Talking Arch has no speech

[Tony Baechler]

Here, for the record, is the message I sent to the support address for
Talking Arch. I did solve the asound.state problem by reading the man page,
but as you can see, I did offer to help. In retrospect, I should have made
my interest clearer. What I didn't state outright is that I would be
willing to test later CD releases to make sure the problems have been
resolved. I did offer to send my amixer output and my asound.state. This
is one case where a public mailing list to discuss these types of problems
is really beneficial. Even though there aren't many Debian developers
working on accessibility, there is a public mailing list. I intend to set
up such a list for my live rescue CD.


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Talking Arch has no speech
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2015 23:52:26 -0800
From: Tony Baechler <***@gmail.com>
To: ***@talkingarch.tk

Hello,

The 2015.03.01 CD seems to boot fine as I get garbage through my DECtalk
Express. However, I get no speech through my sound card. I have two
different installs of Debian here which both work fine, so it isn't an
unsupported card. It's a Sound Blaster Audigy II. I think the problem is
there is a switch for analog which needs to be turned off. I can send you
my asound.state and/or amixer output if that helps. I know nothing about
Arch. Where does it store asound.state? I can copy it over from Debian if
I know where to put it. Also, it completely screwed up my serial
synthesizer to the point that it quit talking and my Windows screen reader
doesn't talk now. I understand that serial detection is necessary for
Braille displays, but perhaps there is a better way to go about it. Again,
Debian works fine here and doesn't have that problem. If you could tell me
where asound.state is, that would be helpful. I know the CD booted because
"halt" shut the system down as expected. Thanks for your help and making
the CD available. I'm interested in trying it if I can get speech working.

[Kyle]

Yeah, I did somehow miss that. I do apologize, as my server may have
flagged it for some reason. I do believe that the switch can be turned
off in the script that unmutes the sound card. The worst problem would
be a possible error message printed to the screen, but I'm sure we have
plenty of those from other cards with non-standard controls that are
fixed by the alsa-unmuter script. Since I don't have this specific
card, I would need the name of the specific control that causes the
problem, so that I could turn it off correctly using amixer, which is
what the unmuter script is using to set volumes. Also, if you could
open this in the issue tracker, it can be tracked more easily, and I
can properly close it once it's fixed. Thanks.
Sent from my inner ear

[Tony Baechler]

Kyle,

I'll have to get back to you on this, but the problem is the sound card
isn't muted, so your unmute script doesn't work. It also happens on the
Sound Blaster Live! Value. I'll have to send my amixer output separately,
but I think the name of the control is:

Analog Capture Switch

To further complicate things, the SB Live calls it something else, but with
Analog in the name. Ubuntu had a problem with the Live! Value but not the
Audigy. If you have a really ancient card, you don't have this problem.
Actually, the Live doesn't have this problem, it's the Live! Value. I know
the Audigy and Audigy II do have the problem and were finally fixed in
Debian, so it's obviously an ALSA driver issue.

[Kyle]

Strangely, having a SoundBlaster Live! Value here, I don't have this
problem at all on TalkingArch. I have blacklisted my onboard card on my
Arch system, and have never had a problem with the SB. Plugging in a
brand new TalkingArch gives me the usual recording played through both
cards, unless this is a really new problem, as I normally test in a VM
before sending the iso off to Kelly to do some additional testing and
to add his signature. Could there be some sort of variation in
SoundBlaster Live! Value cards that may cause problems on some and not
others? If not, then I'm not sure what may be causing this issue on
some systems.
Sent from my puzzle

[Jude DaShiell]

Could the dvd image burnt somehow be corrupted? On Fri, 2 Oct 2015, Kyle

Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2015 09:50:05
Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Fwd: Talking Arch has no speech
Strangely, having a SoundBlaster Live! Value here, I don't have this
problem at all on TalkingArch. I have blacklisted my onboard card on my
Arch system, and have never had a problem with the SB. Plugging in a
brand new TalkingArch gives me the usual recording played through both
cards, unless this is a really new problem, as I normally test in a VM
before sending the iso off to Kelly to do some additional testing and
to add his signature. Could there be some sort of variation in
SoundBlaster Live! Value cards that may cause problems on some and not
others? If not, then I'm not sure what may be causing this issue on
some systems.
Sent from my puzzle
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

--

[Kyle]

Not if it's passing the signature check. If you import the keys from
the website, download the signature file and run

gpg --verify TalkingArch-2015.09.02-dual.iso.sig

and you get a good signature, then your image is fine. If you are still
having sound problems on a Soundblaster Live! Value, then there must be
a variation on this card that is different from the one I have. In this
case, it would be helpful to know what the name of the control is that
needs to be toggled, and the state required to make sound play through
connected speakers or headphones. A fairly large number of cards are de
tected and controls unmuted or toggled on or off to make them work, but
not everything is fully working yet. That said, new controls can be
added or changed at any time, as long as they don't conflict with
controls of the same name on other cards.
Sent from my Hidden Valley Ranch