Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein <chris@schoeppi.net>]

Hi Samuel,

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 10:01:44AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein, le ven. 05 juin 2020 09:44:14 +0200, a ecrit:
>> the sound output and therefore also the speech output is stucking. It
>> sounds like the system is under heavy load and speech is only outputed
>> in fragments with little breaks in between.
>
>Just to be sure:
>
>- what is your environment? text console with speakup? graphical with
>  orca? Which speech synthesis?

I have configured pulse audio to run in daemon mode because I do not know another method to have speech enabled in the graphical environment and also with brltty in the text console. I know that is not recommended but I do not know another way to setup a system if you need textbased and graphical environment at the same time :-(. I can post more details on my config if needed.

>- what is your distribution? what is the version of speech-dispatcher?

Debian 10.4 with buster backports enabled and mate 1.20.2. The other interesting packages are IMHO:

brltty                                6.0+dfsg-5~bpo10+1
brltty-speechd                        6.0+dfsg-5~bpo10+1
espeak-ng-data:amd64                  1.50+dfsg-6~bpo10+1
libespeak-ng1:amd64                   1.50+dfsg-6~bpo10+1
gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:amd64         1.14.4-1
libpulse-mainloop-glib0:amd64         13.0-3~bpo10+1
libpulse0:amd64                       13.0-3~bpo10+1
libpulsedsp:amd64                     13.0-3~bpo10+1
pulseaudio                            13.0-3~bpo10+1
pulseaudio-utils                      13.0-3~bpo10+1
libspeechd2:amd64                     0.9.0-5+deb10u1
python3-speechd                       0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher                     0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher-audio-plugins:amd64 0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng           0.9.0-5+deb10u1
orca                                  3.36.2-1~bpo10+1

Everything worked perfectly before the VMware update with VMware Workstation 15.5.2, the problems started with the latest version of VMware 15.5.5. Wndows is warning because the older version of VMware Workstation that I have to use now, so not doing the update will be no good choice for a longer periode of time and also not because of security policies of my employer :-(.

Cheers and thanks for any hint or help!

  Schoepp