Re: [orca-list] Replacing Pulseaudio with JackD in Ubuntu

[Janina Sajka <janina rednote net>]

luke writes:
> I'm sorry, I'm guessing I didn't say in my original message that I am a 
> Ubuntu user.  They have standardized on pulseaudio in their desktop 
> version, which happens to be what I am using on my laptop.  Orca is 
> running there, with espeak and pulseaudio.
> I was contemplating installation of Intrepid desktop on my DAW as well, 
> which means that it would be using pulseaudio until I switched back to 
> JACK, hopefully doing so with a limited time of no speech.
I don't know that pulse audio is doing anything useful for you. Am I
wrong? Seems to me simply pulling pulseaudio and letting alsa and esd
manage will work perfectly well on the desktop for orca and any sound
via the default device. And, it avoids the latency issues on the
console.

I suppose pa will be nice at some point for home multimedia center type
jobs--sending audio from one machine to another, to multiple machines,
etc. But, what does it actually do to enhance Orca speech? I don't see
the benefit.


> On my laptop: I would never have chosen to install it, but since it has 
> been installed for me, I would like the best way to either work with it 
> and still use advansed sound hardware (Delta1010 in my DAW, UCA202 USB 
> devices on my laptop), or extract it completely.
On Fedora we edit /etc/asound.conf and comment out the pulseaudio call.
These seems sufficient to remove it and now seems better than actually
removing the packages, because the package manager will then not
reinstall and reconfigure at some future time.

For now I also recreate my /etc/modprobe.conf to guarantee that my audio
devices get the same hw:X assignment on each boot. I really should use
udev for that, but haven't yet figured out how.

Without the modules definitions the first firmware to load becomes hw:0
and so forth, which is disasterous if your expecting speech on the
builtin audio device.

My current order is:

hw:0 is the builtin hda-intel. This is where speakup and orca speak via
espeak and ttsynth.

hw:1 is my Sennheiser headset used for voip with linphonec (or twinkle).
It's now my favorite telephone, especially for longer conversations.

hw:2 is my Echo Indigo onmy laptop, and my RME Multiface on my DAW.

Needless to say, jack is directed only at hw:2.

hth

Janina