spd-say "Hello world!"
I'm running Ubuntu 17.10 on a laptop (Dell XPS 15). I haven't noticed any audio problems on this machine with any other application. I've done sudo apt dist-upgrade pretty recently so everything is pretty much up to date.
> lspci | grep Audio
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
> spd-say --version
spd-say: 0.8.7
Copyright (C) 2002-2012 Brailcom, o.p.s.
> uname -sr
Linux 4.13.0-39-generic
The problem persists if I change the volume on the computer, but if I run the application randomly a couple of times with the parameters -i -50 (decreased volume) it goes away temporarily, but I am looking for a more permanent solution.
