audio: after the computer is idle for 30 minutes or the computer is locked and unlocked, audio is very sluggish

[devinprater]

Windows build number:

Version 22H2 (OS Build 22621.1413)

Your Distribution version:

Fedora 37, from https://github.com/WhitewaterFoundry/Fedora-Remix-for-WSL

Your WSL versions:

Hello. I use WSLG with apps like the Orca screen reader and Emacs with the Emacspeak extension. Whenever I run Emacs from the start menu, it works great until the computer locks or goes to sleep. After I unlock my computer, audio is very sluggish, a good second of delay from when I press a key and when Emacspeak speaks. The same happened with Orca, when I could still get Orca to work.

Steps to reproduce:

Install Emacs
clone emacspeak for github.com/tvraman/emacspeak
Install espeak-ng
make Emacspeak and make the espeak speech server.
Put:

(load-file /lisp/emacspeak-setup.el")
(espeak)

In your .emacs.el
Launch Emacs, and make sure Emacspeak is running by pressing down arrow and hearing if Emacspeak says anything.
Now, press Windows + L to lock the computer.
Press Enter to unlock it, entering your PIN or password if needed.
Press Down arrow again, and see if Emacspeak responds as quickly as before.

If you have Orca working, you can launch it with Orca& and then open an accessible app, like GPodder or something to try this also. Navigate the app, noting how responsive it is, lock the machine, unlock it, and note the responsiveness again.

WSL logs:

pulseaudio.log
stderr.log
weston.log

WSL dumps:

No response

Expected behavior:

Emacspeak, or Orca, should be just as responsive when locking and unlocking the computer as when WSL starts.

Actual behavior:

Emacspeak is sluggish after unlocking the computer, taking a second to respond with audio.

[devinprater]

On further inspection, this may be an issue with Pipewire, which Fedora ships with by default. Switching the sound system to Pulseaudio seems to fix this.

[trypsynth]

How do you switch your sound subsystem?

[devinprater]

@TheQuinbox You systemctl disable pipewire and systemctl enable pulseaudio or something like that, I can't remember the units exactly. But just do it through systemctl. It still happens though, even after updating the Fedora WSL and WSL itslef. I've found the best way to make it go fast is to shut down WSL, then run Emacs from your start menu so it's the first thing that launches. But it eventually slows down a lot, becoming much less responsive.

[taniodev]

I would also like to use Emacspeak on WSL2, but on Ubuntu 22.04 and Arch Linux the audio also lags.

Access your favorite WSL2 distribution (I'll use Ubuntu as an example) and install espeak-ng:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install espeak-ng

Open the espeak-ng interactive prompt so you can type text and hear the voice speaking:

$ espeak-ng

Take the test by typing any letter and pressing ENTER:

• w <ENTER>
• s <ENTER>
• l <ENTER>

Note that the voice speaks at the same time you press ENTER.

Go do something else and keep this prompt open. After 10 or 15 minutes, come back and repeat the test above. You will see that the response time has increased significantly.

The more time passes, the more the response time increases, but when the espeak-ng process ends, everything returns to normal.

I'm using Windows 11 Home 23H2.

• WSL Version: 2.0.14.0
• Kernel version: 5.15.133.1-1
• WSLg version: 1.0.59