I can't really give any help for the pulse audio on system wide use but one thing you might try is using espeakup with alsa directly bypassing pulse audio. To do that you give --with-alsa on the ./configure command line when configuring the package. Sometimes a tweak is necessary in alsa.c for smooth output buffering but that can be managed if it works better than the default set-up. Kirk -- Kirk Reiser The Computer Braille Facility e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario phone: (519) 661-3061