TI 46 WORD SPEECH DATABASE SPEAKER-DEPENDENT ISOLATED WORD CORPUS (TI46) CD-ROM NIST Speech Disc 7-1.1 September, 1991 1. Introduction --------------- This disc contains a corpus of isolated spoken words which was designed and collected at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1980. The corpus was intended to provide automated speech recognition researchers with a data set on which to train and evaluate their products. The corpus has been reformatted and produced on CD-ROM by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is distributed with the permission of Texas Instruments. The material contained on this disc was recorded in a low noise sound isolation booth, using an Electro-Voice RE-16 cardoid dynamic microphone, positioned two inches from the speaker's mouth and out of the breath stream. 2. Word Codes ------------- The TI46 corpus contains 16 speakers: 8 males labeled m1-m8 and 8 females labeled f1-f8. There are 46 words per speaker, and each word has a two- letter abbreviation (or prompt code) as shown in the table below: Word Code ---- ---- ZERO '00' ONE '01' TWO '02' THREE '03' FOUR '04' FIVE '05' SIX '06' SEVEN '07' EIGHT '08' NINE '09' A '0A' B '0B' C '0C' D '0D' E '0E' F '0F' G '0G' H '0H I '0I' J '0J' K '0K' L '0L' M '0M' N '0N' O '0O' P '0P' Q '0Q' R '0R' S '0S' T '0T' U '0U' V '0V' W '0W' X '0X' Y '0Y' Z '0Z' ENTER 'EN' ERASE 'ER' GO 'GO' HELP 'HP' NO 'NO' RUBOUT 'RB' REPEAT 'RP' STOP 'SP' START 'ST' YES 'YS' 3. File Naming Conventions -------------------------- There are 26 utterances of each word from each speaker: 10 designated as training (or enrollment) tokens and 16 designated as testing tokens. Every file in this corpus has a unique name. The name of each file contains 8 characters followed by the .wav suffix. The first eight characters of the filename are formed by concatenating the 2-character prompt code ('00'-'YS'), the 2-character speaker code ('f1'-'f8','m1'-'m8'), the 2-character session code ('se' for enrollment, 's1'-'s8' for testing), and the 2-character token code ('t0'-'t9' for enrollment sessions, 't0'-'t1' for testing sessions). Example #1: 00f1set8.wav The '00' denotes the word 'ZERO'. The 'f1' denotes female number one. The 'se' denotes an 'enrollment' session. The 't8' denotes token number eight. Example #2: rpm5s7t0.wav The 'rp' denotes the word 'REPEAT'. The 'm5' denotes male speaker number five. The 's7' denotes the seventh session. The 't0' denotes token number zero. 4. Corpus Structure ------------------- The organization of the corpus is as follows. The complete TI46 corpus is divided into two directories: TI20 and TI_ALPHA. TI20 contains all utterances of the words 'ZERO'-'NINE' and the words 'ENTER'-'YES'. TI_ALPHA contains all utterances of the words 'A'-'Z'. The TI20 and TI_ALPHA directories are each divided into TESTING and TRAINING directories, and each TESTING and TRAINING directory contains 16 sub-directories (one for each speaker). In each of the speaker directories, labeled F1-F8 and M1-M8, are the corresponding .wav files. Example #3: enm8set6.wav The root directory, TI46, contains two directories: TI20 and TI_ALPHA. The 'EN' denotes the word 'ENTER' so this file is in the TI20 directory. The TI20 directory contains two directories: TEST and TRAIN. The 'SE' denotes a training session so this file is in the TRAIN directory. The TRAIN directory contains sixteen directories: F1-F8 and M1-M8. The 'M8' denotes the eighth male speaker so this file is in the M8 directory. So, in the directory /ti-46word/ti20/train/m8 the file enm8set6.wav appears. Example #4: 0xf4s4t1.wav The root directory, TI46, contains two directories: TI20 and TI_ALPHA. The '0X' denotes the word 'X' so this file is in the TI_ALPHA directory. The TI_ALPHA directory contains two directories: TEST and TRAIN. The 'S4' denotes a testing session so this file is in the TEST directory. The TEST directory contains sixteen directories: F1-F8 and M1-M8. The 'F4' denotes the fourth female speaker so this file is in the F4 directory. So, in the directory /ti-46word/ti_alpha/test/f4 the file 0xf4s4t1.wav appears. Example #5: 07f2s2t0.wav The root directory, TI46, contains two directories: TI20 and TI_ALPHA. The '07' denotes the word 'SEVEN' so this file is in the TI20 directory. The TI20 directory contains two directories: TEST and TRAIN. The 'S2' denotes a testing session so this file is in the TEST directory. The TEST directory contains sixteen directories: F1-F8 and M1-M8. The 'F2' denotes the second female speaker so this file is in the F2 directory. So, in the directory /ti-46word/ti20/test/f2 the file 07f2s2t0.wav appears. All .wav files begin with the standard 1024 byte NIST SPHERE format header, in which information pertaining to the file is stored. 5. Note ------- There are two files with somewhat unusual sample values in this corpus: 1) The file 'rbf6set4.wav' contains a sample value of -2051, which just overflows the nominal 12-bit quantization value. It appears that this is a consequence of a "debiasing", or DC-offset removal signal processing operation at TI, and should be of no practical consequence. 2) The file '0sf5s5t0.wav' has unusually low sample min and max values, apparently corresponding to unusually low vocal effort and/or recording gain. The archival copies of both of these files, at both NIST and Texas Instruments, are identical. The above numbers of utterances per speaker above reflects the goal of the collection. For various reasons, this number was not reached for some speakers. Below is the number of files per speaker: Speakers Files f5,f6,f7,m2,m8 1196 f2,f3,f4,f8 1195 m7 1184 m1 1187 m3 1191 f1 1194 m4,m5,m6 1174 6. References ------------- Doddington, George R. and Schalk, Thomas B., "Speech Recognition: Turning Theory to Practice", in IEEE Spectrum, September, 1981, pp. 26-32. Schalk, Thomas B., "The Design and Use of Speech Recognition Data Bases", in "Proceedings of the Workshop on Standardization for Speech I/O Technology", March 18-19, 1982, pp. 211-214.