A speech data base facility using a computer-controlled cassette tape deck

Abstract

A speech data base collection facility is described which uses a cassette tape deck interfaced to a laboratory computer for storing and accessing speech samples. The computer, under program control, has access to the transport functions as well as the position counter of the cassette deck. In addition, there is a capability of reading and writing digital headers. Digital headers are particularly useful in enabling descriptive information to be written directly with the speech samples as well as enabling precise location of individual samples in a data base. The facility offers an attractive means for compactly storing large data bases of speech samples with relatively easy access to individual samples. An experiment is described in which speech sample utterances were digitized and processed on-line simultaneously with recording directly onto cassette tapes with descriptive digital headers. The recorded speech samples were digitized and processed in the same way and compared with the directly digitized and processed samples. No significant degredation was obtained attributable to the analog cassette recording.