viavoice running smoothly (was Re: Error: Could not load libibmeci.so)

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

glad you got it working.

For thw record on my Thinkpad where ALSA and ViaVoice work well
together, I can play a streaming realaudio station (using
mplayer), play an mp3 file and use ViaVoice all at the same time,
including auditory icons, which means it's sometimes doing for
simultaneous streams of audio at a time.

Most of todays sound cards can do directional/spatial audio, and
there are even software plugins to do this on Linux, but sadly
those are even harder than ALSA to figure out.

It would be interesting to get some of those working because with
spatialization multiple streams of audio will become much more useful/usable.

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert D Crawford <rdc1x@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
    Robert> Lukas Loehrer <listaddr1@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
    >> first the easy stuff. If the beep tool from the beep
    >> package does no longer work, One way to restore the beep
    >> is to use the beep script
    Robert> 
    Robert> Thanks.  The script did the trick.
    Robert> 
    Robert> Concerning the viavoice, it is now running very well.
    Robert> In probably what amounts to 6 or 7 hours of use over
    Robert> the last day, I have had only one crash and no echo
    Robert> problems.  To test the issue of overlap after
    Robert> something else accesses the sound device, I went to
    Robert> the sounds directory and did
    Robert> 
    Robert> aplay *.wav
    Robert> 
    Robert> and am suffering no ill effects.
    Robert> 
    >> Anyway, what you have to do is choose a buffer size that
    >> is small, I would say at most 100ms. Mine is 4096
    >> frames. Add some printfs to atcleci.cpp to see what sizes
    >> for buffer_size and chunk_size are used.
    Robert> 
    Robert> Since I do not know anything about c++, I took the
    Robert> trial and error approach.  I started with the value
    Robert> you mentioned above and initially decremented it by
    Robert> 256.  Things progressively got worse doing this, so I
    Robert> started incrementing the value by 1024 until I got a
    Robert> value that worked for me.  I did the same for the
    Robert> period size and the period time.  Here are the values
    Robert> I was left with:
    Robert> 
    Robert> pcm.dmixer { type dmix ipc_key 1024 slave { pcm
    Robert> "hw:0,0" format s16_LE period_time 0 period_size 512
    Robert> buffer_size 8192 rate 44100
    Robert> 
    Robert> 
    Robert> I left a bit of context for anyone reading this in
    Robert> the future.  Note that the value of period time is
    Robert> still 0.  I am not sure what this variable is for,
    Robert> but changing it did bad things.
    Robert> 
    Robert> Here is the output of aplay -l | head 1
    Robert> 
    Robert> card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 0:
    Robert> Intel ICH [Intel 82801DB-ICH4]
    Robert> 
    Robert> BTW, the aplay on my system does not give the card id
    Robert> in the first line of output, and the head command
    Robert> requires a dash before the argument.
    Robert> 
    >> Note that when testing different settings in the .asoundrc
    >> file, the changes only take effect after all processes
    >> have closed the sound device.
    Robert> 
    Robert> This was the case for me as well.
    Robert> 
    Robert> A question that might not be able to be answered is
    Robert> whether or not this is an issue that can be solved in
    Robert> the atcleci.cpp file.  While this tweaking is not
    Robert> such a big deal for knowledgeable users, and only a
    Robert> little bit of a problem for users like me who will
    Robert> plunge head-first into the water without knowing how
    Robert> deep it is, there is a whole class of users that will
    Robert> not take the time to mess around with the settings.
    Robert> This issue will also be a problem with projects like
    Robert> Oralux where it will be impossible to adjust the
    Robert> settings.
    Robert> 
    Robert> Just some thoughts.  Thanks to everyone that helped
    Robert> see me through to resolution.
    Robert> 
    Robert> rdc
    Robert> 
    Robert> --
    Robert> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Robert> Robert D. Crawford rdc1x@xxxxxxxxxxx
    Robert> 
    Robert> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

      
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