BUT-CZAS: Database of Czech anechoic speech

Authors
Vojtech Hajek
Pavol Harar *administrátor
Jiri Schimmel
Radim Burget

Description
BUT-CZAS (Brno University of Technology, Czech Anechoic Speech) is a novel database of human voice recordings, acquired in the anechoic chamber. The database consists of 405 mono recordings of the reading task in the Czech language acquired using bit depth of 24 bit and sampling rate of 48 kHz. In total, 18 speakers (9 women, 9 men) aged between 16–76 years old were involved in the process. Total duration of all recordings is approximately 315 min (comprising more than 40 000 versions of 1747 unique words). The database is designed with particular emphasis on the recording environment, quality of the recordings and equality of both age and gender groups. The full transcript is available for all the recordings.

How to cite?
Please cite the following paper:
BUT-CZAS Korpus kvalitních nahrávek české řeči pořízených v bezodrazové komoře

Bibtex:

@article
{hajek2018butczas,
title={BUT-CZAS: Korpus kvalitních nahrávek české řeči pořízených v bezodrazové komoře},
author={Hajek, Vojtech and Harar, Pavol and Schimmel, Jiri and Burget, Radim},
journal={Elektrorevue},
pages={48--52},
year={2018},
publisher={International Society for Science and Engineering, o.s.}}

License & Download
The BUT-CZAS database is available for download for free as a zip archive. The database consists of two parts; 1. Audio recordings and metadata, 2. Text transcripts. Audio recordings and metadata are published under the CC0 Public Domain license. You are allowed to use the Text transcripts for scientific and artistic purposes only; other usage is prohibited. By downloading this database you agree to the license terms and conditions.

Extending the database
If you own similar recordings and you wish to extend this database, please write to the administrator of this database or to someone listed in the contacts. Before that, please make sure the recordings fulfill these requirements:

  • Recordings were made in an anechoic chamber or in an environment that that is described in ISO 3745:2012.
  • Recordings were made using same or similar equipment as the recordings in the original database.
  • Recordings are saved in .wav format with sampling rate of at least 48 kHz and bit depth of 24 bit.

More technical details are to be found in the article mentioned above.

References to the text authors (ISO 690)
* order of references as in the article

[1] ADAMS, Douglas. Stopařův průvodce po Galaxii. Přeložil Jana HOLLANOVÁ. Praha: Hynek, 1998. Fascinace. ISBN 80-86202-14-3.
[2] HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Stařec a moře. Přeložil Šimon PELLAR. Praha: Odeon, 2015. ISBN 978-80-207-1621-7.
[4] JIROTKA, Zdeněk. Saturnin. Vyd. 19., V nakl. Šulc – Švarc 6. Praha: Šulc – Švarc, 2005. ISBN 80-7244-169-8.
[5] ORWELL, George. Farma zvířat: pohádkový příběh. Praha: Aurora, 2000. ISBN 80-7299-021-7.
[6] SAINT-EXUPÉRY, Antoine de. Malý princ. 9. vyd. v Albatrosu. Přeložil Zdeňka STAVINOHOVÁ. Praha: Albatros, 1998. ISBN 80-00-00586-7.
[7] STEINBECK, John. O myších a lidech. Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1960. Edice ilustrovaných novel.
[8] ŠEDIVÝ, Petr.: Anglie a Skotsko se vzepřely vrchnosti, za vlčí máky mohou dostat trest. iDNES.cz, 2016. URL https://fotbal.idnes.cz/fot_reprez.aspx? c=A161112_010559_fot_reprez_pes