Creation of Japanese Speech Corpus for Speech Processing Research

语料包括光平衡216个词、110个单音节、70个短句、11个疑问句、7个语质评价句、1个民间故事、天气预报句和叙述句。语音样本被记录在基于上述材料的数字音频磁带(DAT)上，其中10名男性和10名女性说话者。为了解噪声对语音处理的影响，在4种不同数量和种类的机器条件下，将噪声持续时间为2小时的噪声数据记录到DAT上，对上述20名说话者(每项4句，每名说话者2小时，共40小时)的语音数据进行听力检查，从中选出语音和录音质量良好的12名说话者(男6人，女6人，共24小时)。制作了语音数据库的母带，为主要项目分配了Start ID和节目编号，以便轻松检索必要的项目。准备了检查表，其中详细描述了发音和记录条件。对于上述7种连续语音数据，从4次重复中选择1个质量较好的发音，并将其记录在CD-ROM上。这将是创建日语句子语音CD-ROM语音数据库的第一次尝试。然后将110个单音节的最佳发音和216个语音平衡的单词记录在光盘上。语音数据库的主要目的之一是利用它们来开发各种语音分析、合成和识别技术，并对它们进行比较和评价。为此，我们进行了几种语音分析和识别实验。一些方法被证明对噪声环境下的语音/非语音识别和语音识别是有用的。

Speech material was chosen including photetically ballanced 216 words, 110 monosyllables, 70 short sentences, 11 interrogative sentences, 7 sentences for speech quality measurement, one folk tale, weather forecast sentences and narrative sentences. Speech samples were recorded onto digital audio tapes (DAT) based on the above material with ten male and ten female speakers. Noise sound in a computer room was recorded to investigate influence of noise to speech processing.Noise data of two hour duration was recorded onto DAT under 4 conditions of varying numbers and kinds of working machines.Speech data of the 20 speakers mentioned above (4 utterances for each item, 2 hours for each speaker, 40 hours in all) was checked by hearing and those of good speech and recording quality of 12 speakers (6 male and 6 female speakers, 24 hours in all) was selected among them. Master tapes for speech database was produced with start ID's and program numbers assigned to major items so that necessary items can be retrieved easily. Check lists were prepared which describes pronunciation and recording conditions in detail. One utterance of good quality from 4 repetitions was selected for 7 kinds of continuous speech data mentioned above and they were recorded on to CD-ROM. This would be the first attempt to create a CD-ROM speech database of Japanese sentence speech. Then best utterances of 110 monosyllables and phonetically balanced 216 words were also recorded onto CD-ROM.One of the major objectives of speech databases is to utilize them to develop various techniques of speech analysis, synthesis and recognition and to compare and evaluate them. Therefore, several kinds of speech analysis and recognition experiments have been performed. Some methods were proved to be useful for speech/non-speech discrimination and speech recognition under noise environments.