- Forum >
- Topic: Troubleshooting >
- Italian Audio Problem
Italian Audio Problem
Has anyone else been having issues with audio in the Italian course?
For quite some time I've been having, and reporting, trouble with the audio specifically in the Italian course. It seems to not play when it come across certain words. Here is a list of sentences I got from strengthen skills and what the audio was like (if I don't say anything the audio was fine):
- lei beve (type what you hear, no audio at regular speed)
- voi siete ragazzi (translate from italian, no audio)
- loro scrivono un libro
- loro leggono un libro
- lui beve (translate from italian, no audio)
- sì (translate from italian, no audio)
- voi leggete (type what you hear, no audio at regular speed)
- è nel giornale (type what you hear, no audio at regular speed)
- lei scrive nel giornale
- lui scrive nel libro
- noi beviamo (translate from italian, no audio)
- lui beve (type what you hear, no audio at regular speed)
- voi siete ragazzi (translate from italian, no audio)
- voi legette (type what you hear, no audio at regular speed)
- loro scrivono un libro
- lei beve (translate from italian, no audio)
- sì (translate from italian, no audio)
- lei scrive nel giornale
- voi bevete l'acqua
It seems presence of certain words correlate with certain audio problems. For example è, beve, beviamo, and leggete seem to stop it playing at regular speed; and siete, and sì seem to stop it playing at any speed.
If I hover the mouse over words they are never spoken, unlike in other courses IIRC.
This problem doesn't occur for any of the other courses I'm doing. My OS is Debian and my regular browser is Xombrero, although I checked and the same error also occurs in Midori (my former regular browser). Iceweasel (Debian's rebranding of Firefox, my former former regular browser)... doesn't seem to be playing nicely right now. Clearing cache and other saved files didn't help. I'm not going to use Chrom(e/ium) so don't suggest it.
6 Comments
It seems presence of certain words correlate with certain audio problems. For example è, beve, beviamo, and leggete seem to stop it playing at regular speed; and siete, and sì seem to stop it playing at any speed.
Actually I just did a new lesson that had sentences containing sì that worked fine so this may be coincidence.
I am using Xombrero. The sound works fine when I use it under OpenBSD on my pc. The sound does not work under OpenBSD on my laptop (though sound from e.g. Youtube does work). When I use Xombrero under Debian (same laptop), I experience problems very similar as you described here, but for French.
edit: Now I have the same problems with Xombrero on OpenBSD on my pc as on Debian on my laptop.
I did some more prodding after this post. It seemed (and still seems) to happen with all the courses that use IVONA voice. It's a less than ideal solution but at the moment when I do one of those courses I swap to iceweasel since after the switch to HTML5 it doesn't seem to happen in that or midori anymore. Just xombrero. :/
Since I now know it's not just me I created a bug report. You can contribute to it here if you want. :)
Great, but so far no one took the bug. Yesterday I created a respective bug upstream.
How does the IVONA voice work? It is a proprietary technology. Is the audio generated on the Duolingo server, and then served through HTML5?
I have no idea sorry. I think you'll need someone a little more hooked into Duolingo to answer that.
