi.

But I hope if I can get it to work switching from portaudio to 
pulseaudio will solve all the latency issues and crashes we currently 
have with Arch on the Pi.

We have SpeakUp and Emacspeak running with eSpeak on Arch on the Pi but 
have had to blacklist firmware and newer versions of sound drivers 
because of a change to the driver which introduced some latency problems.

The other way to make SpeakUp use pulse would be to ditch espeakup and 
use speechd-up to connect it to speech-dispatcher but I haven't had much 
success with speechd-up on Arch either on x86 or on the Pi.

Mike

On 02/11/2013 00:01, Brandon McGinty-Carroll wrote:
> Mike,
> If you have the configure commands/steps handy, I'd love them, as would others, I'm sure.
> If not, I'll go looking and post back what I find.
>
> Brandon McGinty-Carroll
>
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 10:22:05PM +0000, Mike Ray wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Espeakup doesn't use either portaudio or pulseaudio.  It just calls
>> espeak, which in it's default configuration uses portaudio.
>>
>> It is possible to re-compile espeak to use pulseaudio.  I have just
>> done exactly that in efforts to get tts to work properly on Arch
>> Linux on a Raspberry Pi.
>>
>> espeak using portaudio suffers appalling latency on the Pi and
>> sometimes crashes the kernel, but using pulseaudio the latency
>> issues are gone.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> On 01/11/2013 20:37, Gregory Nowak wrote:
>>> If there is a way to use dmix to augment/replace pulse, I'd love to
>>> know about it. The problem here is that espeakup uses alsa directly
>>> instead of going through pulse. The only two ways I can think of to
>>> fix this would be either to be able to run espeakup as a normal user,
>>> which should force it to use pulse by virtue of opening alsa as a
>>> regular user from what I understand, or to add pulse support to
>>> espeakup. Actually, espeak uses portaudio if I remember right, so maybe it's
>>> as simple as portaudio supporting pulse.
>>>
>>> Greg
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Nov 02, 2013 at 04:52:48AM +0900, Devon Stewart wrote:
>>>> Isn't there a way to use alsa's dmix plugin to either replace, or at least augment, pulse? Also, this is assuming that Alsa is being used from the CLI.
>>>>
>>>> -Devon
>>>>
>>>> On 2013/11/02, at 4:41, "John G. Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If I kill pulseaudio, do I still get speech with orca?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 11/01/13 14:23, Trevor Astrope wrote:
>>>>>> Are you using software speech with both speakup and orca? I've had this
>>>>>> problem with sound not working on the command line after running orca.
>>>>>> In my case, gnome/orca started a pulseaudio process running as my user,
>>>>>> even though I have pulseaudio and speechd-up configured to run as a
>>>>>> system daemon.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Killing the pulseaudio process running as my user gets sound back. You
>>>>>> may need to restart speechd-up service as well, as I sometimes have a
>>>>>> problem with this too, but I usually use hardware speech, so I don't
>>>>>> remember the scenario where that is necessary to do as well.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 1 Nov 2013, John G. Heim wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sorry if this is an FAQ but is there a solution to that problem with
>>>>>>> running both speakup & orca in debian 7?  Every time I've installed
>>>>>>> debian 7 (aka wheezy), I can use speakup fine unless I log in at the
>>>>>>> GUI and run orca.  At that point, speakup stops talking and nothing
>>>>>>> I've found short of rebooting gets it working agin. I understand this
>>>>>>> has something to do with pulse audio run in the GUI.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> ---
>>>>>>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> ---
>>>>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Michael A. Ray
>> Analyst/Programmer
>> Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
>>
>> I KEEP six honest serving-men, They taught me all I know. Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
>> -- Rudyard Kipling (paraphrased)
>>
>> Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
>> Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/
>>
>>  From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

I KEEP six honest serving-men, They taught me all I know. Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
-- Rudyard Kipling (paraphrased)

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers