trouble with latest git, espeak, and PulseAudio

[A]

If this is from your hardware then probably you can use dmix to avoid
using the hardware mixing. I'm using alsa's dmix plug-in which is
configured by default for my sound hardware and I haven't seen any
problems with it. It's less troublesome than any other audio layer I
have tried (artd and jackd).

The dmix plug-in does the mixing in software so hardware should not
matter. I think plug is used over dmix to do resampling when needed.

Something like this in your .asoundrc should do the trick for you:
pcm.!default{
   type plug
   slave.pcm dmix
}

If not, http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc#dmix has some
good examples for configuring dmix. Also if your computer is slower,
you may wish to increase buffers so you don't hear glitches.

I don't mind pulse audio or say it should be ditched. I just use
whatever fits best the task at hand. For my kde I let KDE native apps
use artsd but all other apps use the default ALSA device (just like
artsd does) and for recording I'm using jackd on top of the external
sound card I have.

btw. with the above suggested asoundrc you may experience some
problems programs detecting your capture device (for example if you
are using microphone). If dmix works for you I can try to give you a
more comprehensive asoundrc that has your capture device detectable.

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 9:15 PM, Jacob Schmude <j.schmude at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> Unfortunately, on this system, I do not have a choice but to use
> Pulseaudio. To use ALSA directly results in audio artifacts whenever
> speech is used due to poor hardware resampling in the onboard card.
> Really, we have to stop saying "just ditch Pulseaudio" and work with it
> instead. It's not going away, and is sometimes the only thing allowing
> certain poorly-implemented hardware to work properly in cases where ALSA
> and OSS4 are not enough on their own. The blanket "ditch Pulseaudio"
> attitude displayed by a lot of people is worrysome. Pulse is here to
> stay, to think otherwise is wishful thinking and nowhere near close to
> reality.
> Too bad Opensolaris doesn't support enough of the hardware in this
> system for me to switch over to that, since it is free of all these
> ridiculous audio layers and conflicts.
...