software speech problem after latest also upgrade

software speech problem after latest also upgrade

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

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Greg,

On my system, a similar problem with software speech followed the
upgrade of the alsa libraries (libasound2) from 1.0.15 to 1.0.16, and
takes the form of the disappearance of the first couple hundred
milliseconds of a wave file played by aplay.

The problem does a real number of software speech with espeak, which is
made up of numerous very short wave files, so it is more noticeable.
When you use flite, each wave file produced by that engine contains
leading and trailing silent periods, which makes it seem more sluggish,
but protects you from the alsa problem.

If your recent upgrade of also was from 1.0.15 of the libraries to
1.0.16, perhaps you have the same problem.

Look more closely at how aplay handles wave files with abrupt onset of
audio and see if there isn't a very slow startup for the sound. I have
lots of sound effects here with fast onsets, such as the morse code
characters, cuckoo clock sounds, etc., where the problem is very
noticeable when aplay plays the files.

And it doesn't help to switch to play any more either, since play now
uses alsa by default if it is present. 

I wish I knew how to backtrack to 1.0.15, but that version of the alsa
libraries is no longer available in the Debian unstable archive.

Chuck

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                                --------
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Re: software speech problem after latest also upgrade

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

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woops! Did I really type "also" instead of "alsa"? Sorry about that.


On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 08:06:36PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Greg,
> 
> On my system, a similar problem with software speech followed the
> upgrade of the alsa libraries (libasound2) from 1.0.15 to 1.0.16, and
> takes the form of the disappearance of the first couple hundred
> milliseconds of a wave file played by aplay.
> 
> The problem does a real number of software speech with espeak, which is
> made up of numerous very short wave files, so it is more noticeable.
> When you use flite, each wave file produced by that engine contains
> leading and trailing silent periods, which makes it seem more sluggish,
> but protects you from the alsa problem.
> 
> If your recent upgrade of also was from 1.0.15 of the libraries to
> 1.0.16, perhaps you have the same problem.
> 
> Look more closely at how aplay handles wave files with abrupt onset of
> audio and see if there isn't a very slow startup for the sound. I have
> lots of sound effects here with fast onsets, such as the morse code
> characters, cuckoo clock sounds, etc., where the problem is very
> noticeable when aplay plays the files.
> 
> And it doesn't help to switch to play any more either, since play now
> uses alsa by default if it is present. 
> 
> I wish I knew how to backtrack to 1.0.15, but that version of the alsa
> libraries is no longer available in the Debian unstable archive.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> - -- 
> The Moon is Waning Crescent (8% of Full)
> 
>    My web site is: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net, my phone is: 1-518-334-9022,
>          and sometimes I  Jabber. My JID is: chuckh@jabber.org
>                                 --------
>        For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.
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> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

- -- 
The Moon is Waning Crescent (8% of Full)

   My web site is: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net, my phone is: 1-518-334-9022,
         and sometimes I  Jabber. My JID is: chuckh@jabber.org
                                --------
       For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.
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RE: software speech problem after latest also upgrade

[Tom Moore]

You might have to uninstall it from the packaging system and install it from
source to get what you want.
This can be a pain at times, but for certain things like alsa related things
and the kernel I do from source.
Pretty much everything else I do from the packaging system.

Tom
 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Chuck Hallenbeck
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 8:07 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: software speech problem after latest also upgrade

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Greg,

On my system, a similar problem with software speech followed the
upgrade of the alsa libraries (libasound2) from 1.0.15 to 1.0.16, and
takes the form of the disappearance of the first couple hundred
milliseconds of a wave file played by aplay.

The problem does a real number of software speech with espeak, which is
made up of numerous very short wave files, so it is more noticeable.
When you use flite, each wave file produced by that engine contains
leading and trailing silent periods, which makes it seem more sluggish,
but protects you from the alsa problem.

If your recent upgrade of also was from 1.0.15 of the libraries to
1.0.16, perhaps you have the same problem.

Look more closely at how aplay handles wave files with abrupt onset of
audio and see if there isn't a very slow startup for the sound. I have
lots of sound effects here with fast onsets, such as the morse code
characters, cuckoo clock sounds, etc., where the problem is very
noticeable when aplay plays the files.

And it doesn't help to switch to play any more either, since play now
uses alsa by default if it is present. 

I wish I knew how to backtrack to 1.0.15, but that version of the alsa
libraries is no longer available in the Debian unstable archive.

Chuck

- -- 
The Moon is Waning Crescent (8% of Full)

   My web site is: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net, my phone is: 1-518-334-9022,
         and sometimes I  Jabber. My JID is: chuckh@jabber.org
                                --------
       For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.
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Re: software speech problem after latest also upgrade

[Gregory Nowak]

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Hi Chuck and all.

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 08:06:36PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> On my system, a similar problem with software speech followed the
> upgrade of the alsa libraries (libasound2) from 1.0.15 to 1.0.16, and
> takes the form of the disappearance of the first couple hundred
> milliseconds of a wave file played by aplay.

I don't know if libasound2 specifically was one of the packages
upgraded during that upgrade, but if there were some packages with
alsa in their name, it's likely that libasound2 was in that batch as
well. What I can find out, and have found out is that currently, the
libasound2 on my systems is at 1.0.16-1. Having done some testing with wav
files, I do see that a bit of the beginning does seem to be cut on
some, but not on all of them, and when I say all of them, I only mean
those where the sound starts literally playing as soon as the file starts
playing. This doesn't seem limited to aplay only as you mentioned
below, because it also does show up in wav files played by mplayer,
which is also using alsa of course.

> The problem does a real number of software speech with espeak, which is
> made up of numerous very short wave files, so it is more noticeable.

I'm confused here. My impression was that the espeak module (I mean
espeak, not espeak-generic) provided with speech-dispatcher did away
with generating wav files, and espeak send the text to be spoken to
the audio hardware directly, rather than generating a wav file, which
was later played back, as is the case in the espeak-generic module. Am
I wrong on this?

> When you use flite, each wave file produced by that engine contains
> leading and trailing silent periods, which makes it seem more sluggish,
> but protects you from the alsa problem.

That doesn't seem like it is the case. As I said in my previous post,
the problem is less noticeable in flite, but it's still there, it isn't
completely gone.

> I wish I knew how to backtrack to 1.0.15, but that version of the alsa
> libraries is no longer available in the Debian unstable archive.

If the wav file issue is in fact what is causing the problem, then I
would see backtracking to libasound2 1.0.15 as a temporary fix, and
not a desirable one in the long run. I think a better solution would
be to see if it is possible to make espeak generate a few-hundred ms
of silence in wav files it outputs, assuming that the espeak module
still relies on wav files, and that this is the problem.

Thanks for the info Chuck.

Greg


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Re: software speech problem after latest also upgrade

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

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Hi Greg,

> 
> I'm confused here. My impression was that the espeak module (I mean
> espeak, not espeak-generic) provided with speech-dispatcher did away
> with generating wav files, and espeak send the text to be spoken to
> the audio hardware directly, rather than generating a wav file, which
> was later played back, as is the case in the espeak-generic module. Am
> I wrong on this?
> 

Sorry about that: I use the espeak-generic module. On my system for
some reason when I use the newer espeak module, some of my oss packages
fail to be able to open the sound device. 

Chuck


- -- 
The Moon is Waning Crescent (7% of Full)

   My web site is: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net, my phone is: 1-518-334-9022,
         and sometimes I  Jabber. My JID is: chuckh@jabber.org
                                --------
       For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.
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