Wave (*.wav) file specifications, 03/17/94:

The "*.wav" files are two-channel u-law encoded audio waveform files with
standard NIST SPHERE headers.  Each "*.wav" file contains one
conversation of not more than five minutes.  Each channel contains the
audio for one line of the conversation (although crosstalk between
channels occurs frequently).


1.  Sample SPHERE Header

NIST_1A
   1024
speaker_id1 -s4 1549
speaker_id2 -s4 1163
recording_date -s6 920304
recording_time -s4 1959
conversation_id -s4 4062
database_id -s4 SPIDRE0
data_origins -s13 swb1,1.0,4062 
channel_count -i 2
sample_max1 -r 4015.500000
sample_max2 -r 4015.500000
sample_coding -s6 mu-law
channels_interleaved -s4 TRUE
sample_count -i 4792352
sample_rate -i 8000
sample_n_bytes -i 1
sample_sig_bits -i 8
end_head

Each wave file contains a SPHERE header with these fields.

See the file "manual.doc" in the "/doc" directory for complete
detailed descriptions of the header fields.


2.  SPHERE Package

SPeech HEader REsources (SPHERE) is a software package developed by
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Automated
Speech Recognition Group to provide an interface to NIST
SPHERE-formatted speech waveform files.  (The acronym, SPHERE, has now
come to represent the format of the files as well as the software
package.)  
 
The SPHERE package contains two primary user-oriented software
components:
 
        1.  C-language programmer interface library
 
        2.  C-language system-level file manipulation utilities
 
The C-language programmer interface library has been developed to
provide a simple, intuitive interface to access and manipulate SPHERE
files.  The library has been specifically designed to mimic the syntax
and functionality of standard C-language file I/O functions.
Functions are provided to open, close, read, and write SPHERE files.
C-like header field manipulation functions have been included as well.
 
The system-level file manipulation utilities have been written using
the SPHERE library and provide command-line-level manipulation of
SPHERE files as well as functional examples of the usage of the SPHERE
libraries.


a)  INSTRUCTIONS FOR OBTAINING SPHERE PACKAGE

    Anonymous FTP Instructions:

         1. Begin FTP
            % ftp jaguar.ncsl.nist.gov
                or
            % ftp 129.6.48.157
         2. Login as the login-name anonymous by entering anonymous
            for Name, then type your personal username as the password
            Name (hostname:jfiscus): anonymous
            Password: jfiscus
         3. Change you directory to "pub/"
            ftp> cd pub/
         4. Set the transfer mode to binary
            ftp> bin
         5. Get the most recent version of SPHERE.
            ftp> get sphere_2.0Beta2.1.tar.Z
                 (where 2.0 is the version number)
         6. Quit FTP
            ftp> bye

   The SPHERE package is a compressed tar-file.  To extract the files
   execute this command or it's equivalent.

        % zcat sphere_2.0Beta2.1.tar.Z | tar xf -


**Note** 
The current version of SPHERE (version 2.0) does not support multi-
channel operations, but the next release (version 2.1) will.