LINGUIST List 2.349

Thursday, 18 July 1991

Disc: Speech Software

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Charles Read, Re: Queries
2. , Re: Queries
3. , Speech processors

In response to Ralf Thiede and others who have asked about software
for the acoustic analysis of speech: we published a factual comparison
of several programs, in relation to the traditional spectrographs, in
the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research last June. Now a longer
and more evaluative article is in press at the same journal. Our
first article is:
	C. Read, E. Buder, & R. Kent. (1990). Speech analysis
	systems: a survey. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research
	33, 363-374.
The second article will have the same authors, same journal, and will
be titled: Speech analysis systems: an evaluation.
	We dealt with some of the systems that Ralf Thiede mentions
for both MS-DOS and Macintosh, but did not deal with programs for Sun
or NeXT machines.
	We would be delighted to send reprints upon request to:
creadmacc.wisc.edu a.k.a. Charles Read, Dept. of Linguistics, 1220
Linden Drive, 1168 Van Hise Hall, Madison, WI 53706.

On Wed, 10 Jul 1991 21:44:39 +0800 you said:
>4)
>Date: Tue, 09 Jul 91 00:17:06 EST
>From: Ralf Thiede <FEN00RT1%UNCCVM.bitnetRICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
>Subject: MacSpeech Lab II
>
>In response to Espen Ore <fafeonobergen>: I am currently trying to sur-
>vey what hardware / sortware packages are available for analyzing speech
>on computers. ... so far, I have or can get information on:
>
> SpeechViewer (IBM) MS-DOS
> CI-500 Speech Analysis System (SIL) MS-DOS
> MacSpeech Lab (GW Instruments) MacIntosh
> Voice Navigator (Articulate Systems) MacIntosh
> MacRecorder (Farallon) MacIntosh
> waves+ (Entropic Speech) SPARC
> Digital Ears (Metaresearch) NeXT
>
>What else is there? I would like to compile that information, write a
>survey and publish it somewhere, and make a short survey available on
>LINGUIST some time after the next LSA meeting.
> Ralf Thiede
> U of NC Charlotte
>
Ralph - you also may wish to include:
 Ariel Corporation phone: (908) 249-2900
 433 River Road fax: (908) 249-2123
 Highland Park, NJ 08904 DSP BBS: (908) 249-2124 (300-9600 bps)
They manufacture a sophisticated series of DSP (digital signal processing)
products for the Next, IBM-AT compatables, HP, Sun and Macintosh computers.
In addition to a variety of support systems for the DSPs above, they also
offer the "SpeechStation", a complete speech analysis package for IBM-AT
compatables and "SYSid", a full featured acoustic test system for IBM-PCs.
Joe Burch bitnet: jbbuva
Academic Computing Center internet: jbbvirginia.edu
University of Virginia phone: (804) 924-4547

There is an article in the June 1990 issue of the Journal of
Speech and Hearing Research by Ray Kent and someone else which
describes and rates a large number of DOS based speech analysis
programs. I myself have experimented with two--one is DSPS,
written by a guy in Ottawa. It runs on an XT with a Tecmar
Graphics Board. It runs in real time, but has limited cursor
movement--the cursors cannot come closer together than 72 ms.,
which makes it a little inconvenient for VOT measurements.
Cursor movement is also a little slow, sometimes (for e.g.
formant measurement) maddeningly slow.
I have also worked with CSRE (done by a group at University
of Western Ontario). It runs best on 386's and such, and the
cursors are driven by a mouse. It is, however, somewhat slower
than the much older and more primitive DSPS, and capturing the
speech signal using the recommended Data Translation DT2801 board
is erratic. Besides, the board itself is a kludge, and definitely
not for the non-technical minded. The board is also at least
$1200, on top of the (very reasonable) $350 for the program.
Still, CSRE is in color and comes with pitch extraction, and
a version of Klattalk. Since I am currently using someone else's
computer for this program I haven't actually had much of a chance
to really work with it, but it seems pretty good.
I hope this is of some use to Ralf, and to anyone else interested in
speech processing. I myself am also anxious to see what this survey
turns up.
 Geoff Nathan <ga3662siucvmb>
 Southern Illinois University at Carbondale