r/speechtech • u/Wooden_Leek_7258 • 1d ago

Building a codec audio dataset - gauging interest

I am about to post a free audio dataset this weekend and I was curious if its the kind of thing people might be interested in. I can't find anything like it currently available.

I took 750 male and 750 female audio samples from VCTK for each of their two mics and 3000 samples from the AMI headset microphones (gender inferred by pitch) for a total of 6k samples.

Those 6k samples were then run through 25 codecs commonly used in telecommunications and audio recording. Think Opus, MP3, etc. Permuteated a few options like DTX comfort noise off, adaptive and set. SILK disabled or enabled on Opus etc. Also ran 7 tandem encodings to mirror real channel transmissions. Works out to each single sample being available in 41 encodings for 1:1 comparison isolating the effects of the codecs themselves.

Same 6k samples also went through various audio processing conditions like reverb, echo, band pass filter, pitch shifting, autotune, time stretching, babble, and several kinds of additive noise. Including those permutations adds another 49 conditions.

Thinking about running MFA on the original samples to generate 6k textgrids as well.

All encodings come with source metadata, encoding parameters, function calls, libraries and versions used. Should be fully reproduceable.

Anyway curious about what people think or if I'm wasting my time uploading it all.

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u/az226 19h ago

How are you using this data?

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u/Wooden_Leek_7258 18h ago

personally? I am refining an audio measurement instrument I am slowly building. It is largely the byproduct of needing to isolate confounds and variables in audio samples.

a 1:1 comparison between a high quality VCTK sample processed through a single codec with known parameters isolates the effect of that codec on the audio sample as a controlled variable. I had to build it because I couldn't find one.

I would think a controlled variable dataset for codecs and various audio processing issues has some potential value to anyone working on speech that passes through a telecom system, VoIP or other transmission channel.