In order to use Speech Dispatcher with Festival (which is recommended), you must have installed this package (or the packages it depends on) and have the Festival server started. To achieve the latter, you must start the server by hand such as running festival --server on a command line or in some script. If you want to run festival system wide, please read its README.Debian which contains important (security) information and how to create /etc/init.d/festival. If Speech Dispatcher is running as a system service (which is not recommended anymore) and started before the Festival server is started, you must run invoke-rc.d speech-dispatcher reload to allow Speech Dispatcher to figure out that the previously unavailable Festival server is now running. And finally, you must tell Speech Dispatcher to use Festival for its output. Change the following configuration options in ~/.config/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf: DefaultModule festival LanguageDefaultModule "en" "festival" -- Milan Zamazal , Wed Nov 26 12:41:31 2003 -- Paul Gevers , Tue, 14 Jan 2014 21:46:02 +0100