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wisemonkey
Asked: 2011-10-29 16:37:10 +0800 CST

How to get espeak working?

  • 772

I'm trying read it loud feature of acrobat, so need a text synthesizer, I've installed espeak and libgnome-speech libraries (it didn't work for acrobat right out of the box) so when I started espeak-gui through command line it gave me segmentation fault next I tried only espeak and here is output:

    ALSA lib pcm.c:2212:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2212:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2212:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1613:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1613:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1613:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1613:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started

Any ideas? or any alternative solutions for read it loud?

Thanks

11.10

6 Answers

  1. Please, run this test on the command line (AKA, terminal): 

    espeak "Hello, I am Espeak, the voice synthesizer" --stdout | paplay

    That should work, but if you want the Linux voice synthesizer to read your text out loud, you should run and enable Orca (the GNOME default screen reader). It work with Evince, Firefox, LibreOffice, etc.

    • 6

  2. That is the output from when I write "espeak hello" as well (and it does in fact say "hello" to me), so the output itself does not look like the program fails.

    Could you please post the output of:

    espeak hello
echo $?

    That will give the exit code from the espeak program. Then we can tell if the espeak program thought everything went fine (usually return code 0) or if it considers itself to have failed.

    • 1

  3. It looks like this error is caused by espeak trying to use alsa by default when Ubuntu is running pulseaudio - I get this error myself on my laptop, but not on my desktop. Piping the output of espeak to pulseaudio (--stdout | paplay) as suggested avoids this error message and the associated delay - I suppose another solution would be to configure espeak to use pulseaudio instead of alsa - I assume it is set this way because not all distros use pulseaudio yet?

    • 1

  4. I experienced this error after installing a few audio related packages:

    espeak libespeak1 mbrola mbrola-en1 alsa-utils

    The full error text was:

    ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM sysdefault
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM sysdefault
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.front
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround40
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround41
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround50
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround51
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.iec958
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.iec958
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.iec958
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM dmix
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM dmix
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
wave_open_sound > Pa_OpenStream : err=-9996 (Invalid device)
wave_open_sound > Pa_OpenStream : err=-9996 (Invalid device)
wave_open_sound > Pa_OpenStream : err=-9996 (Invalid device)
wave_open_sound > Pa_OpenStream : err=-9996 (Invalid device)

    The good news is that the problem went away after a reboot. So, hopefully all you need to do is do a reboot yourself.

    Running a fresh install of 13.10 server on a 32-bit robot.

    • 0

  5. Sometimes your raspberry pi routes audio signal to the HDMI port, and we keep searching in 3.5mm jack. Simply type -->

    amixer cset numid=3 n

    (where 'n' is 0 for auto, 1 for audio, 2 for HDMI port.)

    Ex: If you wish to listen to audio using headphones, type:

    amixer cset numid=3 1

    and you are done. Hope this helps.

    • 0

  6. In my case, I had to disable PortAudio and enable PulseAudio when building eSpeak in Ubuntu 18. I made this change in the make file, then audio worked for the C++ example and there espeak binary:

    #AUDIO = portaudio
AUDIO = pulseaudio`

    I built speak 1.48.04

    • 0