Arch Linux

kaipee

Member

From: Belfast, UK

Registered: 2012-07-07

Posts: 214

Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

For a while now I have had occassional sound issues whereby the speakers would 'pop' loudly, or introduce a small amount of distortion for a few seconds. This really only happened in Chromium on some page.
Since a recent update (not sure what/when) I have notice 'speech-dispatcher' appear in my volume tray (Gnome Shell). But this only appears alongside the pop/distortion.

I know speech-dispatcher is a dependency of chromium - but I have absolutely no use for it.
Is there any way to safely disable/uninstall speech-dispatcher and keep chromium operating?

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

The cleanest way would be to build chromium without speech-dispatcher support.

kaipee

Member

From: Belfast, UK

Registered: 2012-07-07

Posts: 214

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

OK so it's definitely speech-dispatcher that's causing the issues. It happens on my laptop, desktop and work desktop.
On the work desktop it started to cause an issue whereby  the distortion would be about 2 seconds behind the normal audio....like a distorted echo. Even notification sounds would "ding" ..1...2 "fizzzzzz"

I'm thinking there is a problem with speech-dispatcher package?

Max-P

Member

Registered: 2011-06-11

Posts: 164

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

I'm thinking there is a problem with speech-dispatcher package?

Given speech-dispatcher haven't been updated since 2013, the problem is much more likely to just be Chromium spawning it improperly without freeing it when done.

I noticed I had about 6 speech-dispatcher entries in pavucontrol yesterday, seems to have appeared shortly after a Chromium update. It will probably be fixed in the next Chromium release I guess.

kaipee

Member

From: Belfast, UK

Registered: 2012-07-07

Posts: 214

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

I'm thinking there is a problem with speech-dispatcher package?

Given speech-dispatcher haven't been updated since 2013, the problem is much more likely to just be Chromium spawning it improperly without freeing it when done.

I noticed I had about 6 speech-dispatcher entries in pavucontrol yesterday, seems to have appeared shortly after a Chromium update. It will probably be fixed in the next Chromium release I guess.

You could be right. It really only happened after an update of some sort - speech-dispatcher (multiple instances, usually 4) started appearing in my volume control.
Lucky, killing speech-dispatcher seems to fix the distortion/popping

Xenphor

Member

Registered: 2011-07-01

Posts: 47

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

I have the same problem, even though it seems chromium was updated.

Hudsonkem

Member

Registered: 2017-04-23

Posts: 1

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

i had this problem too, I solved. just uncomment "DisableAutoSpawn" in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf, its at the end of file.

Last edited by Hudsonkem (2017-04-23 17:23:55)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,804

Re: Any way to uninstall/disable speech-dispatcher?

Hudsonkem, Welcome to the Arch Linux forums.  Your post is relevant, thank you.  Never the less, I will go ahead and use this opportunity to close this old thread.

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