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xassp User's Manual (Advanced Speech Signal Processor under the

1. toplevelShell EES AEN waveToplevel gt is parent of gt controls XmRowColumn XmForm XmScrollBar __ waveStatusLine waveForm waveScrollBar XmSeparator C f XspHscale waveSeparator S Ki waveHorizontalScale 2 4 p XspWave XspVscale m waveData waveVerticalScale Figure 4 1 xassp window structure waveHorizontalScale waveVerticalScal waveData waveScrollBar waveStatusLine Figure 4 2 xassp wave window refer to the widget class all widgets belonging to this class are affected when changing some resource By specifying the widget name you are able to change resources for all widgets that are elements of the specified window type The widget names consist of a prefix like wave and the actual name Table 4 1 tells you which prefix to use for each window type X resources can be changed in the Xdefaults file in your home directory If the resource you would like to edit is not present in the file you can copy it from the X application defaults file usr lib X11 app defaults Xassp where the de 4 2 USER CONFIGURATION FILES 87 faults for xassp resources are specified The resources you can change and their possi ble values are listed in the manual pages for the xassp widgets as well as in appendix B It is also useful to have a look at the X manual page especially the section called RESOURCES Each resource line in your Xdefa
2. lt Ctrl gt b jumps to the previous occurrence of the label that was last searched for lt Ctrl gt 1 jumps to the last label Refer to Table A 5 for a complete list of key and mouse bindings in the label window Label Syntax Checks If xassp is run with a user level below 30 a syntax check is performed for each label that is inserted edited or moved If the label is not valid an error message appears and the edit process is aborted The following additional checks are done when a label 15 deleted Only prosodic labels inserted labels or labels with a kp prefix may be deleted inserted The inserted label must be a prosodic label a label that is marked as inserted or a label with a kp prefix Prosodic labels may not be inserted at the temporary marker edited Labels that are marked as inserted may not be edited To change such a label you must delete and re insert it You may not change the label class prosodic or segmental the canonical label or word internal prefixes You are not allowed to modify the lexical stress markers or the minus that indicates that the label has been inserted 3 5 5 The Fundamental Frequency Window In this window the fundamental frequency of a given speech signal file is displayed The window can be called up with the button Fzero in the xassp main dialog or with the window configuration Prosodic which gives you speech signal fundamental fre quency and labels or it can be analys
3. play from temporary marker left bracket beginning of window to right bracket end of window play from cursor to right bracket end of window post window menu post edit menu xassp takes the first item from the slash separated lists that is present when determining what to play If a temporary marker is present and you press the left mouse button this marker determines the beginning of the region to be played If the temporary marker is not present but the left bracket is then the region starts at the position of the left bracket If none of these are currently displayed the playing starts at the beginning of the window Table A 2 Commonly Used Mouse Bindings in xassp Key Action lt Shift gt s open a new section window CursorUp increase the vertical resolution of the speech signal CursorDown decrease the vertical resolution of the speech signal Home restore the original vertical resolution of the speech signal Table A 3 Key Bindings in the Speech Signal Window Key Action T toggles the updating of the section when cursor in speech signal window is moved same as the Freeze Follow menu item k keeps the current section same as the Keep menu item G removes the last kept section same as the Clear menu item Table A 4 Key Bindings in the Section Window 107 Key Mouse button Action lt Shift gt LM set temporary marker lt Shift gt MM move label unchanged to the point in time define
4. press lt Ctrl gt RM and select Delete from the pop up menu that appears You will not be able to delete any labels that were fetched from the label stack since a check is performed before the label is deleted If you try to do this anyway a warning message is displayed and the label is not deleted 2 3 9 Editing an Inserted Label xassp refuses any attempt to edit an inserted label at least if your user level is less than 30 To edit an inserted label you therefore have to delete and re insert it at the same point in time as described above 2 3 10 Moving a Label When you discover that a label was not set onto the right point you will want to move it onto a different one This action is very similar to fetching a label from the label stack You first have to set the temporary marker to the point in time onto which you would like to move the label Then place the cursor between the temporary marker and the label that is to be moved Note that only a label directly to the left or directly to the right of the temporary marker can be moved The label order cannot be changed By pressing lt Shift gt MM you can now move the label onto the temporary marker You can also use the short cuts that are described above to edit the label before moving it or to modify it by inserting a percent sign and so on 2 3 11 Undoing Recent Changes xassp remembers every change that you make inserting deleting moving and editing labels By pressing lt Ctrl
5. The user az can perform all tasks that are needed for prosodic labelling If this user wants to do segmental labelling as well the entry will have to look like this 4 3 ADMINISTRATIVE CONFIGURATION FILES 91 az 10 20 This allows the user to increase the default user level to a maximum user level of 20 and so to perform all tasks that are necessary for segmental labelling Chapter 5 Analyses This chapter gives an overview of the analyses included in xassp The descriptions are kept brief for the general analyses details of which can be found in speech signal pro cessing textbooks like Markel and Gray 1976 The Fo algorithm is described in more detail because it is a method developed at IPDS Most signal processing terms used be low are described in more detail in Chapter 6 Those of you who are not too familiar with signal processing can find good introductions in Rosen and Howell 1991 and Ladefoged 1996 The latter book also includes chapters on Fourier analysis digital filters and LPC analysis Beware however that especially these chapters unfortunately contain many typing errors 5 1 Energy Analysis For showing the course of the signal strength over time an energy analysis can be performed As a measure of energy the Root Mean Square RMS value is calculated In formula where s is the sampled signal w the window function and N the frame size You are advised to use a non rectangular window function and a
6. 95 maxFzero the highest Fo to be evaluated default 600 Hz Decreasing maxFzero speeds up processing However since fewer potential periodicity markers will be evaluated it may lead to voicing errors Decreasing maxFzero may be neces sary to suppress an octave error Contrary to most other Fo analyses maxF zero should not be set to slightly above the correct F but rather to slightly below its octave i e the lowest erroneous value Increasing maxF zero slows down processing may in some cases give somewhat better results but may also lead to octave errors noiseAmp the amplitude threshold for an extremum to be considered a potential pe riod marker default 16 at 16 bit signal resolution Extrema with amplitudes below this threshold are assumed to be due to background noise or weak un voiced signals Decreasing noiseAmp slows down processing and may in some cases lead to erroneous detection of periodicity in noisy stretches Increasing noiseAmp speeds up processing but has no deteriorating effect on the results as long as it is lower than the actually lowest extremum in voiced stretches frameShift determines the rate at which Fo values are produced at the last stage namely once per frameShift ms The default value is 10 ms for proper align ment with other analysis data such as energy contours Decreasing frameShift may in extreme cases lead to gaps in the Fo track These may for example be caused by a phase shift in the transition
7. Label windows e line color or grey value only Wave Fzero Energy and Label windows e label font only Label window e print style only Fzero and Energy windows The following parameters can be changed in the options dialog boxes for horizontal and vertical scales e font for tick labels e minimum space between two tick marks e margin between tick labels and tick marks CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP 84 30000 20000 10000 0 10000 20000 30000 700ms 800ms 900ms 1000ms 1100ms 1200ms 1300ms 1400ms 1500ms 1600ms 1700ms 1800ms 1900ms 2000ms 2100ms 2200ms 8000Hz 7000Hz l l 6000Hz N 5000Hz 4000Hz ll 3000Hz lua 2000Hz ii 1000Hz IM IN OHz 1 700ms 800ms 900ms 1000ms 1100ms 1200ms 1300ms 1400ms 1500ms 1600ms 1700ms 1800ms 1900ms 2000ms 2100ms 2200ms amp 0 Q T N Gan q U PALA EI c sci amp 2 EO amp pel N E0 amp pgl N c A EO amp 0 x amp 0 amp 2 amp O N amp 2 IQ LP 80 HHS SA G HT D d HF A NG I N F A M ISA 700ms 800ms 900ms 1000ms 1100ms 1200ms 1300ms 1400ms 1500ms 1600ms 1700ms 1800ms 1900ms 2000ms 2100ms 2200ms Figure 3 14 Print output generated with xassp Chapter 4 Configuring xassp Since xassp is an app
8. The Label Window The label window lets you assign labels to distinct points in time This is used to mark the segment boundaries of an utterance or to describe its prosodic structure as in segmental and prosodic labelling respectively Window Menu The window menu of the label window has the following additional entries 72 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Show as text Opens a dialog box containing a label list In each line of the list the time in milliseconds and the associated label are displayed Label font This menu item opens the Font Selection dialog box see Figure 3 10 that lists the fonts that are defined in the font configuration file see Section 4 2 2 You can either choose a label font from the list or you can type a valid X font name into the Selection field Save Saves the labels to the file that is given in the title of the window If this file exists it is overwritten without warning Save as You can save the file under a different file name If the file you selected exists you are prompted whether to overwrite it Edit Menu With lt Ctrl gt RM you get the label edit menu see Figure 3 10 which has the follow ing entries Insert before Insert a new label before the highlighted label Insert after Insert a new label after the highlighted label Delete Delete the highlighted label Edit Edit the highlighted label Inserting a New Label If a new label is to be inserted at a certain point in time the te
9. been partly segmented 45 2 3 SEGMENTAL LABELLING IJU yosing Kre odup JX9u pooejd aq 0 oge Jestuouey juoursovyd ogeT 7 210214 6005 42 g 46 CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED WITH XASSP ll Insert label before G mel rsl iss te sr stral cl ml mlm mi r meto ssa mad wur mn m2 sa mel war m2 m5 ma ese ms mo sa m2 w ml ml m2 10 2 ma 2 wa sal ra al so m val ai K DK Apply Cancel Help Figure 2 4 Edit Dialog Box in the Label Window The place where the label is to be inserted is indicated in the dialog title in this case the label will be inserted before the label G 2 3 2 Playing the Speech Signal It is difficult to determine segment boundaries without hearing the relevant stretch of the speech signal You can repeatedly play the signal from the temporary marker to the cursor with LM and shift the temporary marker by pressing lt Shift gt LM until you think that it is set on the right point You can also play other parts of the speech signal see Tables A 1 and A 2 2 3 3 Using the Label List xassp is able to list the labels of the current file in a separate window You can open this window by pressing lt Alt gt RM and selecting Show as Text from the pop up menu that appears The label list consists of two columns In the first column the time in milliseconds is displayed The second column contains
10. can then be opened by selecting the correspond ing configuration buttons These definitions have the following form lt identifier gt lt option gt lt value gt lt window type gt lt suffixes gt The names to be used for the window types are identical to the prefixes listed in Table 4 1 The options that you specify affect only the windows that are defined after the option line If you specify multiple suffixes for a window type you must separate them with commas A suffix must always include a period If you want the data of a certain window to be computed from the data of another you have to specify an asterisk followed by the number of the window from which data are to be taken In this case the window number is the number of the window in this special configuration A simple configuration for segmental labelling could look like this 4 2 USER CONFIGURATION FILES 89 Segmental wave 116 r16 sonag 71 labels mix As you can see the sonagram is computed using data from the first window in the configuration which is the speech signal window If you want only one status line and one scroll bar you can use the following Segmental scrollbar no wave 116 r16 statusline no sonag 71 scrollbar yes smallscale yes labels mix In this configuration the scroll bar is only displayed in the label window and the status line is only present in the speech signal window Addi
11. fields Clicking the Select Windows button opens the Select Windows dialog box where you can select windows change their parameters and choose from different configura tions which are defined in the xassp print configuration file Clicking the Page Options button opens the Page Options dialog box where you can change the page size margins and the page orientation landscape or portrait Press the Print button to generate the PostScript output The Cancel button closes the dialog box 3 7 1 Modifying Page Options In the Page Options dialog box you can modify the page orientation page size and change the margins Additionally you can choose whether to generate EPS Encapsu lated PostScript output which can then e g easily be included in TEX documents You can choose between the page orientations Landscape and Portrait by selecting the corresponding toggle button in the Page Orientation frame The page size can be changed either by selecting one of the pre defined size from the Paper Size list or by selecting Custom in the Paper Size list and specifying the paper size in the Width and Height text fields the values must be given in centimetres 82 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP J gt gt Select Windows Configurations 7 Available Windows Selected Windows _ dg gt gt Default 2 unnamed f0 lt 1 9071a000 r16 1 g071a000 ri6 3 90712000 mix lt Remove wv Pretty Up w Article Opt
12. from a vowel to a nasal Note that frameShift may be reduced to one sample because the Fo values are determined at the sampling rate of the signal Increasing frameShift mainly results in the voicing boundaries becoming increasingly inaccurate Very short stretches that were declared unvoiced e g in the occlusion of lenis plosives may therefore disappear because the frames extending over such stretches now contain more voiced samples resulting in the frames becoming declared voiced 5 3 Formant Analysis If an LPC spectrum is selected in Section a formant analysis may be invoked In this analysis local peaks are searched in the LPC spectrum By parabolic interpolation through the three adjacent FFT points that define such a peak the peak frequency its bandwidth and amplitude are estimated These values will be listed in a dialog box and may be logged in a file How many peaks will be searched for can be defined in the section pop up menu under Formants There you will also find a toggle button for switching formant calculation on or off The formant data will continuously be updated with a change in the spectrum in the section window When analysing formants you are advised not to set the number of FFT points to auto or 0 because this would result in the formant data becoming dependent on the width of the Section display window The number of FFT points should rather be set such that a spectral resolution of between 20 and 50 Hz is obtain
13. gt RM and then selecting Undo from the pop up menu that appears you can undo the last change Repeating this action undoes the last but one change and so on You can continue undoing until the first change that you made is reversed 2 3 12 Jumping to a Specified Label There are several nice features that make segmental labelling with xassp more user friendly If you want to label a file that has already been partly labelled you can jump to the last label by pressing lt Ctrl gt 1 after loading the file lt Ctrl gt s makes the Go to dialog box appear on the screen In its Label text field you can type a label you wish to jump to After pressing the Go button the label you entered is searched for starting from the current position of the beginning of the window and the first occurrence of the label If the label has been found the label 2 4 PROSODIC LABELLING 49 window is scrolled so that the label is displayed in the centre of the window if the label has not been found a warning message is displayed Now you can jump to the next previous occurrence of the same label by pressing lt Ctrl gt lt Ctrl gt b If there is no next previous occurrence a warning message is displayed 2 3 13 Saving the Labels in a File If you press the Exit button in the xassp main dialog box or select Close from the label window menu or Close All from the window menu of any open xassp window you are prompted whether you want to save the data in cas
14. is displayed In Figure 3 4 you can see the window menu and the edit menu for the speech signal window Brackets xassp provides two brackets which delimit a region Brackets are displayed as vertical bars in the data area The region that the brackets define can now be used to play part of the speech signal to analyse the region separately from the rest of the signal or to perform cut and paste operations in the speech signal window Normally brackets are set onto the next zero crossing to the left of the cursor but this behaviour can be controlled by the user Brackets can be set with F5 left bracket and F6 right bracket To over ride the default setting brackets on zero crossings you can use lt Ctrl gt F5 and lt Ctrl gt F6 to set the brackets on the exact cursor position The brackets can be cleared with Return or Del Clearing the brackets with Return does not work on all machines Temporary marker The temporary marker can be thought of as a way of marking a certain point in time where a label is to be placed It is set with lt Shift gt LM The temporary marker is always set on the exact cursor position It can be moved onto the next positive or negative zero crossing to the left by pressing F3 and to the next positive zero crossing to the right by typing F4 Not all of these elements make sense for all window types e g brackets and a temporary marker are not available in the section window because it has no horizontal t
15. may be used in one of the windows It has to be chosen if the windows have been called up separately without any config uration You can also use this menu to unlink one or several window features If you want all features to be unlinked select the window menu item Unlink In the following list all possible links are explained Cursor For several tasks it is necessary that the cursor is at the same point in time in each window Especially for segmenting and labelling a speech signal it is very important that you can see where you are to correctly position a label Zoom The temporal resolution is the same in all linked windows Brackets The brackets are set at the same point in time in linked windows Play If a non speech signal window is linked to a speech signal with a play link you can use the key and mouse buttons listed in Table A 2 in the non speech signal window to play the signal in the speech signal window Scrolling The starting time for the data display is the same in all windows Temporary marker The temporary marker is set at the same point in time in all linked windows 3 4 5 Data Logging xassp provides the possibility to write Fo values energy values formants and labels that are associated with a certain point in time to a log file To enable data logging you have to activate the Data logging button in the xassp main dialog If logging is on a status window appears in the lower right corner of the screen see Figur
16. move the mouse pointer onto the label before or after which the new label is to be inserted the label is highlighted press lt Ctrl gt RM and select Insert before or Insert after in the pop up menu that appears In the Insert Label dialog box which is shown in Figure 2 4 you can either type the label in the text field that is located directly above the row of buttons and then press Return to insert the label or press one of the label buttons provided in the dialog box to insert the label it shows The latter method is intended to be used for the most frequent labels How the labels that are shown as buttons in the Insert Label dialog box can be changed is described in Section 4 2 3 Note that inserted prosodic labels unlike segmental labels do not require a mi nus after the prefix and can be edited 2 4 2 Editing a Label You can edit an inserted label by moving the mouse pointer onto the label the label is highlighted pressing lt Ctrl gt RM and selecting Edit from the pop up menu that appears The Edit Label dialog box is the same as the Insert Label dialog box You can either edit the label in the text field or press one of the buttons If one of the buttons is pressed the label is changed to the one that is displayed on the button It is also possible to edit segmental labels To do this you take the same actions as for editing prosodic labels Note that the changes you can make to segmental labels are restricted 2 4 3 Dele
17. nth formant in Hz An The amplitude of the nth formant in dB FILE The file that is associated with the window in that you pressed w n is to be substituted by an integral number Table 3 3 Keywords used in xassp log files Adding a Comment to logged Data If you wish to add some comment to the logged data press lt Ctrl gt w rather than w After the data have been collected a text window will appear in which you can enter your comment After pressing Return or the OK button the line you entered will be written to the log file after the line with the data As identifier the line is preceded by the word COMMENT and a TAB 3 5 Specific xassp Window Properties In this section the different data and the resulting different window types will be ex plained These are e Speech signal Sonagram e Section e Fzero Labels Energy 3 5 1 The Speech Signal Window In the speech signal window the speech wave of a selected signal file is displayed 66 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Window Menu In addition to the general xassp menu items listed in Section 3 4 3 you have some special items in the pop up menu see Figure 3 4 Analysis Different analyses of the speech signal are possible sonagram section energy fzero and labels The Analysis dialog box that is opened upon selecting this entry in the pop up menu is shown in Figure 3 7 You can choose one or more data types After pressing the OK button for each sele
18. or more of the buttons labelled Fzero Energy Labels Sonagram and Section If you select the Align and Link button all xassp windows are aligned and linked after the analysis is done see Sections 3 4 4 and 3 5 1 for a description of links and window alignment If you marked a region of the speech signal by placing brackets with F5 F6 you can choose whether to analyse the whole speech signal select the All button or only the marked region select the Region button Now you can select the OK button to perform the analysis The outcome of each analysis is presented in a separate window If you select the Cancel button no analysis is performed and no new windows are opened Note that you cannot modify any analysis parameters before the analysis is fin ished Instead you have to press lt Alt gt RM in the window that contains the analysis whose parameters you would like to change and select Re analyse from the pop up menu that appears The Options dialog box appears on the screen Here you can modify the analysis parameters After selecting the OK button the speech signal is reanalysed using the modified analysis parameters Descriptions of the Options dialog boxes are found in Sections 3 5 2 sonagram 3 5 3 section 3 5 5 fundamental frequency and 3 5 6 energy For more informa tion on the different analysis methods and their parameters see Chapter 5 You may have noticed that there is one button in the Analysis dialog box that ha
19. range may lead to sidelobes due to the window function becoming visible For a Section the range may be set larger because the visual resolution is far better and sidelobes are easier to recognise as such The default value here is 80 dB also because no pre emphasis is applied 102 CHAPTER 6 DEFINITION OF SIGNAL PROCESSING TERMS Window Function In a frame based analysis the signal is implicitly assumed to be zero outside the frame This is equivalent to multiplying the signal with a win dow function which equals 1 within the frame and 0 outside it The sharp edges of this function cause distortions of the signal spectrum The two main effects are e a broadening of the frequency components width of the main lobe e the occurrence of spurious components sidelobes The second effect is the most serious one because for a rectangular window the maximum level of the sidelobes is only 13 dB below that of the main lobe Therefore the sidelobes of a single strong signal component may mask other components completely or suggest energy at frequencies where there are in fact no signal components In order to reduce these sidelobes a tapered window function a function that gradually approaches 0 at its ends is usually applied prior to the analysis For any window function there is a trade off between the width of the main lobe and the maximum level of the sidelobes The lower the relative level of the sidelobes the wider the main lobe In so
20. refer to Section 5 1 for a description of the energy analysis and to Chapter 6 for an explanation of the terms that are used in the analysis descriptions 3 6 File Handling xassp can load data to be displayed from and save data to files The data types that can be loaded and saved are e Speech Signal e Fundamental Frequency e Energy e Labels In the following sections the different file formats that are used in xassp are ex plained 3 6 FILE HANDLING 77 3 6 1 Speech Signal Files xassp can handle speech signal files that have one of the formats that are explained in this section KTH File Format Files in KTH format consist of an ASCH header followed by binary data The reason to use an ASCII header is that it can be viewed with a more or Less command or a simple text editor such as vi The header of a KTH file normally looks like this head 1024 lt CR gt lt LF gt file samp lt CR gt lt LF gt data int16 lt CR gt lt LF gt msb first lt CR gt lt LF gt nchans 1 lt CR gt lt LF gt sftot 16000 lt CR gt lt LF gt length 203722 lt CR gt lt LF gt lt CR gt lt LF gt lt SUB gt lt EOT gt lt NUL gt lt NUL gt The lt CR gt is a carriage return character lt LF gt is a line feed character and lt NUL gt lt SUB gt and lt EOT gt are special ASCII characters The dots indicate that the lt NUL gt characters are repeated until the end of the header is reached The header consists of simple keywor
21. that you forgot to modify it you can still edit it by moving the mouse pointer onto the label the label is highlighted pressing lt Ctrl gt RM and selecting Edit from the pop up menu that appears The Edit Label dialog box is exactly the same as the one described above except that the label is not moved if you press the OK button Note that you are only allowed to make changes that are absolutely necessary e g changing the label prefix from word boundary to word internal 2 3 6 Inserting a New Label If there is no label on the stack that matches the stretch of the speech signal that has to be labelled next you can insert a new label at the temporary marker with lt Ctrl gt MM This label must be marked as inserted by inserting a minus sign after the label prefix If you forget to do this xassp refuses to insert the label and shows a warning message 2 3 7 Label Syntax Checks The check that is done when inserting a label is only one of a number of label syntax checks that xassp performs whenever a label is edited inserted or deleted So for in stance you are not allowed to insert invalid labels or to edit labels so that they become invalid A more detailed description of these checks can be found in Section 3 5 4 48 CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED WITH XASSP 2 3 8 Deleting an Inserted Label If you accidentally inserted a label and want to delete it you have to move the mouse pointer onto the label the label is highlighted
22. the window function and the number of FFT points If you need a smaller bandwidth than this limit choose a less compact window function e g a Hamming window or increase the number of FFT points Discrete Fourier Transform DFT As the name implies the DFT is the Fourier transform for discrete signals such as sampled speech signals Usually a short term DFT is calculated For N input samples the DFT delivers N complex Fourier coefficients Thus the frequency resolution of the DFT equals the sam pling frequency divided by N For example a 512 point DFT at a sampling rate of 16 kHz has a frequency resolution of about 31 Hz The DFT is usually calculated using the Fast Fourier Transform FFT Note that calculating a short term DFT violates the requirements for applying a Fourier transform The signal must therefore be multiplied by a tapering window function to reduce spectral distortion due to this violation 97 98 CHAPTER 6 DEFINITION OF SIGNAL PROCESSING TERMS d L L L Figure 6 1 Power Spectrum of a Window Function solid line and of the Rectangular Filter with the same ENB dashed line Effective Window Length The application of a non rectangular window function puts more emphasis on the signal near the centre of an analysis window than near the edges Hence the length of the window is effectively reduced There are several definitions of the effective length of a window depend
23. with the numerous configuration possibilities of xassp These include X resources as well as xassp s own configuration files Chapter 5 explains the methods for analysing speech signals that xassp is capable of Chapter 6 contains definitions of the most important signal processing terms that are used throughout the manual Appendix A provides an overview of all key and mouse bindings that are available in Xassp Appendix B contains a reference list of X resources that have an influence on the behaviour of xassp 39 40 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 3 Typographic conventions When referring to keys or mouse buttons the following conventions are used in this manual A single keystroke always appears as a single letter set in typewriter font e g g means hitting the key labelled G Special keys such as the Return key are written in bold face e g Return The mouse buttons are also treated as special keys LM left mouse button MM middle mouse button RM right mouse button Modifier keys keys that must be held down while pressing another key are written as lt Shift gt lt Ctrl gt lt Alt gt lt Ctrl gt RM means pressing the right mouse button while holding down the Ctrl key Chapter 2 Getting Started with xassp This chapter will help you to get to know xassp and its basic principles It describes how to perform the most common tasks while Chapter 3 provides a complete descrip tion of the features of xassp How xass
24. 2 1 Now files are selected for display in windows There are several ways to do this The first step is choosing the directory that contains the file of interest This can be done either by typing the path in the text field labelled Filter or by selecting a directory from the Directories list When typing the path remember to add a slash at the end To tell xassp to display the contents of the chosen directory you can either press Return in the Filter text field or click on the Filter button or double click on the directory in the Directories list The next step is choosing the file to be loaded You can either select the file from the Files list or type the file name in the Selection field Now you can actually load the file by clicking on the Load button If xassp re fuses to load the file you have to specify the file type by selecting one of the buttons labelled Speech Signal Fzero Energy and Labels Then try to open the file again by pressing the Load button If xassp still displays an error message the file format is not recognised or you selected the wrong file type If the file you chose for display consists of raw speech signal data or data in an unsupported format you can specify further options by clicking on the File Format 2 3 SEGMENTAL LABELLING 43 Options button These are explained in Section 3 3 3 If the Align and link button is selected when loading a file all windows are aligned and linked after the load operation
25. 8336 3 Ree em Lee ANN Ed Saks 81 3 7 1 Modifying Page Options 81 3 7 2 Selecting Windows 2 nn 82 3 7 3 Choosing a Print Configuration 82 3 7 4 Modifying Window Parameters 83 Configuring xassp 85 Al gt MARES Gir teem ie ee Gr Mele ae Rem Gri le hard Gi Ryd a 85 4 2 User Configuration Files ne Aa A BE as 87 4 2 1 The Main Configuration File 88 4 2 2 The Font Configuration File 89 4 2 3 The Label Configuration File 90 4 3 Administrative Configuration Files 2 2 2 222m nenn 90 4 3 1 The xassp Users File ida a 90 CONTENTS 5 Analyses Il Analysis a O a Ai Bove Seed re Ses 5 2 FoorPitch Analysis Coon 5 3 Formant Analysis 2 2 PEER Ew SO Ss 5 4 Spectral Analysis pecas Un o o eho eS a Definition of Signal Processing Terms Key and Mouse Bindings X Resources B 1 Resources for the Core widget 00 000 B 2 Resources for the XmPrimitive widget B 3 Resources for the XspMain widget B 4 Resources for the XspData widget B 5 Resources for the XspWave widget B 6 Resources for the XspFzero widget B 7 Resources for the XspLabels widget B 8 Resources for the XspSonag wi
26. 995 and then extended to segmental la 37 38 CONTENTS belling A student of physics at IPDS Tobias Rettstadt programmed the X Windows implementation Michel Scheffers incorporated the ASSP algorithms in this frame The final product is xassp This User s Manual of xassp provides a guide to the application of the program package for anyone that wishes to segment label and analyse speech data in any lan guage The handbook was compiled jointly by Tobias Rettstadt Michel Scheffers Claudia Rehor and myself Kiel November 1997 Klaus J Kohler Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1 What is xassp xassp refers to the IPDS Advanced Speech Signal Processing tool which operates under the X Window System xassp can be used for a wide range of purposes The most important ones are the analysis and display of speech signals including fundamental frequency Fo en ergy and spectrum sonagram section Another important aspect is the possibility of assigning segmental and prosodic labels to distinct points in time 1 2 Manual Structure This chapter Chapter 1 contains a short description of xassp and this manual Chapter 2 shows how to use xassp for the most common tasks It is intended to be a tutorial like introduction to xassp Chapter 3 provides a complete description of all features of xassp It explains the data types that xassp can handle and also shows different ways to create load display and manipulate them Chapter 4 deals
27. DOW PROPERTIES feusis yooods e SurureJuos MOPULM dssex 91314 JEQJJOJ9S ns gyeos fejuozuioy PH MOPUIM 10smJ Jul snyeJs 8 5 TEINIOA biz _zs rzrc mb a A H ZL A0 02 x0 02 EE ILGLOELZOB L El 60 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Horizontal and vertical scales The scales allow you to associate the data plotted in the data area with values In the energy window for example you can easily find the energy value at a certain point in time by locating this point on the horizontal time scale and then reading the value on the vertical scale A better way would be to move the cursor to the point in time you are interested in and then read the data value that is shown in the status line Scroll bar Since the width of the data area is limited you cannot always see all data at the same time The data area therefore only shows a part of the data The scroll bar lets you choose which part to display Pop up menus Pressing lt Alt gt RM makes a pop up menu window menu appear on the screen You can either hold the mouse button move the mouse pointer over the menu entry that you want to activate and then release the mouse button or you can release the mouse button right after pressing it and then select the menu entry with the left or the right mouse button If you press lt Ctrl gt RM in the speech signal window or the label window a special pop up menu providing edit functions
28. Labels e Sonagram e Section To display each of these data types xassp uses windows with different properties The main differences between the data windows are the dimensions represented by the horizontal and vertical axes which are shown in Table 3 2 Nevertheless xassp windows have a lot in common which will be described in this section 3 4 1 Elements of xassp Windows As you can see in Figure 3 3 xassp windows consist of the following elements Window title In the title area xassp displays the window number and the name of the file the data were loaded from If this window contains analysed data the name of the window the data were derived from is shown as well Data area In this part of the window the data are plotted Cursor The cursor is a vertical bar that is drawn into the data area and always has the same horizontal position as the mouse pointer Status line The status line provides information about the positions of the cursor and the brackets For displaying these values the same unit as for the horizontal scale is used The cursor position in the speech signal window is displayed in milliseconds because the horizontal axis is a time scale In the section window the cursor position is displayed in Hertz In addition the status line also shows the data value at the cursor position using the same unit as the vertical scale The data value in the energy window e g is displayed in dB 59 3 4 COMMON XASSP WIN
29. al stage the Fo values are re sampled at the frame rate If at least half the samples within a frame have been declared voiced have a positive Fo value the frame is assigned the mean of the positive Fo values Otherwise it obtains an Fo value of 0 The following properties of the algorithm should be kept in mind 1 In somewhat difficult voiced stretches irregularity in the initial part of a voiced stretch and voiced fricatives the algorithm has a tendency to declare the stretch unvoiced 2 Conditions for a chain to mark a voiced stretch include a minimum duration of the stretch of 30 ms Also the chain must contain at least three periods and three twins Short stretches of voicing e g in the vowel of ich may therefore go unnoticed If possible select the analysis interval such that it begins and ends in an unvoiced stretch 3 Creak may be declared voiced or unvoiced depending on its regularity and du ration 4 The algorithm is optimised for speech signals and may therefore fail on some types of signals such as slightly noisy square waves User definable parameters are minFzero maxF zero noiseAmp and frameShift minF zero the lowest Fo to be evaluated default 50 Hz Decreasing minFzero slows down processing but has generally no adverse effect on the results Increasing minF zero speeds up processing but has no effect on the results as long as it is lower than the actually lowest Fo in the signal 5 3 FORMANT ANALYSIS
30. cted data type an analysis of the speech signal is performed and the result is displayed in a separate window If the Align and Link button is selected all xassp windows are aligned on the screen see below for further explanation and all new analysis windows are linked to the speech signal window Furthermore you can limit the analysis to the region that is defined by the two brackets by selecting the Region button This is not possible if no brackets or only one bracket is set There is no analysis routine that generates a label file from a speech signal file so xassp opens an empty label file if Labels was selected in the Analysis dialog box Align xassp places the first window in the upper left corner of the screen the second directly below the first etc Then the windows are arranged in such a way that no xassp window is obscured by any other window The order in which xassp stacks the windows is the same as the order in which the windows were opened This order cannot be changed Xassp windows are automatically aligned if in opening files a configuration is used see Section 3 3 6 or if the Align and Link button in the xassp main dialog is selected when opening a file see Section 2 2 or if the Align and Link button in the Analysis dialog box is selected when doing an analysis see above Save Saves the speech signal under the file name that is displayed in the title area of the window If this file exists it is overwritten
31. d only the most important ones are listed For a complete list see the XmPrimitive manual page bottomShadowColor Specifies the colour to use to draw the bottom and right sides of the border shadow bottomShadowPixmap Specifies the pixmap to use to draw the bottom and right sides of the border shadow foreground Specifies the foreground drawing colour used by Primitive widgets highlightColor Specifies the colour of the highlighting rectangle highlightOnEnter Specifies whether the highlighting rectangle is drawn when the cursor moves into the widget The default is False highlightPixmap Specifies the pixmap used to draw the highlighting rectangle highlightThickness Specifies the thickness of the highlighting rectangle B 3 RESOURCES FOR THE XSPMAIN WIDGET 111 shadowThickness Specifies the size of the drawn border shadow topShadowColor Specifies the colour to use to draw the top and left sides of the border shadow topShadowPixmap Specifies the pixmap to use to draw the top and left sides of the border shadow B 3 Resources for the XspMain widget cursorColor Specifies the cursor colour dataColor Specifies the color that is used to draw the data dataMargin Specifies the amount of empty space that is added to the left and the right of the displayed data gridColor Specifies the grid colour gridLength Specifies the length of a single grid line gridSpace Specifies the horizontal space between grid lines
32. d by the tem porary marker lt Ctrl gt LM move label with uncertainty marker lt Alt gt LM move label and mark as deleted appended lt Alt gt MM move label and edit name lt Ctrl gt MM insert a label at the temporary marker CursorLeft move the temporary marker to the next label on the left CursorRight move the temporary marker to the next label on the right h insert aspiration or creak label after a plosive or glottal stop respectively 2 insert a lengthening label lt Ctrl gt s opens the Go to dialog box same as selecting the menu item Go to lt Ctrl gt jumps to the next occurrence of the label that was last searched for lt Ctrl gt b jumps to the previous occurrence of the label that was last searched for lt Ctrl gt 1 jumps to the last label that was set Table A 5 Key and Mouse Bindings in the Label Window Appendix B X Resources B 1 Resources for the Core widget The Core widget is defined by the Intrinsics toolkit Because many of its resources are seldom needed by the user only the most frequently used ones will be listed For a complete list see the Core manual page which is normally included in common Motif distributions background Specifies the background colour for the widget Core XmPrimitive lt nz widget class BEE is superclass of XspVscale XspMain XspH
33. d value pairs The most interesting ones are head which gives the header length in bytes sft ot which gives the sampling frequency in samples per second and msb which gives the byte order CSL File Format The CSL format is used by the Computerised Speech Lab a combination of hard and software for sampling and analysing speech data It is a pure binary format WAV File Format The WAV file format is widely used and has therefore been included in xassp It can be read by almost any application that plays or manipulates sounds 78 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP 3 6 2 Fundamental Frequency xassp knows only one file format for the fundamental frequency It is an ASCII format Each line consists of the time and the associated Fp value separated by whitespaces spaces TABs etc A part of a typical Fo file looks like this 0 840000 214 395721 0 850000 223 070328 0 860000 226 532837 0 870000 229 000473 0 880000 221 581589 0 890000 209 492630 0 900000 190 813736 0 910000 168 316666 0 920000 151 206406 0 930000 139 145554 0 940000 130 742325 0 950000 124 183624 0 960000 118 041351 0 970000 116 924339 0 980000 115 094978 xassp fundamental frequency files can optionally contain a header line which must be the very first line of the file It contains a file type identifier XASSP F ZERO and the sampling frequency 3 6 3 Energy The file format for energy data is exactly the same as for
34. dget B 9 Resources for the XspSection widget 2 22 2222 B 10 Resources for the XspEnerg widget B 11 Resources for the XspHscale widget 2 22 2222 B 12 Resources for the XspVscale widget 2 2 22 o 35 93 93 94 95 96 97 Foreword As early as 1979 after acquiring its first computing system for phonetic research a Data General Eclipse S 230 the Institute of Phonetics at Kiel University started de veloping its own custom built speech analysis and synthesis software The initial result was the program package SSP Speech Signal Processor by Kurt Sch fer Vincent see Barry et al 1982 which allowed electronic splicing of signals analyis of acous tic parameters especially with a very powerful pitch algorithm see Sch fer Vincent 1982 1983 parameter manipulation and LPC synthesis With the replacement of the Eclipse computer by a net of phonetic work stations this package was transferred to an OS9 68k environment expanded and made more flexible by Michel Scheffers The outcome was ASSP Advanced Speech Signal Processor see Scheffers and Thon 1991 Eventually Michel Scheffers transported ASSP to a Unix framework Apollo computers and PCs running on Linux In 1990 the Department of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics of KTH Stockholm gave IPDS their MIX program software which was intended to be used for labelling speech files on Apollo compu
35. e 3 6 It shows which file was selected as the xassp log file the default file is xassp login the directory xassp was started in Pressing the Close button closes the status window and disables data logging If you select the File button you can change the xassp log 64 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP po piai datalogger logging in file xassp log Close File Figure 3 6 The Data Logger Status Window file by picking a new file in the file selection box that is displayed Once data logging is enabled you can position the cursor at the point in time of interest and press w to write the data to the log file The cursor will now briefly change its shape to a pencil to confirm that data have been logged If this does not happen check which window has the focus because this determines the search for data to log Also some windows such as the label and formant lists do not receive the keyboard command to log data Choosing Data for Logging The data items that are to be logged can be chosen by opening the corresponding windows E g if you want F values to be written to the log file you have to load an Fo file with the same base name as the speech signal file or do an Fo analysis of the speech signal file xassp always logs data items from those windows that belong to the same speech signal i e if a speech signal window has the focus and you press w the values from all associated windows are written to th
36. e Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech Volume 3 CD ROM 4 Kiel Institut f r Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung Kohler K J M P tzold and A P Simpson 1995 From scenario to segment the controlled elicitation transcription segmentation and labelling of spontaneous speech AIPUK 29 Ladefoged P 1996 Elements of Acoustic Phonetics Chicago The University of Chicago Press Makhoul J 1975 Linear prediction A tutorial review In Proceedings of the IEEE Volume 63 pp 561 580 IEEE Markel J D and A H Gray 1976 Linear Prediction of Speech Berlin Hamburg New York Springer Rosen S and P Howell 1991 Signals and systems for speech and hearing Lon don San Diego Academic Press 103 104 REFERENCES Sch fer Vincent K 1982 Significant points Pitch period detection as a problem of segmentation Phonetica 39 241 253 Sch fer Vincent K 1983 Pitch period detection and chaining Method and evalu ation Phonetica 40 177 202 Scheffers M and W Thon 1991 Workstation and signal processing software for experimental phonetics In Proceedings of the XIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences Volume 2 Aix en Provence France pp 486 489 Universit de Provence Wells J C W J Barry and A J Fourcin 1989 Transcription labelling and reference In A J Fourcin G Harland W J Barry and V Hazan Eds Speech Technology Assessment Towards Standards and Methods
37. e log file If a non speech signal window has the focus and w is pressed xassp checks whether it contains analysed data If so it searches the speech signal window that this window refers to and logs the values from all windows associated with this speech signal Otherwise it uses the basename of the file to determine which other windows contain associated data Log File Format xassp log files consist of lines that contain TAB separated items The first line of a log file contains the items XASSP and DATALOG Each time you press w a line is appended to the log file The items in each line are paired the first item of a pair is a keyword the second is the associated value The keywords that are used in xassp log files are listed in Table 3 3 An xassp log file could e g look like this XASSP DATALOG TIME 0 82625 LABEL J FO 0 FILE g071a000 r16 TIME 0 9475 ABEL S A FO 131 FILE g071a000 r16 TIME 1 09375 LABEL ST N FO 136 FILE g071a000 r16 TIME 1 31625 LABEL D FO 0 FILE g071a000 r16 TIME 1 4575 ABEL SN FO 127 FILE g071a000 r16 3 5 SPECIFIC XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 65 Keyword Description TIME The point in time the logged data items are associated with LABEL The label that is associated with the segment containing the chosen point in time FO An Fo value in Hz RMS An energy value in dB En The frequency of the nth formant in Hz Bn The bandwidth of the
38. e you made changes to them Press Save to save the data and exit press Do not save to exit xassp without saving any changes Pressing Cancel neither saves the data nor exits xassp To save the data without exiting xassp press lt Alt gt RM and select Save from the pop up menu that appears If an error during the writing of the data an error message is displayed on the screen You can save the labels under a different file name by pressing lt Alt gt RM and selecting Save As from the pop up menu You can then type the new file name in the Selection text field or select a file from the Files list Pressing the OK button saves the data to the specified file If the file you selected already exists you are prompted whether the file should be overwritten If the data were successfully written a short message appears 2 4 Prosodic Labelling The first step for prosodic labelling is to load a set of files including a speech signal file and a label file In most cases you will also need the fundamental frequency of the speech signal If you select the configuration Prosodic as described in Section 2 2 the speech signal and label files are loaded a fundamental frequency analysis of the speech signal is done and the corresponding windows are opened as shown in Figure 2 5 As with segmental labelling xassp has been especially tailored to facilitate the type of prosodic annotation carried out at ipds Among other things this assumes a prior segmental an
39. ed e g 512 for a 96 CHAPTER 5 ANALYSES sampling rate of 16 kHz In general but specially if you are interested in formant amplitudes you should set Pre emphasis to 0 and choose an odd LPC order to have one coefficient free for modelling the overall spectral tilt see Chapter 6 5 4 Spectral Analysis Underlying both Sonagram and Section are two spectral analyses viz calculation of the Fourier spectrum of the signal via the Discrete Fourier Transform DFT and calculation of the spectral envelope of the signal via an LPC analysis In both cases the signal is first pre emphasised and multiplied by the window function specified For the DFT spectrum the size of the window follows from the specified bandwidth with a correction for the window function used For the LPC spectrum it follows from the specification of the effective length of the window and the window function see Chapter 6 The DFT spectrum is then calculated in a straight forward way using an FFT For the LPC spectrum the LPC coefficients are calculated from the windowed signal From them the inverse LPC filter is constructed and an FFT is applied to obtain the spectrum of the transfer function of this filter In both cases the FFT coefficients are converted to spectral power levels The parameters gain and range determine how the power levels will be mapped on your screen range defining the difference between the lowest and the highest level to be displayed gain determi
40. ed directly from a speech wave in the Analysis dialog box in the speech signal window select Analysis in the pop up menu of the speech signal window In each case a separate window appears for the fundamental frequency 74 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Window Menu There are several special menu items for this window Draw mode You can choose between three draw modes of the Fp values circles squares and lines Logscale By selecting this menu item you can toggle between a logarithmic and a linear scale Set range In the Set Range dialog box that opens when selecting this entry you can specify the minimum and maximum F value that should be displayed If the Compute button is pressed the minimum and maximum values are taken from the data Note that this only affects the display not the analysis Re analyse Opens the Fzero Analysis Options dialog box see below This item is only present when the Fa data were analysed on line rather than loaded from a file Save Saves the Fp data in the file that is shown in the title of the window Save as Opens a file selection box to save the Fo data in a different file If the file you selected exists you are prompted whether to overwrite it Analysis Options In the Fzero Analysis Options dialog box which you get by selecting the Re analyse menu entry in the pop up menu of the fundamental frequency window you can specify the following options All Region If both brackets have been set
41. eff length ms Specifies the effective length of the LPC analysis window LPC order Specifies the order of the LPC analysis Pre emphasis Specifies the pre emphasis applied to the speech signal before spectral analysis Gain dB Specifies the gain applied in mapping the spectral levels to grey levels Range dB Specifies the difference between the highest and lowest spectral level to be displayed no of FFT points Specifies the length of the FFT used in calculating the spectra it also sets the vertical resolution to sampling frequency number of points Hz per pixel Shift ms Specifies the frame shift for the analysis it also sets the horizontal reso lution to shift ms per pixel Please refer to Section 5 4 and to Chapter 6 for further information on spectral analysis 3 5 SPECIFIC XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 69 Figure 3 8 The Section Pop up Menu and Section Options formants for Figure 3 9 The Formants List 3 5 3 The Section Window The section window shows the spectrum of the speech signal at the current cursor position The section window can be opened by selecting Section in the Analysis menu of the speech signal window or by the short cut lt Shift gt s see also Table A 3 for key bindings in the speech signal window 70 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Window Menu The pop up menu see Figure 3 8 contains the following entries Follow Freeze Selecting this menu item toggles the updating of the
42. figuration file in the global configuration directory has not yet been implemented The files in the user s home directory override any global defaults 88 CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURING XASSP Option Description autogain If set to yes gain the speech signal to maximum amplitude hscale If set to yes display horizontal scale scrollbar If set to yes display scroll bar smallscale If set to yes display small scale statusline If set to yes display status line vscale If set to yes display vertical scale Table 4 2 xassp options 4 2 1 The Main Configuration File The main configuration file is named config Here you can specify the configuration buttons that appear in xassp main dialog and which windows should be opened if one of them is selected Furthermore you can change global and configuration specific defaults The file starts with a section in which you can specify values for global options If you change options at this point every window that you open in xassp is affected An option consists of the option name and the value you want the option to take At the moment you can specify yes or no Refer to Table 4 2 for a list of valid options If you do not want the status line to be displayed you have to insert the following line at the beginning of the configuration file statusline no After the global options section you can define an arbitrary number of configura tions i e groups of window types that
43. for the EUROPEAN COM MUNITY pp 141 159 Chichester Ellis Horwood Appendix A Key and Mouse Bindings Key Action lt Shift gt LM set temporary marker F3 move temporary marker to next zero crossing on the left F4 move temporary marker to next positive zero crossing on the right F5 set left bracket on zero crossing F6 set right bracket on zero crossing lt Ctrl gt F5 set left bracket onto cursor position lt Ctrl gt F6 set right bracket onto cursor position lt Shift gt F5 clear left bracket lt Shift gt F6 clear right bracket Return clear brackets Del clear brackets Esc close window Space play signal from start to end or stop playing Backspace clear temporary marker w log data to file only when data logging is enabled lt Ctrl gt w log data to file and add a comment line The brackets are set onto the next zero crossing to the left of the cursor only if the resource setOnZeroCrossing see Section B 4 is set to True If the resource is False the brackets are set onto the cursor position PThis key sets the bracket onto setOnZeroCrossing resource Return does not work on all machines the cursor position and does not care about the Table A 1 Commonly Used Key Bindings in xassp 105 106 Mouse button APPENDIX A KEY AND MOUSE BINDINGS Action LM MM RM lt Alt gt RM lt Ctrl gt RM play from temporary marker left bracket beginning of window to cursor
44. fundamental frequency except for the header in which the file type identifier XASSP ENERGY is used instead of XASSP FZERO 3 6 4 Labels Xassp recognises two label file formats MIX used internally at ipds and SAM the label file format found on CD ROMs 1 4 IPDS 1994 1995 1996 1997 A MIX file starts with a header which contains the orthographic and the canonical form The lines following the header consist of the identifier FR the sample number the label the time in centiseconds and the time in seconds 3 6 FILE HANDLING 79 TEXT TISO10 das wIrde mir ganz gut passen also lt P gt Dienstag drei igster Mittwoch erster lt hm gt ja w rd ich sagen das k nnen wir ja dann so machen dann werd ich da meine anderen Termine absa lt T gt PHONET DA St VYrDEO0 MI r G ANTS GU T P A S EON a QALZO p D NST ASK e DRE ELS I CHS TE y MITY X Ou VR ae SEHE A ARE Or OMS DA Ae 7 Moon Di BO Q I CH ZA G EON D A S K NEO N V I r JA DAN Z O M AXEON D A N VE E DES Q I GHL DA MEIN E0 O ANDrREON TErM I NEO O 7AP Z A CT 1 FR 1010 c 7 0 06306 sec FR 1010 s 7 0 06306 sec FR 1198 h 8 0 07481 sec FR 3549 amp 0 23 0 22175 sec FR 3549 D 23 0 22175 sec FR 5091 d 32 0 31812 sec FR 5488 SA 35 0 34294 sec 0 38306 sec FR 6130 S 39 The time in centiseconds and the time in seconds are optional xassp accepts e g t
45. g xassp Sa ser Levels o s id eee 85 bb ba BESS Oe Ske a a a 3 2 xassp Command Line Options 00 3 2 4 AMP A A A PO ls a da 34 CONTENTS 3 3 The xassp Main Dialog N ar Sate A ew eS 55 3 3 1 The Elle Selection BOR 2 20 wale ar ara AE 55 zo FileType BUON AS e E 56 3 3 3 Options for loading speech signal data in other formats 56 3 3 4 Align and Link 22 A oe Soo Stee Bot PE soap is 37 33X Data Lose o i TA ia AD KI o ee Bes 57 3 3 6 Configuration Buttons saoao 57 3 3 7 Additional Buttons 57 3 4 Common xassp Window properties 57 3 4 1 Elements of xassp Windows Lee 58 3 4 2 Keyboard and Mouse cocidos ses a ru 61 3 4 3 Pop up Menus gt Bea 61 3 4 4 Window Linking a 63 3 4 5 Data Logging o 2 242 248 a 63 3 5 Specific xassp Window Properties ooo 65 3 5 1 The Speech Signal Window 65 3 5 2 The Sonagram Window AAA 67 3 5 3 The Section Window dc are a 69 3 5 4 The Label Window sod 494 Sod a at a Ra 71 3 5 5 The Fundamental Frequency Window 73 3 5 6 The Energy Window ass ae at 75 3 6 File Handling e sos eer a RR E 76 3 6 1 Speech Signal Files a Gs ar So a Da Ae we Rie aes 77 3 6 2 Fundamental Frequency 4 2 78 3 03 Energy Das aed EY AES SLE eS fila 78 3 04 iLabelsu Sr ee eee 78 3 7 Prntre 3
46. hasis is applied prior to the analysis this coefficient can model the overall spectral tilt If the LPC order is chosen too low only the strongest resonances will be mod elled and may undergo a frequency shift If the order is chosen too high strong harmonics will be treated as resonances Pre emphasis Pre emphasis is used to change the overall spectral tilt of the speech signal It implies a first order filter with the transfer function H z 1 uz with l lt u lt l IN A positive value of u amplifies the lower frequencies while a negative value amplifies the higher frequencies Typically u is chosen near 1 e g 0 95 to compensate the 6 dB oct slope of the spectrum of voiced speech Such a compensation is necessary in a sonagram in order to show the higher formants Although a positive value should be used for unvoiced speech which usually has a positive spectral tilt the fixed negative value compensates for the lower amplitudes of such stretches Note that some signal processing packages use a definition with a different sign for u Range The range parameter sets the difference between the highest and the lowest spectral level to be displayed in a sonagram or a section For a sonagram the default value is 50 dB Choosing a smaller value may result in components of interest becoming invisible Choosing a higher value will make the picture less distinct due to the limited resolving power of grey levels Moreover too high a
47. he following file TEXT GEP002 lt gt dann treffen wir uns um neun Uhr lt Rascheln gt lt Ger usch gt lt A gt und lt Z gt machen lt Z gt lt h gt bis maximal zwilf lt Ger usch gt PHONET ik DAN T RTE E EON VI r QUN St OU M ON CO SU er ik pte ag obs OU NTE zs MTA X EON zZ v O BIS MAK SIM A L TS Wer Te BY gs CT 1 FR 1600000 k 80 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP 1600000 c 1600000 D 1600000 SA 1600000 SN 1600000 1600000 1600000 S E 1600000 1600000 1600000 N 1600000 V 1600000 SI r 1600000 110 1600000 U 4 J D 9 W W 0 W W WQ 0 0 0 0 0 This file is a so called prototype file It contains labels that have not yet been associated with specific points in time These labels are then placed at the segment boundaries of the corresponding speech signal in the process of segmental labelling The SAM label file has a marginally different structure from that of MIX and the labels are in modified SAMPA Wells et al 1989 As with the MIX format the SAM format contains an orthographic representation of the signal a canonical transcrip tion and individual lines containing time stamps and labels In addition following the canonical transcription there is a variant transcription which represents a concatena tion of the labels Lines containing the words oend kend and hend serve to delimit the various chunks The following is taken from the beginning of a SAM format labe
48. he number of grey levels to be used preEmphasis Specifies the pre emphasis range Specifies the range in dB shift Specifies the shift of the analysis window wfunction Specifies the analysis window function B 9 Resources for the XspSection widget average Specifies whether to compute an average spectrum avrLength Specifies the length of the signal part the average spectrum should be computed from bandwidth Specifies the bandwidth of the DFT spectrum gain Specifies the gain in dB listFormants Specifies whether formants should be analyzed and displayed 114 APPENDIX B X RESOURCES IpcLength Specifies the effective length of the LPC analysis window IpcMode Specifies whether to compute an LPC True or DFT False spectrum IpcOrder Specifies the order of the LPC analysis numFFT Specifies the number of FFT points numFormants Specifies the number of formants to analyze preEmphasis Specifies the pre emphasis range Specifies the range in dB sectionColors This is a comma separated list of colours that are used if more than one section is displayed wfunction Specifies the analysis window function B 10 Resources for the XspEnerg widget drawMode Specifies how to draw the data values This can be lines circles or rectangles frameShift Specifies the frame shift frameSize Specifies the frame size wfunction Specifies the window function B 11 Resources for the XspHscale widget labelFact
49. ilter and Selection text fields Directories and Files lists These items will be described in the following sections file type buttons Speech signal Fzero Energy and Labels the File Format Options button and several configuration buttons for example Prosodic and Segmental a row of buttons Load Filter Exit and Help 3 3 1 The File Selection Box The file selection box lets you choose the directory and the actual file that you want to load 56 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP e Format Options Headersize E Bits per sample wv 1 Sampling rate 18000 000000 Mono vr Starx NSB first Motorola MSB last Intel Ok Cancel Figure 3 2 File Format Options To select the directory you use the Filter text field the Directories list and the Filter button You can either edit the directory that is given in the Filter text field and press Return or select the directory in the Directories list and then press the Filter button Instead of pressing the Filter button it is also possible to double click on the directory in the Directories list Now that you are in the right directory you can simply select the appropriate file from the Files list If you know the complete path to the file that you are interested in you can skip the whole procedure described above and just enter the path including the file name in the Selection text field Once you have selected a file you can press the Load button to load the fi
50. ime scale 3 4 COMMON XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 61 Zoom in Zoom out Show all Show region Go to Link Unlink Redraw Align Analysis Edit Cut Save Save as Close Close all Copy Paste Figure 3 4 xassp Window Menu left and Edit Menu right for the Speech Signal Window 3 4 2 Keyboard and Mouse xassp windows are controlled by a combination of mouse and keyboard When using the keyboard it is important that the window you want to control has the input focus This is normally achieved by clicking into the title area of the window or in some configurations by simply placing the mouse pointer inside the window The window that has the input focus usually has a differently coloured border and title area than the other windows There are some keys that are used in almost all windows for the same purpose These are listed in Table A 1 Since the section window has no horizontal time scale only the binding for the Esc key applies here The mouse buttons are mainly used to play parts of the speech signal Refer to Table A 2 for a list of commonly used mouse bindings Again the commands for playing the speech signal are not available in the section window Appendix A provides a complete reference to the key and mouse bindings used in xassp 3 4 3 Pop up Menus As explained in Section 3 4 1 each xassp window has a pop up menu which is called up by pressing lt Alt gt RM see e g the pop up menu of the speech signa
51. in the Analysis dialog box called up via the pop up menu of the speech signal window see Section 3 5 1 The menu item Align and Link has to be chosen to display the energy window linked with the speech signal window on the screen see Figure 3 12 Window Menu The following special menu items exist in this window see Figure 3 11 Draw mode You can choose between three draw modes of the energy values circles squares and lines Re analyse Opens the Energy Analysis Options dialog box see below This item is only present when the energy data were analysed on line rather than loaded from a file Save Saves the energy data in the file that is shown in the title of the window 76 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Suffix File type r16 116 shh wav raw syn speech signal 10 fzero file mix label file rms energy file Table 3 4 File suffixes Save as Allows you to select a file in which to save the energy data If the file you selected exists you are prompted whether to overwrite it Analysis Options In the Energy Analysis Options dialog box you can change the following options All Region If both brackets have been set you can choose whether to re analyse the whole signal or only the part in the marked region Window function Specifies the window function to be used during analysis Frame size ms Specifies the frame size for analysis Frame shift ms Specifies the analysis frame shift Please
52. ing on the ap plication Unless specified differently xassp uses the equal bandwidth criterion That is the effective length of a window is the length of a rectangular window whose transfer function has the same bandwidth The reduction factor varies between about 1 3 for a triangular window and 2 for the most compact Black man and Gaussian windows see Harris 1978 for more details The bandwidth definition used in this case is the Equivalent Noise Bandwidth Equivalent Noise Bandwidth ENB The Equivalent Noise Bandwidth also called Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth or ERB of a window function equals the integral over frequency of the power spectrum of the window function divided by the maximum level of the power spectrum The term Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth refers to the fact that this bandwidth is the same as the width of an ideal rectangular filter with the same peak power gain and the same integral 99 over frequency of its power spectrum see Figure 6 1 The term Equivalent Noise Bandwidth refers to the fact that if the window function were treated as a filter it would output the same noise power as the ideal rectangular filter when both are excited by the same white noise see Harris 1978 for more details Fast Fourier Transform FFT The FFT is a computer algorithm for calculating a DFT It exploits symmetry properties in the calculation of the Fourier coeffi cients that occur when the number of coefficients ge
53. ions Down Horizontal Scale Options Vertical Scale Options ance Figure 3 13 Select Windows dialog box In the Margins frame you can specify the values for the left right top and bottom margins The values must be given in centimetres All position values in the option dialog boxes are relative to the margins 3 7 2 Selecting Windows If you press the Print button in the Print dialog box without having selected any win dows for printing xassp automatically selects all open windows To choose the win dows that are to be printed yourself you have to open the Select Windows dialog box and add the desired windows to the Selected Windows list To do this you select one or more windows from the Available Windows list and click the Add button which is located near the right edge of the dialog box The selected windows are then moved from the Available Windows list to the Selected Windows list You can remove win dows from the list by selecting them in the Selected Windows list and clicking the Remove button You can change the order of the selected windows by selecting one window in the Selected Windows list and clicking the Up or the Down button to move the selected window up or down in the list The window order in the Selected Windows list is important if you let xassp compute the window positions i e if you have selected a configuration 3 7 3 Choosing a Print Configuration P
54. is complete For more information on links see Section 3 4 4 Selecting this button only makes sense if you have already opened one or more xassp windows Instead of opening the files one after another you can use configurations To do this you select one of the files for loading select one of the configuration buttons they are located directly above the Selection field see Figure 2 1 and press the Load button The configuration Prosodic e g would open a speech signal window a fundamental frequency window and a label window The Segmental configuration opens a speech signal window a sonagram window and a label window In both cases a speech signal file with the suffix 116 r16 shh wav syn or raw and a label file with the suffix mix must be present The fundamental frequency and the sonagram are computed from the speech signal 2 3 Segmental Labelling Segmental labelling in xassp has been especially tailored to meet the needs of the signal annotation carried out at ipds Kohler P tzold and Simpson 1995 Before you can begin with segmental labelling you must load a set of files including the speech signal file and the label file It is also helpful to use a sonagram that is computed from the speech signal You can load the files do the analysis align and link the window by selecting the configuration Segmental as it is described in Section 2 2 If you use this configuration the windows that appear on the screen should look similar to
55. itional whitespaces blanks line breaks etc are not allowed In the edit dialog box in the label window each line in the configuration file is shown as a row of buttons that the user can select This has the same effect as typing the label and pressing the OK button see Section 3 5 4 To make xassp create the buttons that are shown in Figure 2 4 your label configu ration file must contain the following amp pgn lt TAB gt amp pg lt TAB gt amp pg amp hp lt TAB gt amp rp lt TAB gt amp rm amp 0 lt TAB gt 6 amp 1 lt TAB gt amp 2 lt TAB gt amp 3 S amp 0 lt TAB gt amp 1 lt TAB gt S amp 2 lt TAB gt S amp 3 amp 0 lt TAB gt amp 1 lt TAB gt amp 2 amp lt TAB gt amp lt TAB gt S amp 0 lt TAB gt amp 1l lt TAB gt amp 2 amp 0 lt TAB gt amp 1 lt TAB gt amp 2 ma lt TAB gt lt TAB gt z s lt TAB gt g lt TAB gt h k 4 3 Administrative Configuration Files 4 3 1 The xassp Users File The default path to this file is etc xassp_users Itcontains a list of users that are allowed to use xassp For each user it defines the default user level and the maximum user level Each line in this file has the following structure lt user gt lt default user level gt lt maximum user level gt If e g the user az has the following entry az 10 10 he or she receives a default user level of 10 which cannot be increased by any command line parameters
56. l file g083a007 sih KAK007 lt A gt das k onnen wir dann gleich dort machen ja das ist ja praktisch lt P gt und vielleicht den Freitag vorher gleich lt Z gt lt P gt die Besprechung daf ur machen oend dast k9n n vi 6 dant gi 781 6 d 06t m l ax n Ja dast QTs tt Jas poe ta kE Ds So a Pr 0 4 sf LI Lac de nt f r alta k T 0 6 th e 6 g 1 7 1 2 pe do ist lt C per TE WON dia Dry mtax an kend c h d h a st k h 9 n m n v 1i 6 6 d a n N gil aI C d h 06t m lax n c J a A ha 31 Q Ist Jja t piro Pack Ah eho Se Aes pers Q U n t 3 7 PRINTING 81 E gt L at t ShA de eh 268 tit ak ae ad ano f o 6 th e 6 g h1 alCz p d hi r baeSpr ECUN d haf y 6 m a x n N hend 1 c 1 h 11985 1110 12640 h 12823 Sa 13412 s 15054 k 15715 h 3 7 Printing xassp provides the possibility to generate PostScript output from the data displayed on the screen You can either configure the parameters for each window position size font etc yourself or you can use configurations that define parameters and specify the layout for printing Choosing the window menu entry Print which is present in all window menus opens the Print dialog Here you can choose whether to send the PostScript output directly to the printer or to save it in a file Further you can specify a print command and an output file in separate text
57. l window in Figure 3 4 The pop up menus of the different windows have a lot of items in common which will be described first The special menu items of each window are listed in the sections that deal with the different window types Zoom in By activating this menu item you increase the horizontal time resolution that the data are displayed with This implies that the part of the data that is dis played becomes smaller This action is called zooming in because it resembles the zooming performed by a camera 62 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP IB Link window Choose window to link 2 g075a004 lt 1 g075a004 r16 3 g075a004 mix F Link cursor F Link zoom l j Go to F Link brackets F Link play Time ms F Link scrolling Label li F Link temp mark Go Cancel DK apply Cancel Help Figure 3 5 Go to Dialog Box and Link Selection Menu Zoom out Same as Zoom in except that the resolution is decreased and therefore the part of the data that is displayed becomes larger Show all The resolution is adjusted so that all data are displayed at the same time Show region The region that is defined by the two brackets becomes the part of the data that is displayed Go to Jumps to a certain point in time or to a label see Figure 3 5 Link Links different features of the windows displayed on the screen see Section 3 4 4 Unlink Unlinks the current window from the other wi
58. ld xassp allows the definition of configurations that consist of a set of data types and associated suffixes that describe the files to be loaded These configurations must be defined in the xassp configuration file see Section 4 2 1 If you want to open files using a pre defined configuration you just start with selecting a single file as described in Section 2 2 xassp then determines the files to be opened by substituting the suffix of the selected file by those that are given in the configuration It is also possible to specify analyses in the configuration These are then per formed instead of loading a file All files that are opened in this way are aligned and linked see Section 3 4 4 for more information on window linking 3 3 7 Additional Buttons There are two buttons that have not been mentioned yet The Exit button exits xassp If any open xassp window contains data that have been modified you are prompted whether to save them first before exiting The About button gives information about xassp 3 4 Common xassp Window properties xassp is able to handle the following different data types e Speech signal e Fundamental frequency e Energy 58 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Data type Horizontal axis Vertical axis Wave Time Sample values Fzero Time Frequency Energy Time Signal strength Labels Time n a Sonagram Time Frequency Section Frequency Spectrum level Table 3 2 xassp Data Types e
59. le and display its contents in a separate window 3 3 2 File Type Buttons If xassp does not recognise the suffix of the file you selected you have to specify the file type by selecting one of the buttons labelled Speech signal Fzero Energy and Labels before pressing the Load button xassp then uses the type information you have provided when loading the file 3 3 3 Options for loading speech signal data in other formats By pressing the File Format Options button in the xassp main dialog the dialog box that is displayed in Figure 3 2 appears Here you can specify the header size bytes to skip the bits per sample 8 or 16 the sampling rate whether the file is mono or stereo and the byte order These options are used if you load a file that contains raw speech signal data or another format not supported by xassp 3 4 COMMON XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 57 3 3 4 Align and Link Below the file type buttons you find the Align and Link button If this button is set all xassp data windows are aligned and linked after loading some files See Section 3 4 4 for information on window links 3 3 5 Data Logging By clicking the Data logging button which is located next to the Align and link button you can toggle data logging This feature is explained in Section 3 4 5 3 3 6 Configuration Buttons To make it easier for you to open several files at once xassp provides configuration buttons which you find directly above the Selection fie
60. leftBracketColor Specifies the the colour of the left bracket maximum Specifies the maximum data value for display minimum Specifies the minimum data value for display pixPerSpl Specifies the resolution used to display the data in pixels per millisecond rightBracketColor Specifies the colour of the right bracket showCursor Specifies whether a cursor should be drawn showGrid Specifies whether to draw a horizontal grid spIPerSec Specifies the sampling frequency in samples per second tempMarkColor Specifies the colour of the temporary marker tempMarkLineStyle Specifies the line style of the temporary marker This can be solid onoffdash or doubledash 112 APPENDIX B X RESOURCES B 4 Resources for the XspData widget labelLinesColor Specifies the colour of the label lines scrollbarIncrement Specifies the fraction of the window width that the data should be scrolled if the scroll bar arrows are used scrollbarPageIncrement Specifies the fraction of the window width that the data should be scrolled if the user clicks inside the scroll bar setOnZeroCrossing Specifies whether the brackets should automatically be set on the next zero crossing to the left of the cursor showLabelLines Specifies whether label lines from a linked label window should be displayed valueUnit Specifies the value to be used in the status line value label B 5 Resources for the Xsp Wave widget The XspWave widget class defines no new resou
61. lication that runs under the X Window System you can make use of the numerous possibilities of modifying X resources defined by xassp With these you can control the appearance of xassp as well as parameters for the analyses xassp is capable of You can also easily change key and mouse bindings Because of the complexity of xassp X resources alone are not sufficient to control every aspect of xassp Therefore xassp supports three more configuration files to let the user define the buttons that are to appear in the xassp main dialog and the windows to be opened if one of the buttons is selected Furthermore you can specify default fonts to choose from and frequent labels that are presented in the Edit dialog box in the label window 4 1 X Resources To be able to modify X resources 1t is important that you understand how the xassp widgets are structured and which resources they define In Figure 4 1 you can see what elements widgets a typical xassp window containing a speech signal consists of Additionally an xassp window is shown in Figure 4 2 with the designations used in Figure 4 1 As you can see every widget in an xassp window has a name and a class If you Window Type Prefix Speech Signal wave Fzero fzero Labels labels Sonagram sonag Section section Energy energ Table 4 1 Widget Name Prefixes 85 86 CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURING XASSP widget class
62. mporary marker must first be set onto this point Then you press lt Ctrl gt MM to insert the label at the temporary marker If there already are labels at the point in time at which you want to insert a new one you use the edit menu items Insert before and Insert after Moving a Label For moving a label to a different point in time the temporary marker must first be set onto this point Then place the cursor between the temporary marker and the label to be moved If the label to be moved has not been set yet you have to place the cursor after the last label of the file To actually move the label press lt Shift gt MM To edit the label before moving press lt Shift gt RM You can automatically move the label and mark it as deleted append a minus with lt Alt gt LM or mark it as deleted and edit it before moving with lt Alt gt MM An uncertainty marker can be added before moving the label with lt Ctrl gt LM 3 5 SPECIFIC XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 73 Keys The key h can be used to insert an aspiration label at the temporary marker if it is placed directly after a plosive or a creak label if it is placed after a glottal stop If the temporary marker is placed elsewhere nothing is inserted when typing h Typing z inserts a lengthening label z at the temporary marker Pressing lt Ctrl gt s makes the Go to dialog box appear on the screen lt Ctrl gt f jumps to the next occurrence of the label that was last searched for
63. nagrams and sections the resulting increase in the analysis bandwidth is compensated for For more details on window functions and their figures of merit see Harris 1978 In xassp a large number of window functions are available These include the classical triangular Bartlett hanning or Hann and Hamming windows and two groups viz the Blackman and Gaussian windows For most analyses the Hamming window with a highest sidelobe level of 43 dB is a good choice For the Sonagram the minimum 3 term Blackman Harris window has been chosen because of its even lower sidelobe level of 67 dB References Barry W J W v Dommelen H JanBen K J Kohler K Sch fer W Thon and G Timmermann 1982 Phonetic Data Processing at Kiel University AIPUK 18 Carlson R and B Granstr m 1986 A search for durational rules in a real speech data base Phonetica 43 140 154 Harris F J 1978 On the use of windows for harmonic analysis with the discrete fourier transform In Proceedings of the IEEE Volume 66 pp 51 83 IEEE IPDS 1994 The Kiel Corpus of Read Speech Volume 1 CD ROM 1 Kiel Institut f r Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung IPDS 1995 The Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech Volume 1 CD ROM 2 Kiel Institut f r Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung IPDS 1996 The Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech Volume 2 CD ROM 3 Kiel Institut f r Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung IPDS 1997 Th
64. ndows displayed on the screen Redraw Redraws the window contents in case parts of the data were accidentally not drawn Print Displays the Print dialog Please refer to Section 3 7 for more information on printing Close Closes the current window If you made changes to the data you are prompted whether you would like to save them Close all Closes all windows Since zooming depends on the horizontal time scale these actions are not available in the section window 3 4 COMMON XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 63 3 4 4 Window Linking It was mentioned in Section 3 3 6 that it is possible to link windows This is useful for a better overview of the different data files associated with a particular signal file for instance when segmenting the speech signal There are several ways of linking windows The first is shown in Section 3 3 6 in the file selection box different data types e g speech signal and fzero are selected Then the button Align and link is pressed The two windows will be displayed on the screen aligned and linked By default all window features cited below are linked Another way of getting aligned and linked windows is to use one of the configura tion buttons directly above the Selection field see Figure 2 1 For example Segmen tal activates a speech wave a sonagram and a label file in separate windows on the screen these windows are linked and aligned automatically Finally the menu item Link see Figure 3 5
65. nerally called the number of points is a power of 2 to drastically reduce computation effort This re duction is such that even on modern computers and despite the rather strong restrictions on the number of points the FFT is nearly always used to calculate a DFT Frame Since the speech signal is by nature non stationary most analyses are short term This means that they process only a short signal stretch at a time During this stretch or frame as it is usually called the signal is assumed to be quasi stationary Processing parameters involved are the frame size the frame shift and for most analyses a window function and an effective window length Frame Shift In a frame based analysis the analysis window is shifted along the sig nal in discrete fixed steps In other words the global signal features are anal ysed at a constant rate the frame rate In order not to leave parts of the signal unanalysed a certain overlap should exist between adjacent frames In general an overlap of 50 or more is recommended hence the default value of 10 ms for a frame size of 20 to 25 ms Smaller values larger overlap will result in smoother contours at the cost of higher data rates Larger values may result in data loss especially for very compact windows like the higher order Blackman and Gaussian As resource and in menus frame shift is entered in milliseconds as the most convenient unit Internally however it is set to the nearest i
66. ning the highest level relative to an internal reference If both a sonagram and a section are displayed for a speech signal setting the analysis parameters for the section to exactly the same values as those for the sonagram will result in a true cross section of the sonagram Chapter 6 Definition of Signal Processing Terms Bandwidth The bandwidth parameter determines which details will be resolved in a spectral analysis Generally there is a trade off between the bandwidth fre quency resolution and the temporal resolution The better the frequency resolu tion smaller bandwidth the worse the temporal resolution For display purposes such as sonagrams and sections we take the product of the bandwidth and the effective window length to be 1 Thus a bandwidth of 400 Hz corresponds to a temporal resolution of 2 5 ms In a frequency detection task such as a formant or an Fo analysis it is more appropriate to use a product value of 2 In order to analyse fo values down to 50 Hz for example the effective window length in a frequency domain analysis must thus be at least 40 ms Typical values for a sonagram are about 300 Hz wide band analysis in which the harmonics are not resolved and 50 Hz narrow band analysis showing the harmonics as horizontal bars Note that for very high pitched voices a 300 Hz bandwidth may still be too narrow and need to be increased to remove harmon ics There is a lower limit to the bandwidth determined by
67. notation The segmental labels are then used as the temporal points at which prosodic labels can be placed Running xassp at the appropriate user level see section 3 1 ensures that prosodic labels can be inserted and modified without affecting segmental information Of course as with segmental labelling all checking and restrictions on labels can be overridden if xassp is run using a higher user level u 30 When doing prosodic labelling new labels are only set at points in time at which the segmental labels are already placed Therefore there is no need for a temporary marker The prosodic labels are not fetched from a stack You can insert any prosodic label at any point in time at which a segmental label is set CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED WITH XASSP 50 1 g071a005 116 0 0k 10 0k 20 0k 30 0k 200ms 300ms 400ms 500ms 600ms 700ms 800ms 300ms 1000ns 1100ns 1200 1300ns 1400ns 1500ns 1600ns 1 B 2 unnamed f0 lt 1 90712005 16 all 700ms 800ms 1000ms 1100ms 200ms 300ms 400ms 500ms 600ms 300m5 3 g071a005 mix l 84 amp pg2 wert Sf D A RO M U S Z Figure 2 5 Window configuration for prosodic labelling Upper window speech wave middle window fundamental frequency lower window labels 2 5 ANALYSING SPEECH SIGNALS 51 2 4 1 Inserting a Prosodic Label You can insert a prosodic label before or after a given label To do this you
68. ntegral number of samples Therefore the frame shift used may differ somewhat from the value you specified especially for small values at low sampling frequencies Frame Size The frame size or length of the analysis window determines the fre quency resolution of the analysis The larger the frame size the better the spec tral resolution However a large frame size will also result in smearing of fast transients such as plosives In other words the larger the frame size the worse the temporal resolution For analysis of global features such as LPC formants or energy a generally recommended compromise is a frame size of 20 to 25 ms For very high pitched voices a smaller frame size may be used to get a better temporal resolution For very low pitched voices a larger frame size may be necessary to reduce variation in the analysis results of voiced stretches due to the relative position of the frame with respect to the pitch period 100 CHAPTER 6 DEFINITION OF SIGNAL PROCESSING TERMS As resource and in menus frame size is entered in milliseconds as the most convenient unit Internally however it is set to the nearest integral number of samples Therefore the frame size used may differ somewhat from the value you specified especially for small values at low sampling frequencies Gain In sonagrams and sections the gain parameter is used to shift the display range upwards or downwards A positive gain value shifts the sonagram more to
69. or Specifies a factor for multiplication of the scale labels labelFont Specifies the font to be used for the tick labels labelMargin Specifies the margin between tick labels and tick marks labelUnit Specifies a unit that is appended to each label relTicLength Specifies the length of the shorter tick marks in percent of the length of the longer ones ticHeight Specifies the length of the longer tick marks B 12 RESOURCES FOR THE XSPVSCALE WIDGET 115 B 12 Resources for the XspVscale widget factor Specifies the factor for multiplication of each label labelColor Specifies the colour of the scale labels labelFont Specifies the scale label font labelMargin Specifies the margin between labels and tick marks precision Specifies the number of digits to appear after the decimal point ticColor Specifies the colour of the scale tick marks unit Specifies the unit to be appended to each scale label
70. other words it will have anti resonances where the signal spectrum has resonances The inverse of this filter can therefore be used to esti mate the spectral envelope of the signal The LPC analysis method used in xassp is called the autocorrelation method and uses the Durbin recursion to determine the prediction coefficients on the basis of autocorrelation coefficients for more details see e g Makhoul 1975 or Markel and Gray 1976 101 LPC Order The LPC order or number of coefficients determines how closely the inverse LPC spectrum models that of the signal Since in speech analysis we are mainly interested in the spectral envelope the optimal order relates to the length of the vocal tract of the speaker and the sampling frequency used see Markel and Gray 1976 The rule of the thumb is sampling frequency in kHz 2 or 3 for male voices and about 10 fewer for female voices Thus for a sam pling frequency of 16 kHz 18 or 19 for a male voice and 16 to 17 for a female voice Note that two coefficients are needed to model one resonance formant Therefore in the above example for a male voice maximally 9 formants can be modelled which corresponds to the rule of the thumb 1 formant per kHz bandwidth The extra formant follows from a potential nasal formant or the co efficients may be used to compensate for an anti resonance The odd coefficient may be included to model a very global aspect of the spectrum If for example no pre emp
71. p configuration files and resources may be changed will be set out in Chapter 4 2 1 Starting xassp To start xassp simply type xassp on the command line and press Return If you want to do prosodic labelling type xassp ul0 followed by Return to start xassp If you want to do segmental labelling you have to invoke xassp by typing xassp u20 again followed by Return The numbers in the last two commands are the user levels that are required to do prosodic user level 10 or segmental user level 20 labelling Please refer to Section 3 1 for more information on user levels and to Section 3 2 for a complete description of xassp command line options 41 42 CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED WITH XASSP xassp v1 2 15 May 22 1997 Filter d2 vm33 sig 907a 9071a W Directories Files g071a000 r16 90713001 116 L 3 sig g07a g071a 3 si9 07a 9071a 90718002 r16 90714003 116 9071a004 r16 90713005 116 9071a006 r16 90712007 116 1 Files es p Ja w Speech Signal w Labels w Fzero wv Energy Align and link 1 Data logging File Format Options wv Prosodic w Segmental w Formants g File types Configuration buttons Selection 1d2 4m93 5i9 907a 9071a 90713002 r16 K Load Filter Exit About Selected file Figure 2 1 xassp Main Dialog 2 2 Opening Files After starting xassp the xassp main dialog appears on the screen see Figure
72. plays a short message illegal option and ignores the option If you forget to spec ify an argument to the c and u options xassp prints a short message option requires an argument and ignores the option 3 2 1 Examples If you want xassp to show you a short help message describing the options you simply type xassp h or xassp help If you want to start xassp with user level 20 e g to do segmental labelling you need to type xassp u 20 or xassp userlevel 20 Since all options that are shown above are enclosed in brackets and therefore are optional you can simply type xassp to invoke xassp The application is then started using the default user level and the default local configuration directory 3 3 THE XASSP MAIN DIALOG gt xassp v1 2 15 May 22 1997 Filter d2 vm93 sig 907a 9071a H Directories Files 90713000 r16 90713001 116 90713002 r16 3 sig g07a g071a TRAE S lt 9071a003 116 90714004 r16 90712005 116 9071a006 r16 7 9071a007 116 a la Speech Signal Labels wv Fzero v Energy Align and link J Data logging File Format Options w Prosodic w Segmental w Formants Selection d2 um93 sig g07a g071a g071a002 r1E Load Filter Exit About Figure 3 1 xassp Main Dialog 3 3 The xassp Main Dialog The xassp main dialog see Figure 3 1 contains 55 e the file selection box F
73. ral level to dis play Range dB Specifies the difference between the highest and lowest spectral level to be displayed 3 5 SPECIFIC XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 71 A mi Font selection Choose Label Font L Edit Selection p Insert before Insert after Delete Edit Undo Figure 3 10 Left Label Edit Menu Right Font Selection dialog box no of FFT points Specifies the length of the FFT used in calculating the spectra If set to 0 the program automatically determines the optimal number of FFT points given the analysis parameters and the width of the display window the latter to obtain a smooth spectrum This will also be shown in the option box by the word auto in the field for the number of FFT points Average spectrum ms to average If this button is selected the average spectrum of a region is calculated The length of this region is given in the ms to average text field The cursor always defines the centre of the region Averaging is only possible for the DFT spectrum It can be simulated for the LPC spectrum by increasing the effective window length The section window provides several short cuts to the items of its window menu they are listed in Table A 4 For further information on spectral analysis see Section 5 4 The subject of for mant analysis is covered in Section 5 3 Chapter 6 contains important terms that are used in all analysis descriptions 3 5 4
74. rces B 6 Resources for the XspF zero widget drawMode Specifies how to draw the data values This can be lines circles or rectangles frameShift Specifies the shift of the analysis window logarithmic Specifies whether to use a logarithmic vertical scale maxF zero Specifies the highest FO value to be analyzed minF zero Specifies the lowest FO value to be analyzed noiseAmp Specifies the minimum speech signal amplitude considered relevant for analysis B 7 Resources for the XspLabels widget bottomMargin Specifies the space in pixels between window bottom and labels highlightColor Specifies the colour to highlight labels with B 8 RESOURCES FOR THE XSPSONAG WIDGET 113 horizontalSpacing Specifies the space in pixels to be left between the label and the vertical label line labelFont Specifies the label font truncate Specifies whether labels that do not fit into the window are truncated or other labels are overwritten if there is no space left verticalSpacing Specifies the vertical space in pixels between stacked labels B 8 Resources for the XspSonag widget bandwidth Specifies the bandwidth of the DFT spectrum gain Specifies the gain in dB IpcLength Specifies the effective length of the LPC analysis window IpcMode Specifies whether to compute an LPC True or DFT False spectrum IpcOrder Specifies the order of the LPC analysis numFFT Specifies the number of FFT points numLevels Specifies t
75. rint configurations let you define parameters and layouts for printing so that you do not need to change the parameters yourself each time You can choose a configura tion by selecting a toggle button in the Configurations frame which is located in the Select Windows dialog box Choosing a configuration changes the window parameters according to the specifications in the xassp print configuration file You can manually change them afterwards These changes are persistent as long as you do not select a 3 7 PRINTING 83 different configuration If you choose the special configuration Default which is not defined in the xassp print configuration file all parameters are set to their default values 3 7 4 Modifying Window Parameters xassp lets you specify almost every parameter that can be defined in a configuration To change the parameters for a certain window you have to select it in the Selected Win dows list and press the Options button if you want to change the window parameters the Hscale Options button if you want to change the parameters of the horizontal scale for this window or the Vscale Options button if you want to change the parameters of the vertical scale for this window You can change the following parameters in the option dialog boxes e position horizontal X and vertical Y e size width and height e title e title font e whether to print a border e border width e line width only Wave Fzero Energy and
76. s so far not been explained It is the Labels button which if it is selected and you press OK simply opens an empty label window Since the analysis parameters can only be changed after the analysis has been done with default parameters you can modify the default parameters This can be achieved by editing the X resources used by xassp For more information on X resources see Section 4 1 and appendix B Chapter 3 Using xassp 3 1 User Levels User levels restrict the use of xassp features excluding those that are not required for the job at hand In this way modifications of speech signals can for instance be prevented when only label editing is required The user levels needed to perform certain actions in xassp have been chosen arbitrarily they will become configurable in the future l At user level 0 all actions that involve mod User ifications of any kind of data are blocked If 0 no editing allowed you choose a user level of 10 or greater you 10 prosodic labelling can edit and delete labels but at level 10 you 20 segmental labelling may only insert new ones at a point in time if 30 editing speech signals other labels are already set at the same point and you are not allowed to move labels to a Table 3 1 User Levels different point in time This user level is in tended for prosodic labelling To be able to insert new labels and to move old ones which is needed for segmental labelling
77. scale XspData XspWave XspFzero XspLabels XspSonag XspEnerg Figure B 1 xassp widget hierarchy 109 110 APPENDIX B X RESOURCES backgroundPixmap Specifies a pixmap for tiling the background The first tile is placed at the upper left corner of the widget s window borderColor Specifies the colour of the border in a pixel value borderPixmap Specifies a pixmap to be used for tiling the border The first tile is placed at the upper left corner of the border borderWidth Specifies the width of the border that surrounds the widget s window on all four sides The width is specified in pixels A width of 0 zero means that no border shows height Specifies the inside height excluding the border of the widget s window translations Points to a translations list A translations list is a list of events and actions that are to be performed when the events occur width Specifies the inside width excluding the border of the widget s window x Specifies the x coordinate of the upper left outside corner of the widget s window The value is relative to the upper left inside corner of the parent window y Specifies the y coordinate of the upper left outside corner of the widget s window The value is relative to the upper left inside corner of the parent window B 2 Resources for the XmPrimitive widget The XmPrimitive widget class is defined by the Motif toolkit Since many of its re sources are seldom use
78. section by cursor movement in the speech signal window Keep Make a copy of the section that is currently displayed This copy is then shown in addition to the current section allowing you to compare sections at different points in time or with different analysis parameters Clear Remove the last section that was kept with Keep Formants Shows the Formants Options dialog box that lets you choose the display of a formant list in a separate window see Figure 3 9 and the number of for mants to display The formants can only be computed if LPC was selected in the options menu Re analyse Opens the Section Options dialog box shown in Figure 3 8 The analysis parameters you can change here are explained below Analysis Options By selecting the menu item Re analyse the Section Analysis Options dialog box shown in Figure 3 8 appears Here you can make the following changes DFT LPC spectrum The DFT spectrum shows the Fourier spectrum of the speech signal while the LPC spectrum shows the spectral envelope Window function Specifies the window function used during analysis DFT bandwidth Hz Specifies the bandwidth of the DFT spectrum LPC eff length ms Specifies the effective length of the LPC analysis window LPC order Specifies the order of the LPC analysis Pre emphasis Specifies the pre emphasis applied to the speech signal before spectral analysis Gain dB Specifies the gain applied in determining the highest spect
79. ters see Carlson and Granstr m 1986 mixing signal files and prototype label files The latter were automatically generated from orthographic text within the Rulsys Infovox text to speech system which IPDS Kiel adapted for German including spontaneous speech see Kohler et al 1995 The MIX software was adjusted to the German segmentation and labelling conventions and made more flexible and user friendly by a student of computer science at IPDS Frank Bartels It was then used very extensively in the BMFT BMBF funded ASL and VERBMOBIL projects The German speech data processed with the help of MIX have been distributed on three CD ROMs The Kiel Corpus of Read Spontaneous Speech As the Apollo hard and software ceased to be supported it became necessary to think about a future platform for segmentation and labelling of German speech data of various speaking styles all the more so since more and more corpora labelled in teractively by hand were required but the number of our Apollo work stations was extremely small and thus could not meet the demand Matthias P tzold and Adrian Simpson worked out a general concept for combining the ASSP speech processing algorithms with the MIX framework of speech signal segmentation and labelling in a comprehensive speech processing software package portable to any Unix environment under the X Window System This was first realised for prosodic labelling within the Kiel PROLAB notation see Kohler et al 1
80. the labels The labels on the label stack normally have a time of 100 000 milliseconds The latter can only be seen in the label list they are not displayed in the normal label window If you make changes to the labels in the label window the label list is updated 2 3 SEGMENTAL LABELLING 47 2 3 4 Fetching and Modifying a Label Since the labels on the label stack do not always match the utterance that is to be la belled there are several possibilities to modify them If you press lt Shift gt RM instead of lt Shift gt MM to fetch the label from the label stack you can edit the label before it is moved In this case an Edit Label dialog box is displayed see Figure 2 4 In this dialog box you can edit the label in the text field that is located directly above the three buttons labelled OK Cancel and Help Pressing the OK button then moves the edited label onto the temporary marker and pressing the Cancel button neither changes nor moves the label The most frequent changes that are made to labels taken from the stack are ap pending a minus sign to mark the label as deleted and inserting a percent sign to mark an uncertain segment boundary These frequent modifications have been assigned di rectly to mouse buttons You can fetch a label and append a minus sign by pressing lt Alt gt LM and fetch the label and insert a percent sign by pressing lt Ctrl gt LM 2 3 5 Modifying a Label after Moving it If you moved the label and then realise
81. those that are shown in Figure 2 2 When doing segmental labelling labels are set at segment boundaries The labels and the order in which they are to be placed are given in the following the term label stack will be used for the given labels The label order cannot be changed and labels that are taken from the label stack cannot be deleted New labels can only be inserted if they are also marked as inserted with a minus after the label prefix 2 3 1 Fetching a Label To place the next label from the label stack which is shown in the upper right corner of the label window at a certain point in time you first have to set the temporary marker onto this point see Figure 2 3 This can be achieved by placing the cursor at this point and then pressing lt Shift gt LM Then you have to move the cursor between the temporary marker and the end of the window Pressing lt Shift gt MM moves the next label from the label stack to the point in time at which the temporary marker is set This procedure of setting the temporary marker and fetching a label from the label stack is repeated until there are no more labels left on the stack In this case the small box in the upper right corner that displays the next label disappears CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED WITH XASSP 44 E 1 g416a003 r16 Jal zi Figure 2 2 Window configuration for segmental labelling Upper window speech wave middle window sonagram lower win dow labels this file has
82. ting a Label If you accidentally inserted a prosodic label you can delete it by moving the mouse pointer onto the label the label is highlighted pressing lt Ctrl gt RM and then select ing Delete from the pop up menu that appears You are asked whether you really want to delete the label If you press the OK button the label is deleted If you press the Cancel button nothing happens 2 4 4 Undoing Recent Changes By pressing lt Ctrl gt RM you can undo the last change you made You can repeat this action until the first change is reversed 2 5 Analysing Speech Signals The analyses that xassp is capable of are e fundamental frequency 52 CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED WITH XASSP e energy e sonagram e section Refer to Chapter 5 for more information on these different analysis methods There are two different ways to perform an analysis of a speech signal First you can use the window menu item Analysis in the speech signal window The second pos sibility is the definition of analyses in a configuration The latter method is described in Section 4 2 1 while the former will be described in this section The first step in doing an analysis is to open the speech signal that you want to anal yse as described in Section 2 2 Then in the speech signal window press lt Alt gt RM and select Analysis from the pop up menu that appears This opens the Analysis dialog box in which you can select the analysis to be performed Click on one
83. tionally a small scale is created above the scroll bar in the label window 4 2 2 The Font Configuration File The font configuration file is named fonts and resides in the global configuration directory or the subdirectory xassp of the user s home directory It contains a list of fonts that the user can choose from in the Font Selection dialog box in the label window It maps user defined font names to X font names Refer to the X manual page for information on X fonts Each line of the file contains the user defined name and the X Windows font name separated by a tab It is important that no additional whitespaces appear in the file To map the name default to a 24 point Courier font you just add the following line default lt TAB gt courier medium r 240 Be aware that a font that you give the name default is not automatically taken as a default font in the label window If you want to change the default for this you have to modify the corresponding resource Xassp XspLabels labelFont 90 CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURING XASSP 4 2 3 The Label Configuration File The labels configuration file is named labels and can be found in one of the default directories global configuration directory or directory xassp in the user s home directory It contains labels that are offered in the edit dialog box in the label window Each line of the file can contain an arbitrary number of labels which must be separated by TAB characters Add
84. ts contents of the cut buffer at the position of the temporary marker If no temporary marker is present a new window is opened with the cut buffer contents Keys With the keys CursorUp and CursorDown it is in addition possible to increase or decrease the amplitude resolution of the speech signal A list of keys that are available in the speech signal window is given in Table A 3 3 5 2 The Sonagram Window One type of spectral analysis of the speech wave results in a sonagram A sonagram is a time frequency amplitude representation of the speech signal 68 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Window Menu The window menu of the sonagram window has only one additional item Re analyse Selecting this menu entry opens the Sonagram Analysis Options dialog box see Figure 3 7 See below for a description of the analysis parameters that can be changed in this dialog box Analysis Options In the Sonagram Analysis Options dialog box which is opened by selecting the menu item Re analyse in the pop up menu you can modify the following parameters DFT LPC spectrum The DFT spectrum with a bandwidth of about 300 Hz corre sponds to a wide band sonagram one with a bandwidth of about 50 Hz to a narrow band sonagram The LPC spectrum shows the spectral envelope of the speech signal enhancing the formant structure Window function Specifies the window function used during analysis DFT bandwidth Hz Specifies the bandwidth of the DFT spectrum LPC
85. ults file changing an xassp resource normally has the following form Xassp lt widget name or class gt lt resource gt lt value gt If you want to modify the background colour of all widgets containing speech signals widget class XspWave you type Xassp XspWave background white If you want to change the font of the tick labels in the horizontal scale widget of all label windows widget name labelsHorizontalScale you need to add the following line Xassp labelsHorizontalScale labelFont 9x14 To learn more about font specifications you should once more consult the X man ual page section FONT NAMES To alter the default value for the frame shift used in the calculation of a sonagram you will have to write Xassp XspSonag shift 5 After modifying your Xdefaults file you have to run the command xrdb Xdefaults to make your changes take effect 4 2 User Configuration Files The main purpose of the configuration files described in the following sections is to cover configurable aspects of xassp that cannot be sensibly defined as resources The files containing information about fonts and labels are not very complicated and will possibly be included in the main configuration file in the future xassp looks for configuration files in two places The first is the default global configuration directory usr local lib xassp the second is the subdirectory xassp of the user s home directory NOTE Using a main con
86. wards black and the spectrum in a section upwards A negative value more to white and down respectively Note that gain does not influence the spectral levels themselves but only which range of levels will be displayed Gain is expressed in dB relative to an internally calculated estimate of the maximum spectral level The default value of 0 dB should give a reasonable plot provided the signal values span about the full dynamic range of the A D convertor The latter may be achieved by setting autogain on in your config Linear Predictive Coding LPC LPC has basically been developed for data com pression in signal coding In speech research it is typically used for estimating the spectral envelope of the speech signal which is then assumed to represent the transfer function of the vocal tract Underlying LPC is the assumption that a sample value can be predicted on the basis of a linear combination of a number of previous sample values In formula M gt Om Sn ms with M the prediction order m 1 Since in the analysis the sample value s is known the prediction error Cn Sn can be calculated for the set of prediction coefficients a am For each frame the LPC analysis determines the prediction coefficients in such a way that the energy of the error signal within that frame is minimal The prediction coef ficients then form the coefficients of a digital filter that optimally flattens the signal spectrum In
87. window overlap of about 50 for a smooth curve The window function is not very critical and is by default set to Hamming Defaults for frame size and frame shift are 20 ms and 10 ms respectively 93 94 CHAPTER 5 ANALYSES 5 2 Fo or Pitch Analysis Xassp contains a version of the Sch fer Vincent periodicity detector Sch fer Vincent 1982 1983 This detector operates on local extrema minima and maxima in the speech signal as potential period markers Triplets of extrema of the same type are evaluated to mark two adjacent periods a period twin If a twin is detected its period durations are compared to those of previously detected twins Adjacent or partly over lapping twins with comparable period durations are linked to chains cf Fo tracks If a chain exceeds a certain length see point 2 below and there exists no other longer chain with shorter period durations this to suppress octave errors the stretch covered by that chain is called voiced For each sample within the stretch an Fo value is cal culated on the basis of the period markers stored in the chain The same is done for the samples within the twins that are subsequently appended to this chain Samples between voiced stretches are called unvoiced and receive an Fo value of 0 Note that more than one chain may exist at a time but that only one of them may declare the stretch covered by it to be voiced Chains die out when no more twins can be appended to them At a fin
88. without warning Save as Saves the speech signal under a different file name When selecting this menu item you can select a file name and a file format The file formats you can choose from are KTH RIFF WAV CSL and RAW For further information on speech signal file formats see 3 6 1 If the the file you select exists you are prompted whether it should be overwritten Edit Menu Apart from playing and analysing the speech signal it can also be edited This is important in e g the generation of speech stimuli For this task you need at least 3 5 SPECIFIC XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 67 J l Sonagram options A DFT spectrum w LPC spectrum Window function minimum 3 term Blackman Harris 4 DFT bandwidth Hz Sme LPC eff length ms 20 00 J Analysis LPC order as ala pre emphasis 0 95 Labels E H gain dB 0 00 Energy range dB 50 00 A Section no of FFT points 512 F Align and link 2 All w Region shift ms 1 25 Ok Cancel Help DK Cancel Help Figure 3 7 Left Analysis dialog box Right Sonagram options userlevel 30 see Section 3 1 The edit menu is called up by pressing the combination lt Ctrl gt RM see Figure 3 4 The menu items are set out in the following list Cut Cuts the region that is defined by the two brackets out of the speech signal and saves it in the cut buffer Copy Copies the region into the cut buffer Paste Inser
89. xassp User s Manual Advanced Speech Signal Processor under the X Window System IPDS Kiel Contents 1 Introduction LI Whatis xasspl was rar Kara aaa RES REA 1 27 Manual Structure El ERA a a De ea 1 3 Typographic conventions lt 2 Getting Started with xassp Zoli Starine XASSD er en er A 2 2 Opening Piles 13 nr o nahe 2 3 Segmental Labelling 4 24 22 22122 wre ak bee 2 3 1 Fetching a Label 2a a Ar Be 2 3 2 Playing the Speech Signal L 2 3 3 Using the Label IS zo 2 ao ua esa e 2 3 4 Fetching and Modifying a Label 2 3 5 Modifying a Label after Movingit 2 3 6 Inserting a New Label 23 Label Syntax Checks 2 lt n ii ea 2 3 8 Deleting an Inserted Label 2 3 9 Editing an Inserted Label amp 2 2 409 a oh oo ka 2 3 10 Moving a Babel sw 5 8 wise ae Ba Fran a Bade 2 3 11 Undoing Recent Changes 2 3 12 Jumping to a Specified Label 2 3 13 Saving the Labels in a File 2 Prosodic Labelling i 4 2 2 a SS ES 2 4 1 Inserting a Prosodic Label 242 Editing a Label sd biss ae wen 2 43 Weletmiga Label o Poe eee eee oS art 2 4 4 Undoing Recent Changes 2 2 nn nenn 2 5 Analysing Speech Signals 3 Usin
90. you can choose whether to re analyse the whole signal or only the part in the marked region Re analysing a region is particularly useful if you want to correct an octave error see Section 5 2 Frame shift ms Specifies the frame shift for the analysis Maximum F0 Hz Specifies the highest Fo value to be analysed Minimum FO Hz Specifies the lowest Fo value to be analysed Noise amplitude Specifies the minimum speech signal amplitude considered rele vant for analysis Please refer to Section 5 2 for more information on Fo analysis 3 5 SPECIFIC XASSP WINDOW PROPERTIES 75 Energy Options Window function Hamming a Frame size ms 20 00 Frame shift ms 10 00 DK Cancel Help Figure 3 11 Menu item Re analyse in the energy window 1 g071a019 16 l a 20 0k 10 0k 0 0k 10 0k 20 0k 4 30 0k mop rrr pee pa pee pa pee pee peo pat poe rrr rrr rrr m rr 2800ns 280015 3000ns 3100ns 3200ns 3300ns 3400ns 3500ns 3600ns 3700ns 3800ns 3900ns 4000ns 4100ns 4200ms FI T gt 2 unnamed rms lt 1 g0712019 116 l 14 SES RSASHSASRSA 5558555555 2800ms 2900ms 3000ms 3100ms 3200ms 3300ms 3400ms 3500ms 3600ns 3700ns 3800ns 3900ns 4000m5 4100ns 4200ns 1 Figure 3 12 Upper window speech wave lower window analysed energy course 3 5 6 The Energy Window The energy course of a speech wave can be analysed by clicking on Energy
91. you need a user level of at least 20 With a user level of 30 or more you are even allowed to edit speech signals and save them Furthermore no label syntax checks are performed at a user level of 30 or more See Section 3 5 4 for more information on label syntax checks It is important that you always choose the lowest user level that allows you to do your work Table 3 1 displays a short overview helping you in the choice of the appropriate user level 3 2 xassp Command Line Options xassp can be invoked from the command line shell with the following syntax xassp c conf lt dir gt u l userlevel lt user level gt lp 53 54 CHAPTER 3 USING XASSP Brackets enclose optional parameters options that are separated by a vertical bar are equivalent With the option c you can specify the local directory where xassp searches for its configuration files The default directory is the subdirectory xassp of the user s home directory The option u lets you specify a user level that xassp should use during the ses sion The default user level is taken from the file etc xassp_users in which the maximum user level you are allowed is also specified For more information on this file see Section 4 3 1 When the option h is given xassp displays a short description of the command line options and exits In this case any additional options are ignored If you give an option on the command line that is not known to xassp it dis

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