Re: Espeak Server Likes PulseAudio?

[Steve Holmes <steve@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I can dig up the exact URL when I get home tonight.  But in the
meantime, I can give you an indirect way to get there.  It is a page
in the ArchLinux wiki and the suggested change shouldn't be too Arch
specific other than telling you to remove a package called
pulseaudio-alsa; actually, that package contains only wone file,
/etc/asound.conf <smile>. so First off, remove /etc/asound.conf if you
have it and then go to
https://wiki.archlinux.org and search for pulseaudio.
Once in that document navigate on down till you find a section
discussing how to get pulse and ALSA to work without stepping on each
other.  They start out that part saying that it is "not recommended in
most cases but as far as I'm concerned, I want to use espeakup with
speakup so I need to do this hack.  they talk about modifying
/etc/pulse/default.pa by uncommenting a couple static driver
allocations and commenting auto detection.  It looks to me that they
are channeling pulseaudio into ALSA's dmix plug-in but I'm not
positive.

The only side effect I'm noticing is that emacspeak is a bit sluggish
in speech reaction but works well enough for me for the time being.
Let me know if you still need an exact link or if this description
gets you on your way.

On 4/1/13, Christopher Chaltain <chaltain@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Do you mind sharing what you found out or providing a pointer to this
> suggested configuration?
>
> On 04/01/2013 11:30 AM, Steve Holmes wrote:
>> Well after two days of messing around and reading some write-ups for
>> ArchLinux concerning PulseAudio, I founhd a suggested configuration to
>> alter Pulse so it and ALSA function side by side now and I can use
>> Emacspeak, Speakup and Gnome with Speech Dispatcher without any speech
>> losses.  Also tim, I have not experienced any stability issues with
>> the emacspeak espeak server other than while I was battling with Pulse
>> and all.  It is using the pulse driver but I notice that espeak
>> natively is also calling up pulseaudio.c but what's strange is
>> espeakup does not; espeakup probably calls the espeak library function
>> directly and that appears to go through ALSA.  Anyway, I seem to have
>> all these environments working now and hopefully this "house of cards"
>> won't collaps on me:).  I sure wish the Linux sound system were a lot
>> simpler than all this.
>>
>> On 3/30/13, T.V. Raman <tv.raman.tv@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Jason, You have articulated part of the issue correctly. The
>>> other reason why the pulseaudio / alsa combination gives such
>>> vastly varying results is that the layering is complex;  See
>>> Tim's earlier note.  If you have pulseaudio on a system, do an
>>> aplay -v of a .wav file and look at the output -- you'll see the
>>> audio buffers getting routed through multiple layers.  Now,
>>> depending on the soundcard and the memory buffer size it needs,
>>> sample conversions ... this can  go horribly wrong when you
>>> generate a lot of rapid audio requests -- something that happens
>>> with emacspeak a lot if you perform actions that both produce
>>> speech and a rapid sequence of auditory icons.  For the record,
>>> the first thing I did on my work machines after upgrading to
>>> Precise was to nuke pulseaudio -- that is getting harder and
>>> harder to do --
>>>>>>>> "Jason" == Jason White <jason@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>>      Jason> Tim Cross <theophilusx@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>      >> Note that there should be no problems with alsa and
>>>      >> pulseaudio. Pulseaudio is not a replacement for alsa. It
>>>      >> is another abstraction layer on top of it and pulseaudio
>>>      >> needs alsa
>>>      Jason>
>>>      Jason> Part of the problem might be that PulseAudio holds
>>>      Jason> devices open even when not in use, so that
>>>      Jason> applications which access the Alsa layer directly fail
>>>      Jason> to open audio devices.
>>>      Jason>
>>>      Jason> As I remember, there is a way to configure PulseAudio
>>>      Jason> to relinquish devices temporarily that aren't being
>>>      Jason> used by applications.
>>>      Jason>
>>>      Jason> With apologies in advance if I am wrong in the above -
>>>      Jason> it's a while since I read about these issues.
>>>      Jason>
>>>      Jason>
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>      Jason> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your
>>>      Jason> address on the emacspeak list send mail to
>>>      Jason> "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a subject of
>>>      Jason> "unsubscribe" or "help".
>>>
>>> --
>>> Best Regards,
>>> --raman
>>>
>>> --
>>> Best Regards,
>>> --raman
>>>
>>> --
>>> Best Regards,
>>> --raman
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/29/13, Jason White <jason@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> Tim Cross <theophilusx@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Note that there should be no problems with alsa and pulseaudio.
>>>>> Pulseaudio
>>>>> is not a replacement for alsa. It is another abstraction layer on top
>>>>> of
>>>>> it
>>>>> and pulseaudio needs alsa
>>>>
>>>> Part of the problem might be that PulseAudio holds devices open even
>>>> when
>>>> not
>>>> in use, so that applications which access the Alsa layer directly fail
>>>> to
>>>> open
>>>> audio devices.
>>>>
>>>> As I remember, there is a way to configure PulseAudio to relinquish
>>>> devices
>>>> temporarily that aren't being used by applications.
>>>>
>>>> With apologies in advance if I am wrong in the above - it's a while
>>>> since
>>>> I
>>>> read about these issues.
>>>>
>>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
>>>> emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
>>>> subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
>>> emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
>>> subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
>>>
>>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
>> emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
>> subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
>>
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
> emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
> subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
>
>

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