Consonant recordings for speech testing

Initial and medial consonants were recorded in three vowel contexts for use in speech recognition experiments. Five male and five female talkers were recorded producing the twenty-five consonants /b, d, g, p, t, k, m, n, beta, l, r, f, v, theta, partial derivative, s, z, integral, t integral, d3, 3, j, w, m, h/ in medial (v/C/v) and initial (C/v) positions using vowels /a/ ("hod"), /i/ ("heed"), and TI-he sampling rate for these recordings was 44.1kHz. Representative tokens of each consonant were amplitude normalized to the steady-state portion of the vowel. Listening tests were conducted with normal-hearing listeners on a subset of twenty consonants in all three vowel contexts and in initial and medial positions. The results showed that the consonants were clearly recognized with only a few minor confusions, primarily between /v/ and /delta/. The full set of recordings is available for research use. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America.