Re: Comparing the responsiveness of espeak and Outloud

["T. V. Raman" <tv.raman.tv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is useful feedback. As to why the emacspeak server doesn't
use that call, simple answer may be that that call didn't exist
at the time Iimplemented the emacspeak alsa server -- from memory
sometime in 2003. I'll look at what that function does when I
have some time.

>>>>> "Alastair" == Alastair Irving <alastair.irving@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
    Alastair> Further to the below, I've now got voxin working
    Alastair> with speakup via the speakup connector. Stopping
    Alastair> speech with it is far more responsive than with
    Alastair> emacspeak.
    Alastair> 
    Alastair> I've had a look at the code for both the emacspeak
    Alastair> server and the speakup connector. The main
    Alastair> difference seems to be that the connector uses the
    Alastair> snd_pcm_avail_update method to determine how many
    Alastair> frames to write. It then doesn't do any checking
    Alastair> for underruns.
    Alastair> 
    Alastair> I don't really understand all the details of what's
    Alastair> happening but is it possible that this explains the
    Alastair> difference in performance? If so is there a reason
    Alastair> why the emacspeak server doesn't use the
    Alastair> snd_pcm_avail_update method?
    Alastair> 
    Alastair> Alastair
    Alastair> 
    Alastair> On 20/02/2012 18:35, Alastair Irving wrote:
    >> Hi
    >> 
    >> I'm running Arch Linux inside a virtual machine. I have
    >> emacspeak 34.0 with both the espeak and Outloud servers
    >> compiled and working. Both servers work well, the only
    >> problem is that the outloud server seems to be less
    >> responsive than espeak, especially when trying to stop
    >> speech. It's often the case that when stopping outloud an
    >> extra couple of sylabuls will be spoken. I know this
    >> doesn't sound like much but if you cursor through lines
    >> very quickly it can get to be a long way behind.
    >> 
    >> I did some experimenting by running the outloud server
    >> directly, queueing some speech with the q command,
    >> speaking it with d and stopping it with s. as above there
    >> was a very obvious delay in stopping, where as with espeak
    >> there is not. Whilst doing this I realised that every time
    >> I got it to speak something the server printed numerous
    >> messages of the form Underrun!!! (at least ... ms too
    >> long) (for varying values of ...).
    >> 
    >> Presumably this shouldn't happen.
    >> 
    >> I would really appreciate it if someone who understands
    >> the workings of the server could please tell me if the
    >> slow stopping and the underrun issues are the same problem
    >> or different and if there is anything I can do about the
    >> slow stopping problem.
    >> 
    >> Many thanks
    >> 
    >> Alastair
    >> 
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    Alastair> 
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-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

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