Re: Espeak Server Likes PulseAudio?

[Steve Holmes <steve@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yeah, tell me about PulseAudio and its antics.  I would love to nuke
pulse here but I want to be able to use gnome here too and you know
now that gnome requires pulse to do anything with sound.  I finally
got pulse's configuration to allow native ALSA and pulse to co-exist
but I'm still trying to smooth espeak out.  I rebuilt espeak to use
ALSA (portaudio) exclusively but now I seem to lose speech
periodically and have to use emacspeak's c-e c-s command to restart
speech.  Not sure what's up there but might have to go back to using
pulse on this one.  speakup seems to be flawless with its espeakup
module.

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 07:34:48AM -0700, T.V. Raman 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
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>     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".
> >
> >
> 
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> emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
> subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
> 

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