STeVi

The Speech Test Videos corpus consists of recordings of common speech test materials (see table below). The recordings incorporate multiple talkers and repetitions, with utterance length and context ranging from isolated vowels and syllables to highly-predictable sentences. Brief test utterances that are embedded in the carrier phrase (“You will mark ____ please.” ) have been marked for easy extraction of the audio. The recorded audio and video signals have been carefully synchronized. For most sets of materials, recordings were made with two male and two female talkers; in a few sets it was one male and one female.

Click on the titles in the table below for more information on each group of recordings.

File Formats

All materials are available as:

(i) videos — with full HD 1920×1080 pixel resolution, stored in .mov files with H.264 video encoding and a single channel of uncompressed 24-bit audio;
and
(ii) audio-only — single-channel, 24-bit .wav files.

In the corpora that use carrier phrases (see list above), the .mov files for the test items spoken in the carrier phrase include chapter markers indicating the start and end time of the item within the phrase. Matlab .mat files are also provided that contain the key-word start and stop times for each file.

All signal levels have been normalized to an RMS of -25 dB re Full Scale; .mat files provide the original RMS levels.

Each of 22 initial consonants were combined with each of five vowels to form 110 CV syllables.

Initial Consonants

/ p, t, tʃ, k, f, ɵ, s, ʃ, b, d, ʤ, g, v, ð, z, ʒ, m, n, ɭ, r, w, j /

Vowels

/ ɑ, eɪ, i, o, u /

Sample

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Twenty final consonants were combined with the same five vowels as used with CVs to form 100 VC syllables.

Final Consonants

/ p, t, tʃ, k, f, ɵ, s, ʃ, b, d, ʤ, g, v, ð, z, ʒ, m, n, ɭ, r /

Vowels

/ ɑ, eɪ, i, o, u /

Sample

Fifteen vowels were spoken in hVd context in the carrier phrase.

Vowels

/ i, ɪ, e, æ, ɑ, ɔ, o, ʊ, u, ɜr, eɪ, ʌ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ /

Sample

The words of the modified rhyme test (House et al., 1965) were recorded in the carrier phrase.

Sample

The eleven numbers (“zero’, “one”, . . ., “ten”) were spoken by two talkers with the carrier phrase.

Sample

The one-hundred numbers (“zero’, “one”, . . ., “ninety-nine”) were spoken by two talkers with no carrier phrase.

Sample

This set comprises 200 high-context SPIN sentences (Bilger et al., 1984); for example, “Hold the baby on your lap.”

Sample

This set comprises 200 syntactically-correct but semantically-meaningless sentences; for example, “He was fought by the highway on your lap.”

These sentences were constructed so that the final word in the ith sentence is the same as that in the ith High-Probability Spin Sentence.

Sample

Two thousand unique five-word syntactically-constrained sentences were constructed by selecting randomly from ten choices for each word, given below. This set was divided into four sets of 500 sentences; one set was spoken by each of the four talkers.

Sample

Speech materials are sold in the following sets, which can be ordered for individual talkers.

Notes:

• Sets of videos include the corresponding sets of audio-only .wav files.
• All selections include multiple repetitions if available.
• Price listed is for one talker

For additional talkers, add:

• 75% of the one–talker price for the second talker
• 50% of the one–talker price for the third talker
• 25% of the one–talker price for the fourth talker

Thus, for all four talkers, multiply the one-talker price by 2.5.

To purchase STeVi please contact Sensimetrics.