Pulse Audio

Robert Spangler spangler.robert at gmail.com
Sun Mar 9 00:27:14 EST 2014


I am running Jesse/Sid.  I tried all of these things with no luck.  I 
even tried Janina's suggestion of disabling Pulseaudio (using her steps) 
and that just resulted in Orca not speaking.

I thought I would try a little experimenting of my own, so I recompiled 
espeak to use Pulseaudio.  I then configured Pulseaudio to run as a 
system service.  When I attempted to restart espeakup, it said it 
couldn't connect to PulseAudio: access denied.

On another note: I noticed, when booting, that speech starts before the 
Pulseaudio daemon.  Could this be causing a problem?

I'll keep hammering away at this.  I agree with another poster that 
someone should fix this bug.

Thanks,
Rob

On 3/7/2014 10:48 AM, Trevor Astrope wrote:
> 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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