English Speech Files

Nested
Arthur the Rat
User: granthulbert
Date: 12/29/2006 2:18 am
Views: 3602
Rating: 12

Speaker Characteristics:

Gender: male
Age range: adult
Pronunciation dialect: California

Recording Information:

Microphone: C-Media USB Headphone Set
Audio Card: Mac USB built-in
Audio Recording Software: Audacity rel 1.2.5
O/S: Mac OS X 10.4.8

File Info:

File type: wav
Sampling rate: 44.1kHz
Sample rate format: 32-bit float
Number of channels: 1

 Copyright (C) 2006  Grant Hulbert

These files are free software; you can redistribute them and/or
modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

These files are distributed in the hope that they will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

 

ar-01 Once there was a young rat named Arthur who never could make up his mind.
ar-02 Whenever his friends asked him if he would like to go out with them,
ar-03 he would only answer, "I don't know;" he wouldn't say yes or no either.
ar-04 He would always shirk making a choice. His Aunt Helen said to him,
ar-05 "Now look here! No one is going to care for you if you carry on like this.
ar-06 You have no more mind than a blade of grass."
ar-07 One rainy day the rats heard a great noise in the loft.
ar-08 The pine rafters were all rotten, so that the barn was rather unsafe.
ar-09 At last the joists gave way and fell to the ground.
ar-10 The walls shook, and all the rats' hair stood on end with fear and horror.
ar-11 "This won't do," said the captain; "I'll send out scouts to search for a new home."
ar-12 Within five hours the ten scouts came back and said,
ar-13 "We found a stone house where there is room for us all.
ar-14 There is a kindly horse named Nelly, a cow, a calf, and a garden with an elm tree."
ar-15 The rats crawled out of their little houses and stood on the floor in a long line.
ar-16 Just then the old rat saw Arthur. Stop. he ordered coarsely.
ar-17 "You are coming, of course." "I'm not certain," said Arthur, undaunted,
ar-18 "The roof may not come down yet."
ar-19 "Well," said the old rat, "we can't wait for you to join us. Right about face! March!"
ar-20 Arthur stood and watched them hurry away.
ar-21 "I think I'll go tomorrow," he said calmly to himself, "but then again I don't know;
ar-22 it's so nice and snug here,".  That night there was a big crash.
ar-23 In the foggy morning some men with some boys and girls rode up and looked at the barn.
ar-24 One of them moved a board and saw a rat quite dead, half in and half out of his hole.

--- (Edited on 12/29/2006 2:18 am [GMT-0600] by granthulbert) ---

--- (Edited on 12/29/2006 2:20 am [GMT-0600] by granthulbert) ---

ar.zip ar.zip

Notice: many prompts in "English Speech Files" were adapted from the prompt files contained in the CMU_ARCTIC speech synthesis database, which were in turn derived from out-of-copyright texts from Project Gutenberg, by the FestVox project at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Re: Arthur the Rat
User: kmaclean
Date: 1/3/2007 1:54 pm
Views: 340
Rating: 24

Hi Grant,

Thanks for your submission, and your patience ...

I noticed in your README that you state that you used a Sample Rate Format of 32-bit float.  When I upload into Audacity on (Fedora FC4) it shows with a sampling rate of 16-bit. 

Although your audio sounds great, I also noticed that some of the waveforms seem to be clipped at around 0.9/-0.9.  For example in your first wav file (ar-01), when you say the word 'rat', the waveform seems to flatten out at around 0.9/-0.9, but there is no discernible distortion. 

I don't think this is a problem since we need audio from as many different recording environments (and as much different recording equipment) as possible, and I cannot hear any breakup of your voice, but it seems like you might have a pre-filter on your mic that is clipping the high and low end.

Ken 

--- (Edited on 1/ 3/2007 2:54 pm [GMT-0500] by kmaclean) ---

--- (Edited on 1/ 3/2007 5:10 pm [GMT-0500] by kmaclean) ---


Notice: many prompts in "English Speech Files" were adapted from the prompt files contained in the CMU_ARCTIC speech synthesis database, which were in turn derived from out-of-copyright texts from Project Gutenberg, by the FestVox project at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

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