/dev/dsp missing in debian and cannot hear festival utterance

Tried to make an utterance in festival and it seems /dev/dsp/ is missing in the debian. How to add this?

festival> (SayText "Hello")
Linux: can't open /dev/dsp
#<Utterance 0xb669c708>

2 Answers

Had the same problem with a TV tuner card. Here is what to do:

sudo apt-get install alsa-utils alsa-oss

Another solution would be to run the desired software using padsp, which is an OSS wrapper for Pulse Audio.

Simply run:

padsp festival

Note that it will use the default audio devices which you can change with your system's audio settings utility.