Re: [orca-list] Revamped explanation of problems relating to lack of speech accessability

[Christopher Chaltain <chaltain gmail com>]

I had some of the problems you described in the console prior to the 
release of vinux 4, and I was able to resolve them by recompiling eSpeak 
to use PulseAudio instead of PortAudio when PulseAudio is installed. 
It's true I had to recompile eSpeak to fix the issues with lag and 
dropping syllables, but the fact that I did it by taking PortAudio out 
of the equation tells me that PulseAudio shouldn't be blamed for this 
behavior. I believe this is how eSpeak is built for Vinux 4 now, i.e. 
using the runtime option instead of PortAudio, which is why these 
problems don't exist in Vinux 4 using PulseAudio.

On 08/06/2013 09:20 AM, Alex Midence wrote:
> Yeah, there's a lot of fancy multimedia stuff you can't do as nicely without
> Pulse.  I don't use those features though so, I don't miss it.  My
> overarching concern is that speech output work responsively, reliably and
> unceasingly.  When I used pulse, the only time it ever worked decently well
> with console, gnome and emacspeak which are the three solutions I use was in
> Vinux 3.0  with the systemwide setup Bill Cox came up with for that version
> of Vinux.  In 3.1, there was crackling and other issues.  In 3.2, it really
> started doing badly for me especially in Emacspeak.  I used Natty (Ubuntu
> 12.04) also at the time and, as long as I didn't have Gnome logged in, it
> worked ok but once I logged onto Gnome, I could forget about console speech
> and Emacspeak would start clipping off the end of syllables and just lagging
> sometimes.  I had the same issues with Ubuntu 12.10.  Great speech in Gnome,
> poor speech performance in the console.  About this time, I switched from
> Vinux to Debian.  I worked out how to eliminate Pulse from the equation
> during initial installation and all of my stuff just worked way way better.
> I never lose speech in the conlsole when Gnome comes up.  My Emacspeak works
> as intended.  Gnome works great also.  Perhaps, the multimedia stuff
> wouldn't but I just don't do a whole lot of multimedia-related work in
> Linux.  I do listen to podcasts and some music from time to time and it
> works good.  If I want to turn it down, I reach over and fiddle with the
> volume knob on my speakers and that's that.
>
> Having said all of that, the fact that you guys got console speech working
> with Pulse in a secure way gives me hope that it will make it upstream and
> other distros like Debian and Fedora as well as plain old Ubuntu will
> benefit from it as well.
>
>
> Regards,
> Alex M
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Luke
> Yelavich
> Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 12:22 AM
> To: orca-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: [orca-list] Revamped explanation of problems relating to lack
> of speech accessability
>
> On Tue, Aug 06, 2013 at 01:21:24PM EST, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> > I used two different methods to get Speakup and Orca cohabitating with
> > PulseAudio's user mode in Ubuntu and Vinux before Luke provided his
> > ConsoleKit package. One method was just to log into a console as root
> > and then su to my user ID. Another was to run sudo speechd-up in a
> > terminal on the desktop and then log into my user ID in a console. I
> > don't consider either method to be extremely difficult.
> > Your first statement also made it seem like it was not possible as
> > opposed to just difficult.
> >
> > I've only used PulseAudio systems in the last few years, and I haven't
> > found it that complicated. I don't have experience with a pure alsa
> > system to compare it to though, so you may be right in that I don't
> > know what I'm missing. From the posts I've seen, which I haven't read
> > too deeply, it seems like it takes a bit of work to install a system
> > without PA on it though.
> >
> > I'm curious, on a pure alsa system, can I control the volume of each
> > audio stream like I can with my Ubuntu systems where I have PA
> > running?
>
> No. Its also harder to do the following:
> * Use bluetooth audio hardware.
> * Move an application's audio output from one card to another.
> * Make an app play through a different card, although if the app provides UI
> to do this, then its not so bad.
>
> The resampling algorithm that ALSA's dmix plugin uses is also nowhere nearly
> as good a quality as the resamplers that pulseaudio can work with. I say
> resamplers because pulseaudio can work with several, and this is changeable
> in its configuration files. Pulseaudio also does as much as it can to
> minimize power usage when audio is being played back.
>
> Luke
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--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail