SPHERE Utilities (TIMIT Database)

gobby

First off, if this is the wrong place (its not strictly speaking about programming, its more about installations etc..) mods, feel free to move!

I am undertaking a project (final year engineering) that requires me to use the TIMIT speech database. The database comes with SPHERE (SPeech HEader REsources) utilities for handling the wave files. (The wave files have headers on them that must be removed for them to work).

The problem is that the SPHERE utility programs (a series of C++ programs) dont seem to compile. They turn up a range of compilation errors. Now the thing is that these files should be as safe as houses (or safe enough, ie. not 63 compilation errors!).

The documentation that came with the utilities suggest that an installation may be required. The way it suggests this is by saying how to do it when using Linux (which I am not using, Im using windows). Then it says that if your not using Linux a manual installation may be required! WTF!?

So I'm not really sure what to do here. I've google loads and I can never find any specifics regarding installation. Well, nothing more than what I already have.

I guess that I'm looking for people that may have experience with the TIMIT database and how to set it up using the SPHERE utilities.

I'm thinking that this may be a long shot but if anyone has any suggestions I would like to hear them...

Cheers,
Gob.

gobby

After a bit more work on this I think I may have found out some interesting bits of info. Basically I am supposed to have a library called "libsp.a" that should be linked in my C++ compiler. This kinda make sense seeing as how I never get compiler errors but rather linker errors. The problem now is that I dont seem to have (and cant find it to download) this file!

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the fact that I am supposed to be using the unix command "make" to install the software package.

Thoughts??

gobby

From http://ftp.cwi.nl/audio/NIST-SPHERE wrote:

2. Installation:

To install SPHERE on a Unix system, use the Unix utility "make".
While in the directory where the package source code has been
installed, type:

make -f makefile.

The speech header library will be created, as well as the sample
programs. Installation on non-Unix systems without "make" will
probably require manual compilation.

So here we can see the problem. Any ideas on how to manually compile (using windows based system)??

OfflerCrocGod

gobby wrote:

So here we can see the problem. Any ideas on how to manually compile (using windows based system)??

Read the make file and change the commands as appropriate for windows. Of course this may be harder then it sounds....it depends how much the make file does

gobby

Guess I'll have to learn a bit of scripting so...

(Might post some of it up here later today)