[orca-list] Fwd: Re: Configuring speech rate that tracks keyboard entry

[Didier Spaier <didier slint fr>]

Mistakenly sent only to Daniel, now forwarded to the list.

-------- Message transféré --------
Sujet : Re: [orca-list] Configuring speech rate that tracks keyboard entry
Date : Sat, 17 Feb 2018 00:58:39 +0100
De : Didier Spaier <didier slint fr>
Pour : Daniel Collins <djjc1954 gmail com>

Daniel,

Le 16/02/2018 à 22:50, Daniel Collins a écrit :
> Didier,
>
>       You are exactly correct; there is a significant lag between
> depression of a key and the echo of that key in my head phones.  I suspect
> that it is because I am using my laptop sound card instead of a hardware
> speech synthesizer.  Any thoughts?  Thanks.
> -Daniel

Only thing I can thing of apart from an hardware issue is the effect of
of some audio setting.

Nothing really scientific there but in Slint we enhanced responsiveness
making speech-dispatcher (hence orca) only rely on alsa instead of
pulseaudio and conversely having alsa not spawning pulseaudio.

Maybe (deaf guess, so to speak) try this if that is allowed by your
distribution's software:

1. Have speech-dispatcher rely on alsa. For that, run spd-conf as
eegular user, ask for a new user configuration then when you hear:
Default audio output method [pulse] :
type alsa the press [Enter]
Caveat: this will be effective only if your speech-dispatcher package
has been built with the alsa audio method included (not only pulse),
which I don't know.

2. Make sure you don't have these two lines in /etc/asound.conf:
pcm.default pulse
ctl.default pulse
If they are there, comment them out inserting a # as first
character of the line.
This will avoid that alsa spawns a pulse process.

3. To make pulse and alsa share your hardware nicely, make sure that you
have thesee two lines in /etc/pulse/default.pa:
load-module module-alsa-sink device=dmix
load-module module-alsa-source device=dsnoop

This reminds me the saying:
Practice is when it works but we don't know why
Theory is when it doesn't work but we know why
Her we gather theory and practice:
It doesn't work and nobody knows why.

I am far to be knowledgeable wrt sound handling but hope
this helps.

Cheers,
Didier
Slint distribution:
http://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-14.2.1/README-14.2.1.1
http://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-14.2.1/doc/ACCESSIBILITY