- The Natural Language Software Registry. DFKI, Germany's website for info on a host of linguistic software.
- Agora Language Marketplace (Signalyze, etc.)
- AVAAZ (CSRE, etc.)
- CSpeech developer, Paul Milenkovic (homepage)
- Entropic Research Lab (esps, waves+). Purchased by Microsoft on 29 October 1999.
[See also Linux OS and related websites: Linux HOWTO Documents,
including The Linux Installation HOWTO
(or Chih-wei Huang's (Eng/Big5) links to Linux HOWTOs and Mini-HOWTOs);
Linux on Laptops; Red Hat Linux.]
- KayPENTAX (formerly, Kay Elemetrics; hardware/software include CSL, Multi-Speech, Real-Time Pitch, Visi-Pitch, etc.)
- Scicon Research & Development (PCquirer (X16), Macquirer (X16), PitchWorks (for PCs and Macs; can read/import Entropic's xwave files, labelling and tier structure), SynthWorks, SpeechCoach, etc.)
- Sensimetrics Corporation (SpeechStation2, HLsyn, SenSyn, Speech Production and Perception 1 (multimedia course on CD-ROM))
- Speech Technology Research (STR)
(CSL, U. of Victoria Phonetic Database (PDB) on CD ROM, etc.)
- UCLA Phonetics Laboratory Instructional Software. Instructional software available for purchase for Macs.
- EMU Speech Database System. EMU is a collection of freely-downloadable
software tools from Macquarie University for the creation, manipulation and analysis of speech databases in Windows (Win95/98/NT), Mac, and
Unix platforms (incl. Linux (e.g., RedHat 6.2)); includes a
search engine for querying the databases and an interactive labeller that can display waveforms, spectrograms, pitch tracks, etc.;
allows for the creation of hierarchical as well as sequential labels for speech utterances.
Emu is currently being used for
ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) style
prosodic annotations for English and other languages, including Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese).
While there does not appear to be any online, illustrated tutorials for Emu, the following Macquarie
University websites are informative:
one has instructions on installing Emu: Acoustics
of Speech Software Setup, part of Mcquarie University's course, SLP801: Fundamentals of Speech Science. The
other website is Steve Cassidy's SLP801: Fundamentals of Speech Science
Acoustics Module, an online tutorial that makes use of the suite of programs in Emu.
- ONZE Miner.
This is a browser-based, Open Source, linguistics research tool that stores audio recordings and text transcripts of interviews, originally
developed for the ONZE (Origins of New Zealand English) Project, in the Linguistics Department at the University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand.
- Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer.
Developed by Paul Boersma and David Weenink, Institute of Phonetic Sciences, U. of Amsterdam,
this freely-downloadable software is a comprehensive speech analysis, synthesis, and manipulation package
for multiple platforms: Mac (PowerMac, G3, G4...), Windows (9x/NT/2000/Me ..),
PARC/Intel Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, etc. (thanks to Olli Salmi)
- ProRec 1.01 Speech Prompt & Record System.
ProRec is a Windows program developed by Mark Huckvale (University College London) for field workers in
Phonetics, Linguistics and Speech Science. It allows researchers to set up a laptop as a portable recording system
complete with visual prompts for speakers.
- SFS Speech Filing System.
SFS is a set of computer tools for speeech research, and performs standard operations such as acquisition, replay, display and labelling, spectrographic and formant analysis and fundamental frequency estimation. It
runs under Unix, DOS and WIN32 environments and is currently running on Sun, Hewlett-Packard, Masscomp, Alpha, Linux and 486+PC. SFS is copyrighted University College London, but is currently supplied free of charge
to research establishments for non-profit use.
- SIL: Linguistics Computing Resources on the Internet.
SIL's links to linguistics software, including their own freely-downloadable
SIL Computing resources, such as their Encore IPA fonts
(or go to their gopher site: SIL gopher site: fonts),
and other linguistics-related freeware.
See also SIL Acoustic Software: Speech Analysis Tools,
SIL's freely-downloadable, speech-related resources, including their Speech Analyzer for Windows, and other
speech analysis software for different platforms: the CECIL series -- CECIL (for DOS), WinCECIL (for Windows), and MacCECIL (for Macs).
The Speech Analyzer for Windows uses .wav files instead of (Win)CECIL's .utt files.
The speech analysis software is produced by JAARS.
(See also JAARS' description of the different components of their Acoustic Speech Analysis Program.)
- Snack: The Snack Sound Extension for Tcl/Tk.
Snack is cross-platform (Win/Mac/Unix/etc.) freeware developed by Kare Sjölander that is "an extension to the
Tcl/Tk scripting language [open source--mc]. It makes
possible the creation of powerful multi-platform audio applications. Snack adds commands for basic
sound handling, e.g. sound card and disk I/O. Snack also has primitives for sound visualization,
e.g. waveforms and spectrograms. It was developed mainly to handle
digital recordings of speech, but is just as useful for general audio."
(See, for example, WaveSurfer, a sound application built using Snack.)
- SoundScriber. Windows 95 freeware developed by
Eric Breck, at U. of Michigan, for transcribing digitized sound files;
features specifically for transcription include: keystrokes to control the program while working in another window (e.g. word processor,
SGML editor, etc.), variable speed playback, and "walking" (i.e., playing a small stretch of the file several times, then
advancing to a new piece while overlapping slightly with the previous one. With this feature, it is possible to transcribe continuously without
having to manually pause or rewind the recording.)
- Transcriber. Freeware for transcribing and annotating
digital audio, aimed initially at transcription of broadcast news data.
It was developed under Unix by Claude Barras and Edouard Geoffrois, at DGA in Paris, and compiled at LDC
on Windows NT.
The program handles files in .wav, .au, .snd, .aiff, .smp and .sph formats, as well as
headerless (raw) files -- it guesses byte order, 8 vs. 16 bit sampling, etc., and you can tell it the sampling rate
and number of channels (currently only 1, 2 and 4 are supported). The program runs in Windows, Mac, Linux,
and Unix systems. (Also see the commercial product, nXPeds Foot Pedal,
which connects to the USB port for transcribing, etc.)
- WaveSurfer. A sound application built using Snack
(see above), WaveSurfer is a
toolkit for speech research,
teaching, etc., developed by Kare Sjölander and Jonas Beskow, the software
records, plays, edits, views, prints, and labels audio data. It can display waveforms, pitch tracks,
wideband spectrograms, time axis, and a "pane" (or tier) for labelling/transcription,
as well as multiple displays of those as needed). It is a multi-platform program, with versions for
Windows, Linux, Macintosh, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, and SGI IRIX.
- UCSB Linguistis: Resources. Freely downloadable Windows-based tools for the transcription of
spoken discourse, including: VoiceWalker, a transcription tool for audio and video, compatible with Windows AVI files and Quicktime MOV files
(the older software was SoundWalker for audio files only); and
SoundWriter, which incorporates the features of SoundWalker as well as the ability to align transcripts with sound files;
tools developed at the UCSB Linguistics Computing Lab, U. of California Santa Barbara, California.
- More Freeware/Shareware Links:
Freeware: Audacity is a free, non-expiring, cross-platform
(Windows 98 and higher, Mac OS 9/X, Linux/Unix) sound editor.
Shareware: Shareware for opening, recording (including directly from CD's), and saving in multiple formats, and waveform-editting
on multiple platforms:
For a sound editor for Windows only, see
Chris Craig's GoldWave (incl. spectrographic display options),
and Ponnuchamy Varatharaj's FlexiMusic Wave Editor
(converts between .wav and .mp3 (as well as .snd, .voc, etc.)).
Syntrillium's Cool Edit (incl. saving to RealAudio format) is no longer available, as
the company's technology assets were purchased by Adobe Systems Incorporated in May 2003.
(The professional version of Cool Edit (Cool Edit Pro 2.1) was "rebranded" and released in August 2003
as Adobe Audition.
See also C. Craig's annotated links to
Other Audio Software and Audio Related Companies.
Also check out TUCOWS'
links to downloadable sound editors and other audio applications for
Macs, Unixes, Windows, etc. (TUCOWS: alternate site), as well as
Pure Mac: Audio
(part of Pure Mac's website for freeware/shareware),
the comp.speech WWW Site, and
this web page's Web Tools and Software for other FTP and web sites for downloadable, archived freeware/shareware.
O. LINGUISTICS SOFTWARE AND ONLINE VENDORS
E-mail <marjorie.chan @ osu.edu> (close the gaps) on changes, updates, and suggestions.