The error that happens when trying to play back audio with the program Transcriber running on Ubuntu reports the following message:

Error: Could not gain access to /dev/sound/dsp for writing.

Viewing the details reported about the error also lists the following diagnostic output:

 

Could not gain access to /dev/sound/dsp for writing.

Could not gain access to /dev/sound/dsp for writing.

    while executing

"player play -start [expr int($begin*$rate)] -end [expr int($end*$rate)]"

    (procedure "PlayRange" line 56)

    invoked from within

"PlayRange $pos $end $script"

    (procedure "Play" line 64)

    invoked from within

"Play"

    (procedure "PlayOrPause" line 10)

    invoked from within

"PlayOrPause"

    invoked from within

".cmd.play invoke"

    ("uplevel" body line 1)

    invoked from within

"uplevel #0 [list $w invoke]"

    (procedure "tk::ButtonUp" line 22)

    invoked from within

"tk::ButtonUp .cmd.play"

    (command bound to event)

 

So apparently, after looking around with the command line, it appears there is no such /dev/sound/dsp on Ubuntu 10.04.

The solution to getting Transcriber to work on my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop is as follows:

 

  1. Exit Transcriber
  2. From a terminal run the following commands:
    sudo ln -s /dev/snd /dev/sound

    sudo ln -s /dev/dsp /dev/snd/dsp
  3. Restart your computer.
  4. Run Transcriber
  5. Everything is good!
  6. Think about how awesome I am!