speech dispatcher not connecting to alsa

[Mitchell Smith]

Hi,

I suspect gnome-speech is trying to use OSS and tying up your sound card. 
Make sure you have installed the alsa-oss package which might help resolve 
this matter.

If you have a second system available, try quitting Orca entirely and then 
ssh in from another box and run spd-say from the command prompt.

Also, make sure your user is a member of the audio group in /etc/group.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Mitch


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Hill" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
To: < speechd at lists.freebsoft.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:12 PM
Subject: speech dispatcher not connecting to alsa


> Hello list,
>
> I've as yet been unable to get orca working with speech dispatcher  on 
> Intrepid.
> I've tried permutations of system and user setup, different output
> modules etc to no avail.  A typical output of the
> var/log/speech-dispatcher/espeak.log file is:
>
> Tue Jan 13 14:49:13 2009 [528318] ALSA: Opening ALSA sound output
> Tue Jan 13 14:49:13 2009 [528379] ALSA: Opening ALSA device
> ALSA lib pcm.c:2196:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM pcm.dmixer
> Tue Jan 13 14:49:13 2009 [531909] ALSA ERROR: Cannot open audio device 
> pcm.dmixer (No such file or directory)
> Tue Jan 13 14:49:13 2009 [531937] ALSA ERROR: Cannot initialize Alsa 
> device 'pcm.dmixer': Can't open.
>
>
> I usually hear the dummy module message.  My setup is as follows:
>
> I have disabled pulseaudio according to the method given at:
>
> http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/alsa-instead-of-pulseaudio-for-ubuntu-810-intrepid-a-non-destructive-way/
>
> with all tabs in preferences-sounds-devices set to alsa, and all
> system sounds disabled.  I use emacspeak from a console, with voxin
> (ibmtts) and flite, which work perfectly.  When I use orca, it is via
> espeak, which at the moment is very sluggish, but which does work via
> gnome speech.  I use a .asoundrc file taken from the emacspeak
> distribution, but removing it has no effect on whether speech
> dispatcher works.
>
> I tried to install speech-dispatcher by installing the speech-dispatcher
> and python-speechd packages, then using spd-conf.
>
> So the problem seems to be getting speech dispatcher to connect to
> alsa.  All other audio on my system works fine, though.
>
> any help appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rob
>
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