[SOLVED] How to disable robotic voice in Knights chess?

Projectile · 08-03-2023, 10:08 AM

While playing Knights, the robotic voice calling out the computer's moves is extremely distracting. I haven't found any way to disable it. The voice is active for both GNU Chess and Sjeng engines.

0XBF · 08-03-2023, 08:57 PM

I just fired up knights and took at look. Weird that they don't give you an option to mute that espeak voice in the knights settings.

I see that the espeak voice is a separate source in pavucontrol so you can mute it there. Open 'pavucontrol' and then run knights. Once you start a game and the voice starts speaking you will see 'speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng' listed on the playback tab of pavucontrol. You can mute that audio source from the mute button there. See the attached screenshot for reference.

frankbell · 08-03-2023, 09:36 PM

Nice tip about pavucontrol!

Projectile · 08-04-2023, 02:45 AM

0XBF, thank you.

Also, I've accidentally found another way to "fix" this though I wouldn't recommend it: change the region to something more exotic than "United States (en_US)", for example "Europe - English (en_150)". Then speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng will not start up.

Didier Spaier · 08-04-2023, 03:35 AM

Or if you want a less robotic voice, install svox and set the default voice to pico in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf. Caveat: I did not try.

0XBF · 08-04-2023, 09:17 AM

Didier Spaier and his Slint signature just reminded me of something:

Muting the 'speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng' input source in pavucontrol will also mute it for other applications that use espeak like the 'orca' screen reader. Something to keep in mind in case you ever use/test any other programs that use espeak.

Of course it would be better to have actual controls within Knights. Maybe something to request upstream?

Cheers!