English Speech Files

Nested
Comma Gets a Cure
User: shakyhand
Date: 9/25/2007 11:51 pm
Views: 2478
Rating: 8

Speaker Characteristics:

Gender: [male];
Age range: [adult];
Pronunciation dialect: [The Midland (West Texas)].

Recording Information (don't worry if you can't find some of this information):

Microphone make: [HP not the fancy gaming ones but padded and sleek grey and black];
Microphone type: [headset mic];
Audio card make: [Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)];
Audio card type: [Integrated (8-Channel?)]
Audio Recording Software: [Audacity rel 1.3.3-beta];
O/S: [Debian Lenny GNU/Linux].

File Info:

File type: [wav];
Sampling rate: [96kHz (wasn't sure if sound card was actually able to capture at this rate)];
Sample rate format: [16];
Number of channels: [1];
Audio Processing: [n] (we prefer, but *do not require*, unprocessed audio)

Comma Gets a Cure

cc-01 Well, here's a story for you: Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse
cc-02 who had been working daily at an old zoo in a deserted district of the territory,
cc-03 so she was very happy to start a new job at a superb private practice
cc-04 in north square near the Duke Street Tower.
cc-05 That area was much nearer for her and more to her liking.
cc-06 Even so, on her first morning, she felt stressed.
cc-07 She ate a bowl of porridge, checked herself in the mirror
cc-08 and washed her face in a hurry. Then she put on a plain yellow dress
cc-09 and a fleece jacket, picked up her kit and headed for work.
cc-10 When she got there, there was a woman with a goose waiting for her.
cc-11 The woman gave Sarah an official letter from the vet.
cc-12 The letter implied that the animal could be suffering from a rare form
cc-13 of foot and mouth disease, which was surprising,
cc-14  because normally you would only expect to see it in a dog or a goat.
cc-15 Sarah was sentimental, so this made her feel sorry for the beautiful bird.
cc-16 Before long, that itchy goose began to strut around the office like a lunatic,
cc-17 which made an unsanitary mess.
cc-18 The goose's owner, Mary Harrison, kept calling, "Comma, Comma,"
cc-19 which Sarah thought was an odd choice for a name.
cc-20 Comma was strong and huge, so it would take some force to trap her,
cc-21 but Sarah had a different idea.
cc-22 First she tried gently stroking the goose's lower back with her palm,
cc-23 then singing a tune to her. Finally, she administered ether.
cc-24  Her efforts were not futile. In no time, the goose began to tire,
cc-25  so Sarah was able to hold onto Comma and give her a relaxing bath.
cc-26 Once Sarah had managed to bathe the goose, she wiped her off with a cloth
cc-27 and laid her on her right side. Then Sarah confirmed the vet's diagnosis.
cc-28 Almost immediately, she remembered an effective treatment
cc-29 that required her to measure out a lot of medicine.
cc-30 Sarah warned that this course of treatment might be expensive -
cc-31 either five or six times the cost of penicillin.
cc-32 I can't imagine paying so much, but Mrs. Harrison - a millionaire lawyer -
cc-33 thought it was a fair price for a cure.
cc-34 Comma Gets a Cure and derivative works may be used freely for any purpose
cc-35 without special permission provided the present sentence
cc-36 and the following copyright notification accompany the passage in print,
cc-37 if reproduced in print, and in audio format in the case of a sound recording:
cc-38 Copyright 2000 Douglas N. Honorof, Jill McCullough & Barbara Somerville.
cc-39 All rights reserved.


 

--- (Edited on 9/26/2007 10:24 am [GMT-0400] by shakyhand) ---

shakyhand-2007-09-25.tgz shakyhand-2007-09-25.tgz

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: Comma Gets a Cure
User: kmaclean
Date: 9/27/2007 11:35 am
Views: 259
Rating: 16

Hi shakyhand,

thanks for your submission!

Your audio is now part of today's Acoustic Model Build.  I had to update the scripts a bit - we usually don't take audio with a 96kHz sampling rate (48kHz-16bit audio is quite sufficient).

Ken 

 

--- (Edited on 9/27/2007 12:35 pm [GMT-0400] 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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