That's a long standing issue with Debian and derivatives' handling of audio cf. the Debian accessibility mailing list: https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/ And especially the thread that begins with this message: https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/2018/10/msg00000.html I tried to help on that, to no avail. Workarounds that I know as of today: 1) Remove pulseaudio and install the libspeakup-ng Debian package patched by Samuel: https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/2018/11/msg00065.html Instructions: https://people.debian.org/~sthibault/tmp/sid-tmp/libespeak-ng1_1.49.2+dfsg-7~0_amd64.deb However, I don't know if theses packages can be used wuth stretch @Samuel: please tell us if it's possible, or if you will backport these packages. Caveat: I can't provide help to remove pulseaudio (which I generally do not recommend) as I am neither a Debian nor Ubuntu user. 2) Install a distribution that does not have this issue, like Slint. Didier -- Didier Spaier http://slint.fr On 19/11/2018 21:19, John G Heim wrote: > What is the trick to getting speakup with software speech and orca to work at the same time. I have both debian stretch and ubuntu bionic systems and on both machines, I have to disable espeakup to get orca to work. If I disable espeakup via the command, "systemctl disable espeakup" and reboot, orca works as normal. If I re-enable espeakup via, "systemctl enable espeakup", then I get no speech on the login screen or after I log in. After I log in, even playing sounds via aplay does not work. > > I have a vague memory of having to recompile espeakup or something to get that to work. _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup