Errors with espeak

Question

I am getting an error using espeak. Audio comes out the head phone jack, but all of this stuff get written to the command line. I installed espeak and alsa-utils. Any idea how to fix these errors?

[kevin@raspberrypi ~]$ sudo espeak "hello"
[sudo] password for kevin: 
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.front
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround40
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround41
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround50
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround51
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.iec958
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.iec958
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.iec958
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
ALSA lib pcm_direct.c:877:(snd1_pcm_direct_initialize_slave) slave plugin does not support mmap interleaved or mmap noninterleaved access
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1030:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to initialize slave
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

Yes, I get audio, however it typically is not normal to have all of these warnings and errors printed to the command line. I would like to fix this. — kevin, Oct 30 '12 at 23:44
I am getting the same error messages but the audio is not normal. There is always a delay at the start of each sentence. Can anyone help, please? — , Nov 28 '12 at 12:18

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 30 '12 at 23:55

5

Here is the short solution:

sudo espeak "hello" 2>/dev/null

Here is my explanation:

The output you're seeing is normal.

Jack is an audio server and the errors report that Jack is not installed. There's nothing wrong with this, espeak will just use a different audio engine such as ALSA or Pulse. In your case it looks like it's using ALSA.

The above command will just hide the output from you.

answered Oct 30 '12 at 23:55

Jivings

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Doesn't that mean espeak is being a bit too verbose and printing it out to stderr poorly? If it's not really an error, anyway. – Ehtesh Choudhury Nov 06 '12 at 22:46
@Shurane Yes it is. – Jivings Nov 07 '12 at 08:56
Is it possible to get audio output to HDMI and not to head phone jack? – avra Dec 09 '12 at 21:29
1

@avra That should happen by default if your HDMI device supports it. If not then there should be something in the espeak documentation. – Jivings Dec 09 '12 at 21:36
Yes it does work after all. My mistake. – avra Dec 17 '12 at 11:21

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 24 '14 at 16:57

3

You can get rid of the annoying messages about jack by running the jack server with the following command line:

jackd -r -m -p 8 -d dummy

I put this in my ~/.config/autostart/jackd.desktop

[Desktop Entry]

Type=Application

Name=jackd

Exec=jackd -p 8 -r -m -d dummy > /dev/null 2>&1

StartupNotify=false

edited Feb 24 '14 at 16:57

RPiAwesomeness

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answered Feb 23 '14 at 06:24

user13029

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 16 '13 at 18:02

2

Found the answer for this here:

http://alexpb.com/notes/articles/2012/11/14/error-when-playing-audio-on-raspbian-on-a-raspberry-pi/

in

/usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf 

   change the line "pcm.front cards.pcm.front"
             to "pcm.front cards.pcm.default"

worked for me. Can't tell if there is other better solution.

answered Jan 16 '13 at 18:02

mjk

21
1

The link is dead – Besi Jan 29 '18 at 17:08

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 02 '13 at 18:36

0

Turns out pulseaudio ruins ALSA. For me, espeak worked with 'sudo' only. After apt-get --purge remove pulseaudio, things got back to normal.

answered Sep 02 '13 at 18:36

Chris

1

Errors with espeak

4 Answers4