Recording Methods and Speaking Styles

Two recording sessions provided speech in six different speaking styles. The first recording session (SOLO, SYNCHRONOUS, RETELL) was carried out in a professional recording studio (December 2005) and speakers were recorded in a sound-attenuated booth. The recordings in the released corpus were done using a Neumann U87 condenser microphone. Additional tracks using other microphones (near and far-field) were recorded and may be made available upon request.

The second recording session (RSI, WHISPER, FAST) (from March 2006 to May 2006) was carried out in a quiet office environment, using an AKG C420 headset condenser microphone.

Across the two sessions, each speaker provided recordings in six different speaking styles:

• SOLO reading
• SYNCHRONOUS reading
• Spontaneous speech (indicated in the followings as RETELL condition)
• Repetitive Synchronous Imitation (hereafter RSI)
• WHISPERed speech reading
• FAST speech reading.

In two of the speaking conditions adopted, speakers modified their speech in a constrained fashion towards a known target; in the SYNCHRONOUS condition, the speech of the co-speaker served as a target, while in RSI, there was an explicit known static target. The presence of a known target which speakers aim to copy raises the bar in the discovery and design of procedures for automatic speaker identification, as the target speech provides a potentially highly confusing foil.

The WHISPER and FAST speech conditions are also well defined speaking styles which require substantial voice modification by the speaker.