RE: outloud with ubuntu hardy

["Bart Bunting" <bart@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim,

Thanks for the info.  
I've got alsa 1.0.16 and things seem to be worse since the upgrade from
1.0.15.

I am noticing similar things on my vmware instance also on my laptop using a
totally different chipset so suspect it's not exactly card specific.

If anyone else can verify this problem I'd appreciate it.  

It would be nice to try and get it resolved before the release of hardy.

I'm not sure if similar things are happening with speech-dispatcher using
orca as I don't use it enough, will try and test.

Also if you happen to have the asoundrc file that worked for you around I
wouldn't mind trying it but only if it's easy for you to put your hands on.

Regards

Bart

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Cross [mailto:tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Saturday, 1 March 2008 1:01 PM
To: Bart Bunting
Cc: emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:outloud with ubuntu hardy 

Hi Bart,

I'm running Debian Testing on one box and Debian unstable on the
other. I've found that I have to have a .asoundrc file on both systems even
though they are running Alsa 1.0.15. One box has a Sound Blaster Live
(quite old version 6+ years) and the other running SB Audigy 4 (12 months
old). Kernel is 2.6.22 on Testing and 2.6.24 on Unstable). 

I also noticed just recently that speech doesn't seem to be as
'interruptable' as it was in that when moving lines quickly, the previous
line still gets spoken, though with the most recent update, it seems
better. I've not really worried about it though.

Up until fairly recently, I couldn't use the example .asoundrc file that is
in the emacspeak repository - having to define one specific for my sound
cards. However, a while ago, after an update to a later version of Alsa,
the example .asoundrc now works fine. Without one, I get distorted sound
that you can't understand on both systems.

What I use to do to make things easier was define an 'outloud' virtual pcm
in my .asoundrc and then modify the emacspeak atcleci.c file to use it
instead of 'default'. This seemed to eliminate problems I had with other
sound sources that occured when I modified the 'default' pcm in my
.asoundrc file. 

To work out a .asoundrc file for my needs, I just searched the Alsa site (I
think it was the wiki) for Sound Blaster and SB Audigy 4. That gave me the
basic setup and a little bit of tweaking had it working perfectly. I've
probably still got the files and can provide them if they might be of any
use.

Tim


Bart Bunting writes:
 > Morning,
 > 
 > Is anyone using emacspeak with the outloud speech server and hardy
ubuntu?
 > 
 > I've upgraded a machine to have a play and am finding that the
responsiveness of the outloud server has become much worse.
 > 
 > Speech doesn't seem to interup correctly on long lines and sometimes when
switching buffers i still hear queued speech from the previous buffer being
spoken.
 > 
 > I'm using a soundblaster live.  I am also using the asoundrc shipped with
emacspeak.  I know that theoretically I don't need one but I find that if I
remove it speech becomes almost unrecognisable.  It stutters and slows right
down, hard to describe.  I must add that it also does this with gutsy.
 > 
 > Is anyone using outloud successfully without a asoundrc on a soundblaster
live?
 > 
 > There is a new version of alsa in hardy, this may have something to do
with the speech problems but haven't tracked anything specific down yet.
 > 
 > Regards
 > 
 > Bart
 >  
 > 
 >
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-- 
Tim Cross
tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx

There are two types of people in IT - those who do not manage what they 
understand and those who do not understand what they manage.

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