Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/answers/comp/comp-speech-faq/part1

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Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv
From: [e-mail] (Andrew Hunt)
Newsgroups: comp.speech,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: comp.speech Frequently Asked Questions - part 1/3
Supersedes: <comp-speech-faq/[e-mail]>
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Date: 16 Apr 1994 13:07:57 GMT
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Summary: Useful information about Speech Technology
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Archive-name: comp-speech-faq/part1
Last-modified: 1994/04/06


                       comp.speech

                Frequently Asked Questions
                ==========================

This document is an attempt to answer commonly asked questions and to
reduce the bandwidth taken up by these posts and their associated replies.
If you have a question, please check this file before you post.

The FAQ is not meant to discuss any topic exhaustively.  It will hopefully
provide readers with pointers on where to find useful information.  It also
tries to list useful material available elsewhere on the net.

If you have not already read the Usenet introductory material posted to
"news.announce.newusers", please do.  For help with FTP (file transfer
protocol) look for a regular posting of "Anonymous FTP List - FAQ" in
comp.misc, comp.archives.admin or news.answers.


This FAQ is posted every 4 weeks to comp.speech, comp.answers & news.answers.


It is also available for anonymous ftp from the comp.speech archive site
    svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk:/comp.speech/FAQ
It is also available from the news.answers ftp site (and its mirrors) as
    rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/comp-speech-faq
It is also available by sending email to <[e-mail]> with
    send usenet/news.answers/comp-speech-faq/*
    in one line of the body of the message.


Admin
-----

This release brings updates on a number of synthesis and recognition
products as well as a number of new entries.  Keeping up-to-date with
the increasing number of new Windows products is becoming more
difficult.  Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.


Cheers,

Andrew Hunt
Speech Technology Research Group    email: [e-mail]
Department of Electrical Engineering    Ph:  61-2-692 4509
University of Sydney, NSW, Australia.    Fax: [phone]


========================== Acknowledgements ===========================

Thanks to the following for their significant comments and contributions.

Barry Arons        <[e-mail]>
Joe Campbell        <[e-mail]>
Oliver Jakobs        <[e-mail]>
Sonja Kowalewski    <[e-mail]>
Tony Robinson        <[e-mail]>
Mike            <[e-mail]>

Many others have provided useful information.  Thanks to all.


============================ Contents =================================

SECTION 1 - General

Q1.1: What is comp.speech?
Q1.2: Where are the comp.speech archives?
Q1.3: Common abbreviations and jargon.
Q1.4: What are related newsgroups and mailing lists?
Q1.5: What are related journals and conferences?
Q1.6: What resources are available as handicap aids?
Q1.7: What speech data is available?
Q1.8: Speech File Formats, Conversion and Playing.
Q1.9: What "Speech Laboratory Environments" are available?
Q1.10: Miscelaneous Software and Other Resources.

SECTION 2 - Signal Processing for Speech

Q2.1: What sampling do I need for speech?
Q2.2: How do I find the pitch of a speech signal?
Q2.3: How do I find the start and end points of a speech signal?
Q2.4: Where can I find FFT software?
Q2.5: What signal processing techniques are used in speech technology?
Q2.6: What speech sampling and signal processing hardware can I use?
Q2.7: How do I convert to/from mu-law format?

SECTION 3 - Speech Coding and Compression

Q3.1: Speech compression techniques.
Q3.2: What are some good references/books on coding/compression?
Q3.3: What software is available?

SECTION 4 - Natural Language Processing

Q4.1: What are some good references/books on NLP?
Q4.2: What NLP software is available?

SECTION 5 - Speech Synthesis

Q5.1: What is speech synthesis?
Q5.2: How can speech synthesis be performed?
Q5.3: What are some good references/books on synthesis?
Q5.4: What software/hardware is available?

SECTION 6 - Speech Recognition

Q6.1: What is speech recognition?
Q6.2: How can I build a very simple speech recogniser?
Q6.2: What does speaker dependent/adaptive/independent mean?
Q6.3: What does small/medium/large/very-large vocabulary mean?
Q6.4: What does continuous speech or isolated-word mean?
Q6.5: How is speech recognition done?
Q6.6: What are some good references/books on recognition?
Q6.7: What speech recognition packages are available?

=======================================================================

SECTION 1 - General

Q1.1: What is comp.speech?

comp.speech is a newsgroup for discussion of speech technology and
speech science.  It covers a wide range of issues from application of
speech technology, to research, to products and lots more.  By nature
speech technology is an inter-disciplinary field and the newsgroup reflects
this.  However, computer application is the basic theme of the group.

The following is a list of topics but does not cover all matters related
to the field - no order of importance is implied.

[1] Speech Recognition - discussion of methodologies, training, techniques,
results and applications.  This should cover the application of techniques
including HMMs, neural-nets and so on to the field.

[2] Speech Synthesis - discussion concerning theoretical and practical
issues associated with the design of speech synthesis systems.

[3] Speech Coding and Compression - both research and application matters.

[4] Phonetic/Linguistic Issues - coverage of linguistic and phonetic issues
which are relevant to speech technology applications.  Could cover parsing,
natural language processing, phonology and prosodic work.

[5] Speech System Design - issues relating to the application of speech
technology to real-world problems.  Includes the design of user interfaces,
the building of real-time systems and so on.

[6] Other matters - relevant conferences, books, public domain software,
hardware and related products.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.2: Where are the comp.speech archives?

comp.speech is being archived for anonymous ftp.

    ftp site:    svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk (or 129.169.24.20).
    directory:    comp.speech/archive

comp.speech/archive contains the articles as they arrive.  Batches of 100
articles are grouped into a shar file, along with an associated file of
Subject lines.

Other useful information is also available in comp.speech/info.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.3: Common abbreviations and jargon.

ANN   - Artificial Neural Network.
ASR   - Automatic Speech Recognition.
ASSP  - Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing
AVIOS - American Voice I/O Society
CELP  - Code-book excited linear prediction.
COLING - Computational Linguistics
DTW   - Dynamic time warping.
FAQ   - Frequently asked questions.
HMM   - Hidden markov model.
IEEE  - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
JASA  - Journal of the Acoustic Society of America
LPC   - Linear predictive coding.
LVQ   - Learned vector quantisation.
NLP   - Natural Language Processing.
NN    - Neural Network.
TI    - Texas Instruments.
TIMIT - A big speech database from TI and MIT - see Q1.6
TTS   - Text-To-Speech (i.e. synthesis).
VQ    - Vector Quantisation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.4: What are related newsgroups and mailing lists?


NEWGROUPS

comp.ai - Artificial Intelligence newsgroup.
     Postings on general AI issues, language processing and AI techniques.
     Has a good FAQ including NLP, NN and other AI information.

comp.ai.nat-lang - Natural Language Processing Group
     Postings regarding Natural Language Processing.  Set up to cover
     a broard range of related issues and different viewpoints.

comp.ai.nlang-know-rep - Natural Language Knowledge Representation
     Moderated group covering Natural Language.

comp.ai.neural-nets - discussion of Neural Networks and related issues.
     There are often posting on speech related matters - phonetic recognition,
     connectionist grammars and so on.

comp.compression - occasional articles on compression of speech.
     FAQ for comp.compression has some info on audio compression standards.

comp.dcom.telecom - Telecommunications newsgroup.
     Has occasional articles on voice products.

comp.dsp - discussion of signal processing - hardware and algorithms and more.
     Has a good FAQ posting.
     Has a regular posting of a comprehensive list of Audio File Formats.

comp.multimedia - Multi-Media discussion group.
     Has occasional articles on voice I/O.

sci.lang - Language.
     Discussion about phonetics, phonology, grammar, etymology and lots more.

alt.sci.physics.acoustics - some discussion of speech production & perception.

alt.binaries.sounds.misc - posting of various sound samples
alt.binaries.sounds.d - discussion about sound samples, recording and playback.


MAILING LISTS

ECTL - Electronic Communal Temporal Lobe
     Founder & Moderator: David Leip
     Moderated mailing list for researchers with interests in computer speech
     interfaces. This list serves a broad community including persons from
     signal processing, AI, linguistics and human factors.

     To subscribe, send the following information to:
        [e-mail]
        name, institute, department, daytime phone & e-mail address

     To access the archive, ftp snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca, login as anonymous,
     and supply your local userid as a password.  All the ECTL things can be
     found in pub/ectl.

Prosody Mailing List
    Unmoderated mailing list for discussion of prosody.  The aim is
    to facilitate the spread of information relating to the research
    of prosody by creating a network of researchers in the field.
    If you want to participate, send the following one-line
    message to "[e-mail]" :-

        subscribe prosody Your Name

foNETiks
    A moderated monthly newsletter distributed by e-mail. It carries
    job advertisements, notices of conferences, and other news of
    general interest to phoneticians, speech scientists and others
    The editors are Linda Shockey and Gerry Docherty.  To subscribe
    send the following 1 line message to '[e-mail]'

    join fonetiks your_first_name your_second_name

Digital Mobile Radio
     Covers lots of areas include some speech topics including speech
     coding and speech compression.
     Mail Peter Decker ([e-mail]) to subscribe.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.5: What are related journals and conferences?

Try the following commercially oriented magazine:-

    Speech Technology - no longer published
    Voice Technology News

Try the following technical journals (some contact addresses below):-

    IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing (from Jan 93)
    IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing
        (ASSP) - now obsolete.
    Computational Linguistics (COLING)
    Computer Speech and Language
    Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA)
    Transactions of IEEE ASSP
    AVIOS Journal
    ASR News

Try the following conferences:-

 ICASSP        Intl. Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (IEEE)
 ICSLP        Intl. Conference on Spoken Language Processing
 EUROSPEECH European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology
 AVIOS      American Voice I/O Society Conference
 SST        Australian Speech Science and Technology Conference
        SpeechTech


Here are a few contact addresses:-

Publications:    IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing (from Jan 93)
        IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing
            (ASSP) - now obsolete.
Organization:    Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Address:    IEEE Service Center
        445 Hoes Lane
        PO Box 1331
        Piscataway, NJ  08855, USA
Phone number:    1-800-678-IEEE
        [phone]

Publications:    Computer Speech and Language
Organization:    Academic Press, Ltd.
Address:    24-28 Oval Rd
        London NW1
        England
Price:        $136 (Institutions), $58 (Individuals)

Publications:    Association for Computational Linguistics
Organization:    Association for Computational Linguistics
Address:    MIT Press Journals
        55 Hayward St
        Cambridge, MA  02142
Phone number:     [phone]


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.6: What resources are available as handicap aids?

Can anyone provide information on speech technology aids for the deaf,
blind, speech impaired, physically impaired and other groups who may
benefit from speech technology?


Product Name:    SpeechViewer II
Platform:    IBM Machines from Mod 25 on.
Description:    SpeechViewer II is a speech therapy tool.  It provided
    graphical feedback of various speech features so that speech
    impaired individuals can improve their speech.  It works with an
    audio bandwidth of 7.3 Khz and thus allows the therapist to work
    with sustained vowels and fricatives.  A wide range of graphics
    are used to provide adequate variability to hold client interest.
    An extensive set of statistics are gathered which allows a therapist
    to do research or keep therapy records.
    The speech therapy modules are:
     o Awareness - Sound, Loudness, Pitch, Voicing Onset, Voicing
     o Skill Building - Pitch, Voicing, Phonology
     o Patterning - Pitch & Loudness - Waveform & Spectrogram, Spectra
     o Clinical Management - Profiles, Models, Client Data
Hardware: Requires an IBM M-ACPA (Multimedia-Audio Capture Playback
    Adapter).  It has a TI TMS320C25 DSP chip.  The input sampling
    rate is 44.1 Khz stereo, 88.2 Khz mono.  This is a 16 bit card.
    It has the following jacks:  mic in, stereo line in, stereo line
    out, speaker out.  Note: This card is being replaced by Mwave
    technology.  For more info on Mwave contact Texas Instruments.
Price:    The software is $2130 list, $1491 educational, part number 92F2066.
    The M-ACPA is $370 list, $222 educational, part number 92F3378.
    The MicroChannel adapter part number is 92F3379 (same price).
Contact: The Psychological Corporation (TPC) [IBM Authorized Remarketer]
    Phone: [phone]
    Or contact IBM on 1-800-426-4832.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.7: What speech data is available?

A wide range of speech databases have been collected.  These databases
are primarily for the development of speech synthesis/recognition and for
linguistic research.

Some databases are free but most appear to be available for a small cost.
The databases normally require lots of storage space - do not expect to be
able to ftp all the data you want.

[There are too many to list here in detail - perhaps someone would like to
 set up a special posting on speech databases?]


    PHONEMIC SAMPLES
    ================

First, some basic data.  The following sites have samples of English phonemes
(American accent I believe) in Sun audio format files.  See Question 1.7
for information on audio file formats.

        sounds.sdsu.edu:/.1/phonemes
        phloem.uoregon.edu:/pub/Sun4/lib/phonemes
        sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/multimedia/sun-sounds/phonemes


    HOMOPHONE LIST
    ==============

A list of homophones in General American English is available by anonymous
FTP from the comp.speech archive site:

  machine name: svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk
  directory:    comp.speech/data
  file name:    homophones-1.01.txt


    LINGUISTIC DATA CONSORTIUM (LDC)
    ================================

Information about the Linguistic Data Consortium is available via
anonymous ftp from:    ftp.cis.upenn.edu    (130.91.6.8)
in the directory:    /pub/ldc

Here are some excerpts from the files in that directory:

Briefly stated, the LDC has been established to broaden the collection
and distribution of speech and natural language data bases for the
purposes of research and technology development in automatic speech
recognition, natural language processing and other areas where large
amounts of linguistic data are needed.

Here is the brief list of corpora:

   * The TIMIT and NTIMIT speech corpora
   * The Resource Management speech corpus (RM1, RM2)
   * The Air Travel Information System (ATIS0) speech corpus
   * The Association for Computational Linguistics - Data Collection
     Initiative text corpus (ACL-DCI)
   * The TI Connected Digits speech corpus (TIDIGITS)
   * The TI 46-word Isolated Word speech corpus (TI-46)
   * The Road Rally conversational speech corpora (including "Stonehenge"
     and "Waterloo" corpora)
   * The Tipster Information Retrieval Test Collection
   * The Switchboard speech corpus ("Credit Card" excerpts and portions
     of the complete Switchboard collection)

Further resources to be made available within the first year (or two):

   * The Machine-Readable Spoken English speech corpus (MARSEC)
   * The Edinburgh Map Task speech corpus
   * The Message Understanding Conference (MUC) text corpus of FBI
     terrorist reports
   * The Continuous Speech Recognition - Wall Street Journal speech
     corpus (WSJ-CSR)
   * The Penn Treebank parsed/tagged text corpus
   * The Multi-site ATIS speech corpus (ATIS2)
   * The Air Traffic Control (ATC) speech corpus
   * The Hansard English/French parallel text corpus
   * The European Corpus Initiative multi-language text corpus (ECI)
   * The Int'l Labor Organization/Int'l Trade Union multi-language
     text corpus (ILO/ITU)
   * Machine-readable dictionaries/lexical data bases (COMLEX, CELEX)

The files in the directory include more detailed information on the
individual databases.  For further information contact

    Linguistic Data Consortium
    441 Williams Hall
    University of Pennsylvania
    Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
    Phone:   [phone]
    Fax:     [phone]
    e-mail:  [e-mail]


    Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU)
    ===============================================

1. The ISOLET speech database of spoken letters of the English alphabet.
The speech is high quality (16 kHz with a noise cancelling microphone).
150 speakers x 26 letters of the English alphabet twice in random order.
The "ISOLET" data base can be purchased for $100 by sending an email request
to [e-mail].  (This covers handling, shipping and medium costs).
The data base comes with a technical report describing the data.

2. CSLU has a telephone speech corpus of 1000 English alphabets.  Callers
recite the alphabet with brief pauses between letters.  This database is
available to not-for-profit institutions for $100. The data base is described
in the proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language
Processing.  Contact [e-mail] if interested.


       PhonDat - A Large Database of Spoken German
       ===========================================

The PhonDat continuous speech corpora are now available on
CD-ROM media (ISO 9660 format).

    PhonDat I  (Diphone Corpus)        : 6 CDs    (1140.- DM)
    PhonDat II (Train Enquiries Corpus): 1 CD     ( 190.- DM)

PhonDat I comprises approx. 20.000, PhonDat II approx. 1500
signal files in high quality 16-bit 16 KHz recording.  The
corpora come with a documentation containing the orthographic
transcription and a citation form of the utterances, as well as a
detailed file format description.  A narrow phonetic transcription
is available for selected files from corpus I and II.

For information and orders contact

   Barbara Eisen
   Institut fuer Phonetik
   Schellingstr. 3 / II
   D 80799 Munich 40

   Tel: +49 / 89 / 2180 -2454 or -2758
   Fax: +49 / 89 / 280 03 62


          Oxford Acoustic Phonetic Database
          =================================

Available on compact Disc, from J.B. Pickering and B.S. Rosner.
It contains data on vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel combinations
in both stressed and unstressed locations.  The language covered
include French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, British English,
Spanish and English.

Does anyone know a contact email or snail mail address?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.8: Speech File Formats, Conversion and Playing.

Section 2 of this FAQ has information on mu-law coding.

A very good and very comprehensive list of audio file formats is prepared
by Guido van Rossum.  The list is posted regularly to comp.dsp and
alt.binaries.sounds.misc, amongst others.  It includes information on
sampling rates, hardware, compression techniques, file format definitions,
format conversion, standards, programming hints and lots more.  It is much
too long to include within this posting.

It is also available by ftp
    from:         ftp.cwi.nl
    directory:    /pub
    file:         AudioFormats<version>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.9: What "Speech Laboratory Environments" are available?

First, what is a Speech Laboratory Environment?  A speech lab is a
software package which provides the capability of recording, playing,
analysing, processing, displaying and storing speech.  Your computer
will require audio input/output capability.  The different packages
vary greatly in features and capability - best to know what you want
before you start looking around.

Most general purpose audio processing packages will be able to process speech
but do not necessarily have some specialised capabilities for speech (e.g.
formant analysis).

The following article provides a good survey.

  Read, C., Buder, E., & Kent, R. "Speech Analysis Systems: An Evaluation"
  Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, pp 314-332, April 1992.


Package: Entropic Signal Processing System (ESPS) and Waves
Platform: Range of Unix platforms.
Description: ESPS is a very comprehensive set of speech analysis/processing
    tools for the UNIX environment.  The package includes UNIX commands,
    and a comprehensive C library (which can be accessed from other
    languages).  Waves is a graphical front-end for speech processing.
    Speech waveforms, spectrograms, pitch traces etc can be displayed,
    edited and processed in X windows and Openwindows (versions 2 & 3).
    The HTK (Hidden Markov Model Toolkit) is now available from Entropic.
    HTK is described in some detail in Section 5 of this FAQ - the
    section on Speech Recognition.
Cost:   On request.
Contact: Entropic Research Laboratory, Washington Research Laboratory,
    600 Pennsylvania Ave, S.E. Suite 202, Washington, D.C. 20003
    [phone].  email - [e-mail]


Package: CSRE: Canadian Speech Research Environment
Platform: IBM/AT-compatibles
Description: CSRE is a comprehensive, microcomputer-based system designed
    to support speech research.  CSRE provides a powerful, low-cost
    facility in support of speech research, using mass-produced and
    widely-available hardware. The project is non-profit, and relies
    on the cooperation of researchers at a number of institutions and
    fees generated when the software is distributed.  Functions
    include speech capture, editing, and replay; several alternative
    spectral analysis procedures, with color and surface/3D displays;
    parameter extraction/tracking and tools to automate measurement
    and support data logging; alternative pitch-extraction systems;
    parametric speech (KLATT80) and non-speech acoustic synthesis,
    with a variety of supporting productivity tools; and a
    comprehensive experiment generator, to support behavioral testing
    using a variety of common testing protocols.
    A paper about the whole package can be found in:
       Jamieson D.G. et al, "CSRE: A Speech Research Environment",
       Proc. of the Second Intl. Conf. on Spoken Language Processing,
       Edmonton: University of Alberta, pp. 1127-1130.
Hardware:     Can use a range of data aqcuisition/DSP
Cost:    Distributed on a cost recovery basis.
Availability: For more information on availability
    contact Krystyna Marciniak - email [e-mail]
    Tel [phone]  Fax [phone].
    For technical information  - email [e-mail]
Note: Also included in Q5.4 on speech synthesis packages.


Package: OGI Speech Tools from the Center for Spoken Language
    Understanding (CSLU) at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science
    and Technology (Portland Oregon)
Platform: Unix????
Description: The OGI Speech tools include :-
    1. An X windows display tool (LYRE) for displaying data in a time
       synchronous fashion for a. the speech signal b. spectrograms
            c. phoneme labels, and other information.
    2. A Neural Network (NOPT) training package.
    3. An set of C library routines (LIBNSPEECH) for the manipulation
       of speech data, including:  a. PLP Analysis, b. Rasta PLP
       Analysis, c. Linear Predictive Coding, d. Mel Cepstrum Coding,
       e. Fast Fourier Transform
    4. A set of utilities for converting file formats such as ADC, NIST,
       mu-law, binary files, and ascii.  Includes filtering.
    5. A database utility (find_phone) to automate speech database
       related enquiries.  It allows the user to specify a particular
       label or set of labels in a given context, display all occurrences
       of the label, and relabel the occurrences if desired.
    6. A Vector-Quantizer based on the Linde Buzo and Gray (LBG)
       algorithm.
    7. A set of PEARL Scripts which have been used mainly to automate
       the use of the OGI Speech Tools.
    8. MAN Pages for all routines and programs developed, as well as
       a User manual in both in postscript and {\bf tex} format.
Misc: Software is written in ANSI C.
Availability: By anonymous ftp from
    speech.cse.ogi.edu:/pub/tools/
Contact: Try [e-mail]


Package: Signalyze 3.0 from InfoSignal
Platform: Macintosh
Description: Signalyze's basic conception revolves around up to 100
    signals, displayed synchronously in HyperCard fashion on "cards".
    The program offers a complement of signal editing features,
    quite a few spectral analysis tools, manual scoring tools, pitch
    extraction routines, a good set of signal manipulation tools, and
    extensive input-output capacity.
    Handles multiple file formats: Signalyze, MacSpeech Lab, AudioMedia,
    SoundDesigner II, SoundEdit/MacRecorder, SoundWave, three sound
    resource formats, and ASCII-text.
    Sound I/O: Direct sound input from MacRecorder and similar devices,
    AudioMedia, AudioMedia II and AD IN, some MacADIOS boards and devices,
    Apple sound input (built-in microphone). Sound output via Macintosh
    internal sound, via SoundManager 3.0, some MacADIOS boards and devices
    as well as via the Digidesign 16-bit boards.
    It has a range of capabilities for creating, editing and manipulating
    label files with flexibility in labelling format.
Compatibility: MacPlus and higher (including II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIfx,
    IIvx, IIvi, Portable, all PowerBooks, Centris and Quadras). Takes
    advantage of large and multiple screens and 16/256 color/grayscales.
    System 7.0 compatible. Runs in background with adjustable priority.
Misc: A demo available upon request.
    Manuals and tutorial included.
    It is available in English, French, and German.
    An UPDATER to version 2.48 is now available in:
      - The UNIL Gopher server (see last page of InfoSignal News 8)
      - The LAIP FTP server. Address: MACFL4082.unil.ch, machine no.
        130.223.104.31, login: anonymous, password: your email
    Also available are a demo program, and current questions and answers.
Cost: Individual licence US$350, site license US$500, plus shipping.
    Upgrades from version 2.0 are available.
Contact: North America - Network Technology Corporation
        91 Baldwin St., Charlestown MA 02129
        Fax: [phone]   Phone: [phone]
    Elsewhere -  InfoSignal Inc.
        C.P. 73, 1015 LAUSANNE, Switzerland,
        FAX: [phone],
        Email: [e-mail].


Package: Kay Elemetrics CSL (Computer Speech Lab) 4300
Platform: Minimum IBM PC-AT compatible with extended memory (min 2MB)
    with at least VGA graphics. Optimal would be 386 or 486 machine
    with more RAM for handling larger amounts of data.
Description: Speech analysis package, with optional separate LPC program
    for analysis/synthesis. Uses its own file format for data, but has
    some ability to export data as ascii. The main editing/analysis prog
    (but not the LPC part) has its own macro language, making it easy to
    perform repetitive tasks.  Probably not much use without the extra
    LPC program, which also allows manipulation of pitch, formant and
    bandwidth parameters.
    Hardware includes an internal DSP board for the PC (requires ISA
    slot), and an external module containing signal processing chips
    which does A/D and D/A conversion.
    A speaker and microphone are supplied.
Misc:  A programmers kit is available for programming signal processing
    chips (experts only).
    Manuals included.
Cost: Recently approx 6000 pounds sterling. (Less in USA?)
Availibility: UK distributors are Wessex Electronics,
        114-116 North Street, Downend, Bristol, B16 5SE
        Tel: [phone].
    In USA: Kay Elemetrics Corp,
        12 Maple Avenue, PO Box 2025, Pine Brook, NJ 07058-9798
        Tel:[phone]


Package: MacSpeech Lab II (MSL II)
Platform: Macintosh
Description: A sound analysis and acquisition for Macs.  MSL II delivers
    the most common functions for speech analysis (FFTs, LPCs, f0
    extraction, etc.) & produces grayscale spectrographic displays.
    Can be used for various speech technology and phonetic training
    tasks.  The software an trade off accuracy and speech.
Hardware: requires MacADIOS ("Macintosh Analog/Digital Input/Output
    System") hardware for speech I/O at 12/16 bits.
Misc: Software no longer updated by GW Instruments; MSL soft/hardware will
    not perform input/output on Quadras, for example, though analysis
    seems fine.  Known to operate properly on systems as high as IIcx &
    II fx.
Cost: $4990 (in May '92 price list; no MSL soft/hardware package
    listed in January '93).
Contact: GW Instruments
    35 Medford Street, Somerville, MA  02143
    Phone: [phone]   Fax: [phone]


Package: Ptolemy
Platform: Sun SPARC, DecStation (MIPS), HP (hppa).
Description: Ptolemy provides a highly flexible foundation for the
    specification, simulation, and rapid prototyping of systems.
    It is an object oriented framework within which diverse models
    of computation can co-exist and interact.  Ptolemy can be used
    to model entire systems.
    Ptolemy has been used for a broad range of applications including
    signal processing, telecomunications, parallel processing, wireless
    communications, network design, radio astronomy, real time systems,
    and hardware/software co-design.  Ptolemy has also been used as a lab
    for signal processing and communications courses.
    Ptolemy has been developed at UC Berkeley over the past 3 years.
    Further information, including papers and the complete release
    notes, is available from the FTP site.
Cost: Free
Availability: The source code, binaries, and documentation are available
    by anonymous ftp from "ptolemy.bekeley.edu" - see the README file -
        ptolemy.berkeley.edu:/pub/README


Package: Khoros
Description: Public domain image processing package with a basic DSP
    library.  Not particularly applicable to speech, but not bad
    for the price.
Cost:    FREE
Availability: By anonymous ftp from pprg.eece.unm.edu


Package: SpeechViewer II
Description: Speech Therapy Tool
    See the detailed description in the handicap section (Q1.6).



Can anyone provide information on capability and availability of the
following package?

    ILS ("Interactive Laboratory System")

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1.10: Miscelaneous Software and Other Resources.

Resource: CMU dictionary
Description: Phonemic transcriptions of 100,000 English words.
    (Presumably with American English pronunciation.)
Availability: By anonymous ftp from
        ftp.cs.cmu.edu:project/fgdata/dict


Package: Network Audio System Release 1.1
Platforms: Various (includes SunOS, Solaris, SGI)
Description: A device-independent mechanism for transferring, playing
    and recording audio signals over a network.  Has a range of
    features suited to networks.
Cost: Free
Availability: By anonymous ftp from
    ftp.x.org:/contrib/netaudio/netaudio-1.1.tar.Z
    Also available in the same directory are document files and
    some sample sounds.

Pacakage: NEVOT (1.4v) from AT&T BL
Platforms: Sun Sparc Station (SunOS 4.1.x) and Silicon Graphics
Description: Audio-conferencing tool which supports both point-to-point
    and broadcasting of audio using multicast IP.
    Audio encoding:
                + PCM 64kb/s 8-bits u-law encoded 8KHz PCM (G.711)
                + ADPCM 32 kb/s [Sun only] (G.721)
                + DVI ADPCM 32 kb/s
                + ADPCM 24 kb/s [Sun only] (G.723)
                + CELP 4.8 kb/s
                + LPC 2.4 kb/s
    Source is available.
Availability: by anonymous ftp from
    gaia.cs.umass.edu:pub/nevot
Contact: Henning Schulzrinne ([e-mail])



Andrew Hunt
Speech Technology Research Group        Ph:  61-2-692 4509
Dept. of Electrical Engineering            Fax: [phone]
University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia    email: [e-mail]