Methodology of Lombard Speech Database Acquisition: Experiences with CLSD

AbstractIn this paper, process of the Czech Lombard Speech Database (CLSD'05) acquisition is presented. Feature analyses have proven a strong appearance of Lombard effect in the database. In the small vocabulary recognition task, significant performance degradation was observed for the Lombard speech recorded in the database. Aim of this paper is to describe the hardware platform, scenarios and recording tool used for the acquisition of CLSD'05. During the database recording and processing, several difficulties were encountered. The most important question was how to adjust the level of speech feedback for the speaker. A method for minimization of the speech attenuation introduced to the speaker by headphones is proposed in this paper. Finally, contents and corpus of the database are presented to outline it's suitability for analysis and modeling of Lombard effect. The whole CLSD'05 database with a detailed documentation is now released for public use.