Pulse Audio

Trevor Astrope astrope at tabbweb.com
Fri Mar 7 10:48:15 EST 2014 

On Fri, 7 Mar 2014, John G. Heim wrote:

> I think the  classic fix for this probme is to recompile espeak to use 
> pulseaudio.  Here is a link to a bug report explaining (sort of) what to do.
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=481651
>
> I think we had a discussion of this point back in November of 2013 but i 
> can't find the thread on google. I am still running debian squeeze on my 
> every day work machine and all my other machines now use sonar linux. So I 
> haven't tried to get speakup and orca to play nice for several months. But I 
> know I got speakup and orca to work in wheezy by following the advice on that 
> bug report. The real problem was that the version of orca in debian wheezy
> didn't work.

Below is the post from you and Mike Ray on how to configure and build 
espeak to use pulseaudio. I run pulseaudio as a daemon to get espeakup to 
start speaking as soon as it is loaded so I get speech at the login 
prompt.

In Debian Jessie/Sid, you will need to edit 
/etc/default/pulseaudio to have this line:

PULSEAUDIO_SYSTEM_START=1

And in /etc/pulse/client.conf:

autospawn = no

It's been a while since I configured speech for orca, but I think I had to 
modify /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf to use a unix socket:

SocketPath "/var/run/speech-dispatcher/speech-dispatcher.sock"

And in my .bash_profile, I added:

export SPEECHD_ADDRESS="unix_socket:/var/run/speech-dispatcher/speech-dispatcher.sock"

I use hardware speech with speakup on the machine running orca and I don't 
run orca on the machine using espeakup, so I can't say that it will work 
for both orca and speakup with espeakup. Please follow up if I missed 
something.

----- Forwarded Message -----
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 22:17:03
From: John G. Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <speakup at linux-speakup.org>
To: mike at raspberryvi.org, Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <speakup at linux-speakup.org>, Brandon McGinty-Carroll <bmmcginty at bmcginty.hopto.org>
Subject: Re: speakup & orca in debian 7

I got it working on my debian 7 (wheezy) system. Here is what I did:

apt-get remove espeakup espeak
apt-get install libpulse-dev libsonic-dev
apt-get source espeak
cd espeak-1.6.42/src/
[edit Makefile as describe below]
make
make install

cd ../../
apt-get install espeakup
cd espeakup-0.71/
make
make install

modprobe speakup-soft
espeakup
Viola!

Notes:
1. I couldn't figure out how to get the debian espeakup package to work 
with my custom compiled version of speakup. You can't install espeakup 
w/o the espeak package.
2. The apt-get source command downloads the source for the debian 
package into the current working directory.

On 11/01/2013 07:28 PM, Mike Ray wrote:
>
> I should also say the command to compile is:
>
> make all
>
> not just make
>
> Mike
>
> On 02/11/2013 00:22, Mike Ray wrote:
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>
>
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