[Bug 54975] Re: Aplay terminates Fonix DECtalk, sometimes Orca

[Luke Yelavich]

This is unfortunately something that is not really solvable with the
current GNOME/esd/ALSA architecture for sound.

I suggest you try turning off esd, and see what happens. The two sounds play, because you are using aplay to play a sound file, which is using ALSA. However, Software DECtalk still only uses OSS, so it can only get exclusive access to the sound device, whereas ALSA apps are quite happy to have their output mixed together, because of the way they talk to
ALSA.

To turn off esd, do the following:
1. Go to the System menu, Preferences, and choose Sound.
2. Uncheck the "Enable software sound mixing (ESD)" checkbox.
3. Log out and back in again.

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Aplay terminates Fonix DECtalk, sometimes Orca
https://launchpad.net/bugs/54975