---
license: mit
language:
- en
tags:
- audio
pretty_name: Audio Device
---
# Parallel Recordings
This dataset is a small corpus of audio recorded in parallel.
This data can be used to quantify the difference in recording quality between different audio devices.
An example of this quantification using WER is [shown below](#example-of-usage).

## Organization
There are two separate experiments.
1) Personal Microphone
2) Speakerphone

The original data for both experiments are located in the`full_length_audio` directory.
Each experiment was performed by recording simultaneously on multiple devices.
Example sentences were prepared beforehand and read during the simultaneous recording.
The recordings were cut into bits that could fit within the context of most modern ASR models (ie. < 30s).

### Personal Microphone
**Devices:**
* AT8: Audio Technica Digital 2.4GHz System 10 + ATW-T1007 + AT857SL
* ATR: Audio Technica ATR4800-USB
* bltin: Built-In microphone on unknown laptop
* boya: Boya BY-W4, Ultracompact 2.4GHz Four-channel Wireless Microphone System

Each device was pointed in the same direction toward the speaker. The speaker read sentences at varying distance from the microphones. Here is the following mapping:
* Indexes 4-13: Distance = 1 inch (2.54cm)
* Indexes 18-27: Distance = 1 foot (30.48cm)
* Indexes 30-39: Distance = 1 yard (914.4cm)
All other indexes correspond to user speaking to themselves at varying and inconsistent distances.

#### Example of Usage
This data was used to measure microphone quality in the context of ASR. The metric used was WER from the output of `WhisperModel` from `faster_whisper`. The follow parameters were used:
```
whisper = WhisperModel(
    model_size_or_path="deepdml/faster-whisper-large-v3-turbo-ct2",
    device="cuda",
    compute_type="float16",
)
```

![Image of graph showing experiment results](personal_mic_wer.png)

### Speakerphones
**Devices:**
* respeaker: SeeedStudio ReSpeaker USB Mic Array
* jabra: Jabra Speak2 75, PHS060Wa
* sanwa: Sanwa Supply 400-MC011
* yamaha: Yamaha Unified Communications Speakerphone YVC-330
* ntt: NTT Advanced Technology FR-1100

Each device was placed in the same location in the center of the room. The speaker read sentences five at a time, moving position each time. The positions were roughly assigned and can be best described as close-rear-left, far-front-left, far-front-right, close-rear-right (in order). The final paragraph was read in the same location as the last 5 sentences (close-rear-right).

The NTT microphone has directionality settings and was set to capture as wide as possible but there are certain angles where complete loss of sound can be observed. This was also recorded originally as a stereo track.