Bug#591717: [Espeak-general] Bug#591717: espeak: Library unble to open soundcard.

[Jonathan Duddington <jonsd@talktalk.net>]

On 22 Aug, Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org> wrote:

> One of our debian users has troubles with using espeak on his machine,
> getting 

> wave_open_sound > Pa_OpenStream : err=-9996 (Invalid device)

This error message comes from espeak, from file wave.cpp at line 307.

This is in function wave_open_sound() which tries to open a sound
channel for output.  Error number -9996 means "invalid device", but I
don't know what that means in this context.

espeak tries to open a sound channel for 22050 Hz, 16 bit, mono.

If the error is -9998 (Invalid channel count) it will try stereo, but
that is not the case here.

If 22050 Hz is not available, the error should have been -9997 (Invalid
bit rate).  Error "Invalid device" may suggest something wrong with
ALSA data.

eSpeak can be made to use a specified device number (I'm not sure what
"device number" means), by a line in the file  espeak-data/config

You could try adding a line:

pa_device  1

in the file espeak-data/config, and change "1" to a number that works.

Is this an index into a some ALSA data?  This number sets the value of
variable option_device_number which is used at line 503 in function
select_device() in wave.cpp.  I don't know much about this code.  It
was written by Gilles Casse <gcasse@oralux.org>, so he may have a
better understanding of this problem.