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Laboratory on the Physiology, Acoustics, and Perception of Speech >> Content Detail



Lab Database



Lab Database

Special software is required to use some of the files in this section: .zip, .m, and .mat.

This page contains digitized media files for use in the labs. Most of the files are audio data, but there are also image files and other types of data. For some of the labs, you are asked to record your own voice. If you do not have the tools for making such recordings, example utterances are provided as spoken by both a female speaker and a male speaker. The audio files are given below under the heading of the relevant lab.



Lab Data


1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17





In Lab 1, you will record a database of speech utterances for use throughout the semester. Below are links to sample databases recorded by two speakers, one female (HH) and one male (KS).

Note that although these files have a .wav suffix, they are in Klatt format, for use with the Klatt speech-analysis tools (xkl); they are not Microsoft® .wav format.

You can download zip archives of an entire database here:

Female Sample Database (ZIP - 13.6 MB) (Courtesy of Elisabeth Hon. Used with permission.)

Male Sample Database (ZIP - 8.3 MB) (Courtesy of Daryush Mehta. Used with permission.)

The following utterances were recorded by both male and female speakers:

  1. English Vowels


    #SPEAKERS
    1beatbit
    2baitbet
    3potbut
    4boatbought
    5putboot
    6batBert
    7buyboy
    8about


  2. English Consonants


    #SPEAKERS
    9the puttthe bug
    10the tugthe duck
    11the cutthe gut
    12the mugthe nut
    13the fussthe vanilla
    14the thugthe "the"
    15the supperthe shutter
    16the rugthe lug
    17the wonderthe young
    18the chumpthe jump
    19the hutsung a song
    20the /zah/the /zhah/

  3. Sentences


    #SPEAKERS
    21teacher
    22He wanted to rebel
    23school
    24high school teacher
    25He stopped the rebel
    26school teacher
    27tall school teacher
    28Was he a high school teacher?
    29The tall school teacher left early.
    30teach
    31We live in Cambridge and we study at MIT
    32He won those shoes.

  4. Rainbow Passage

    When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  5. Spontaneous Speech

    Describe in detail the room in which you are sitting (hesitations, ah's, etc., are normal).

  6. Prosody Sentences

    List the following pairs of sentences:
    Please say Bray CUP again.
    Please say BRAY cup again.

    Please say lake EELS again.
    Please say LAKE eels again

    Please say see CADS again.
    Please say SEE cads again.

    Please say lake ORES again.
    Please say LAKE ores again.

    Please say see TIES again.
    Please say SEE ties again.

    Please say bite INNS again.
    Please say BITE inns again.

    Please say my TEARS again.
    Please say MY tears again.

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You will use the following utterances recorded during Lab 1:

  • The word "shutter"
  • The simple vowel pairs (Items 1-7)
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You will use at least one of the following subsets of utterances recorded during Lab 1:

  • The words "mug", "nut", and "sung"
  • The words "rug" and "lug"
  • The words "wonder" and "young"
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You will use at least one of the following subsets of utterances recorded during Lab 1:

  • The words "bug", "duck", "gut", "putt", "tug", "cut", "hut"
  • The words "fuss", "thug", "supper", "shutter", "vanilla", "the", /zschwa/, /zhschwa/
  • The words "chump", "jump", "tug", "duck", "shutter", /zhschwa/
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  • Part A: You will use the words "bat" and "pat" recorded by five speakers. These utterances have already been recorded and stored in the labc account. They can also be downloaded below.
  • Parts B-C: You will record the words "pat", "pad", and "bad" during the lab. If you are not able to make new recordings, you can download samples recorded by a female speaker (HH) below.

Download a tar/zip archive of the utterances (xkl format) required for this lab (ZIP)

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In this lab you will use .gif files of cineradiographic images. Because the full database of these images is rather large, it will only be available to students attending the lab. Sample .gif files can be downloaded here:

Download file KNS_6400995.gif (GIF), /a/ in "he'tat"
Download file KNS_6401423.gif (GIF), /a/ in "soggy"
Download file KNS_6400919.gif (GIF), /u/ in "he'tu"
Download file KNS_6401621.gif (GIF), /u/ in "shoes"

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In this lab, you will use data recorded by an x-ray microbeam system for two speakers.

Microbeam Data for Speaker JW16 (ZIP - 6.0 MB)
Microbeam Data for Speaker JW18 (ZIP - 6.0 MB)

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You will use the set of words "beat" and "buy" from the database of recorded utterances from Lab1.

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Lab 9: Techniques for Measuring Respiration during Speech


In this lab, you will use MATLAB® files to calculate lung volume and examine air flow. Download a tar/zip archive for the lab here. (ZIP - 3.1 MB) (The ZIP file contains: 10 .mat files, 2 .m files and 3 .jpg files.)

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Lab 10: Sound Segment Reduction


You will use the spontaneous speech recorded during Lab 1.

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Lab 11: Prosody1: Vowel and consonant duration in speech


Each speaker produced two utterances (AB and BC version). You will use utterances of the following sentences:

Please say Maine or Duke, and Rice will play. (AB version)
Please say Maine, or Duke and Rice will play. (BC version)
Please say Thomas or Kenneth, and Lucas will stay. (AB version)
Please say Thomas, or Kenneth and Lucas will stay. (BC version)

Download utterances required for this lab. (PDF - 1.2 MB) (The zip file contains 8 .wav files.)

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You will use the following utterances recorded during Lab 1:

  • utterances containing the word "teacher"
  • prosody sentences containing pairs of phrases
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Lab 13: Speech Intelligibility and Confusion Matrices


In this lab, you will participate as a subject in two types of intelligibility tests. If you attend the lab, you will hear the stimuli on audiotape. If you do not attend class, you can download audio files of the tests below. In order to take run the tests on your own, you will need to download the response and answers sheets from the Lab 13 page.

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You will use utterances produced by adults and children with several types of speech disorders, all in Xkl (Klatt .wav) format:

  • Part 1: Utterances produced by children with normal speech production.
    Download a tar/zip archive for Part 1 here (ZIP)
  • Part 2: Utterances produced by children who misarticulate several speech sounds.
    Download a tar/zip archive for Part 2 here (ZIP)
  • Part 3: Utterances produced by deaf children.
    Download a tar/zip archive for Part 3 here (ZIP)
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Lab 15: Speech Synthesis Using a Formant Synthesizer


For this lab, students will record new utterances. If you are unable to record new data, you can use the sample utterances provided for Lab 5, part B (either "pat" or "bad").

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There are no utterances required for this lab.

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Lab17: Use of Landmarks and Features for Speech Recognition


In the first part of the lab, you will analyze and annotate acoustic events in two sentences. The waveforms of these two sentences can be downloaded here. (ZIP) (The ZIP file contains 8 .wav files: 4 xkl format and 4 Microsoft® format.)

In the second part of the lab, you are given two brief utterances in which two of the words are unknown. Each utterance is of the form "Say --- --- please."

The words used to fill in the utterances are provided below:


Sentence CSentence D
the buttonthat fan
the soccerhis can
beware ofdish pan
his ribbonthis pen
her wakingbig bomb
his wigglethis pen

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