CMUSphinx and pocketSphinx

Make subdirectory CMUSphinx

Windows install

Mine is d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx

From http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/download/, download snapshot of pocketsphinx, sphinxbase, and sphinxtrain to your CMUSphinx directory
I have made window binaries. They are available from the class web page.
If you get binaries, you still need to get the full sphinxtrain file as well (so you will need to download two versions of sphinxtrain)
First get and decompress complete version Second, get executables. Put executables in SphinxTrain\bin\Release (you will need to make this dirtectory) This way the directory+file structure is the same as if you had compiled the files

Put binaries of sphinxbase in CMUSphinx/sphinxbase/bin/Release Put binaries of pocketsphinx in CMUSphinx/pocketsphinx/bin/Release To run on android, you need to get the full version of pocketsphinx. But this only compiles on linux. We will do this later If you are a student, you can get it for free from
http://e5.onthehub.com/WebStore/ProductsByMajorVersionList.aspx?ws=29950cc3-3670-e011-971f0030487d8897&vsro=8&JSEnabled=1 Or find MSDNAA link at https://www.eecis.udel.edu/wiki/ececis-docs/index.php/FAQ/Applications

The non windows binaries requires MS Visual Studio 2010 (I used Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate)

You will also need an eecis account. You can sign up for one.
Open visual studio. File->open->Preoject/Solution. Navigate to and select .sl file. To build: Build->Build solution First download and build sphinxbase
Before buildigng, switch to release. Select Build -> Configuratrion Manager: under Active solutions configuration: Change from Debug to Release

The snapshots include .sh visual studio 2010 project files (earlier versions will not work)

Then pocketsphinx and sphinxtrain

You need perl and python

For perl, get activestates activeperl: http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads http://www.python.org/getit/

For python get v2.7.X Once python is installed, add the directory to you path Add path to sphinxtrain binaries
If downloaded binaries, then add path to where

Running pocketsphnix
Note audio file in CMUSphinx\pocketsphinx\test\data\goforward.raw Open terminal and
Change directory to d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\pocketsphinx\bin\Release
Pocketsphinx_batch.exe should be there, unless compile failed

Make file ctlFile.txt with text of the name of the file we will decode
goforward -hmm ../../model/hmm/en_US/hub4wsj_sc_8k -lm ../../model/lm/en/turtle.DMP -dict ../../model/lm/en/turtle.dic CMUSphinx/sphinxbase/bin/Release/sphinxbase.dll To CMUSphinx/pocketsphinx/bin/Release CMUSphinx\pocketsphinx\test\data\goforward.raw To CMUSphinx\pocketsphinx\bin\Release\goforward.raw pocketsphinx_batch.exe -argfile argFile.txt -cepdir ../../test/data -ctl ctlFile.txt -cepext .raw -adcin true -hyp out.txt
Note: the command line arguments must be in this order!! -argfile argFile.txt defines the name of the arguments file. These aurgments are displayed on the screen when the program runs. You can check if they match -cepdir ../../test/data defines the path to the files to be processed
-cepdir must come before -ctl

Make file called argFile.txt with contents (more about these later)

Move

Move

run
Where

-ctl ctlFile.txt defines the ctlFile, which contains the name of the files to process. These names cannoy have the path or the extension -cepext .raw defines the extension of the files in the ctlFile -adcin true means that the files are audio files -hyp out.txt defines the output file More details on the parameters are http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/pocketsphinx_batch.1.html

After running, the outfile contains

go forward ten meters (goforward -26532)

Make and decode a new audio file

Open windows sound recorder Record go forward ten meters
Save as myGoForward.wma Saves as .wma file

Get wma to wav converted

Save as c:\pocketsphnix\test\data\myGoForward.wav I use 4musics multiformat converted. Other converters should work

Change ctlFile.txt to
myGoForward

In terminal run
pocketsphinx_batch.exe -argfile argFile.txt -ctl ctlFile.txt -cepdir ./ cepext .wav -adcin true -hyp out2.txt

Check that out2.txt says go forward ten meters

Make your own acoustic model and language

We will go over the what is going on later. But first, lets try the process.
Alternatively, you can read the about what is going on first and then return to this section

Download data
http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/databases/an4/index. html Get mswav version Save it to your CMUSphinx directory Decompress

models
Three types of models are used acoustic model
Used to model the sound of a phone Typically, this a HMM is used Each phone has a HMM Mapping from HMMs to phones Since the acoustic model is a HMM, in the CMU Sphinx the HMM is the same as the acoustic model

phonetic dictionary
Maps phones to words In CMU Sphinx, .dic files are dictionary files

language model
Used to determine sequences of words are allowed. For example, he super run the sally is not allowed in the language model

Set up config file

From CMUSphinx\SphinxTrain\etc
Copy
feat.params sphinx_train.cfg Sphinc_train.cfg is the main configuration file

To CMUSphinx\an4\etc

Open sphinx_train.cfg in an editor

Line 6: $CFG_DB_NAME = an4; Line 7: $CFG_BASE_DIR = "d:\\stephans\\CMUSphinx\\an4"; Line 8: $CFG_SPHINXTRAIN_DIR = "d:\\Stephans\\CMUSphinx\\SphinxTrain"; Line 11: $CFG_BIN_DIR = "d:\\Stephans\\CMUSphinx\\sphinxbase\\bin\\Release"; Line 13: $CFG_SCRIPT_DIR = "d:\\Stephans\\CMUSphinx\\SphinxTrain\\scripts"; Check out line 19-21. These say where the wav files are and that we are using mswav, which is what we downloaded Line 232: $DEC_CFG_DB_NAME = 'an4'; Line 233: $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR = 'd:\\Stephans\\CMUSphinx\\an4'; Line 234 does not seem to matter Line 239: $DEC_CFG_BIN_DIR = "d:\\Stephans\\CMUSphinx\\pocketsphinx\\bin\\Release"; Save sphinx_train.cfg

Other changes
copy sphinxbase.dll from
CMUSphinx\sphinxbase\bin\Release To CMUSphinx\SphinxTrain\bin\Release

In CMUSphinx\an4\etc directory, copy or rename

an4.ug.lm.DMP to an4.lm.DMP

Open CMUSphinx\SphinxTrain\scripts\sphinxtrain.in in an editor

Line 3: sphinxpath="d:\\Stephans\\CMUSphinx In many places is /lib/sphinxtrain. Change this to /SphinxTrain

Copy files
From CMUSphinx\pocketsphinx\bin\Release, copy
pocketspinx_batch.exe and pocketsphinx.dll to CMUSphinx\SphinxTrain/bin/Release
Try skipping this and setting line 243 of .cfg

check
Open a cmd prompt
Type path and make sure that the directory to
python is there SphinxTrain\bin\Release is there

Run training
Change to CMUSphinx\an4 directory Run
python ..\SphinxTrain\scripts\sphinxtrain.in run

This will take a while (15 minutes)

Results from test is sentence error rate of 45% (nearly half of the sentences had at least one error) and 15.7% word error rate (15.7% of the words were incorrectly estimated)

This can fail because python was not installed or the path to python was not set Or the path to SphinxTrain

Check log
Open an4.html Check for errors
MODULE: 30 Training Context Dependent models
A few errors of type: Failed to align audio to trancript: final state of the search is not reached are acceptable

MODULE: 50 Training Context dependent models

A few errors of type: Failed to align audio to trancript: final state of the search is not reached are acceptable

At the very end is the test decoding

Open log file Note parameters for running decoding, specifically, where Hmm, dic, and lm is

Test with your own voice sample

Record sample Convert to .wav Run pocketsphinx_batch pocketsphinx_batch
-hmm d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\an4/model_parameters/an4.cd_cont_200 -lw 10 -feat 1s_c_d_dd -beam 1e-80 -wbeam 1e-40 -dict d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\an4/etc/an4.dic -lm d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\an4/etc/an4.lm.DMP -wip 0.2 -ctl d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\an4/myTest/ctlFile.txt -ctloffset 0 -ctlcount 130 -cepdir d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\an4/myTest -cepext .wav -hyp d:\Stephans\CMUSphinx\an4/myTest/results.txt -agc none -varnorm no -cmn current -adcin true

test

background
At a first approximation, words are a sequences of sounds, where each sound is a phone. However, the exactly pronunciation of a phone depends on the phones before and after. Diphones are two phones. Diphones are less impacted by the phones that come before or after. Triphones and quinphones are possible. The general name is senone While there are many phones, not all combinations of a phone is a word. Thus, we should not simple recognize phones, by recognize words as a sequence of phones Besides phones are fillers (e.g., breath, um). An Utterance is a sequence of words and fillers Utterances are separated by a pause

models
Three types of models are used acoustic model
Used to model the sound of a phone Typically, this a HMM is used Each phone has a HMM Mapping from HMMs to phones Since the acoustic model is a HMM, in the CMU Sphinx the HMM is the same as the acoustic model

phonetic dictionary
Maps phones to words In CMU Sphinx, .dic files are dictionary files

language model
Used to determine sequences of words are allowed. For example, he super run the sally is not allowed in the language model

Running with other models

Many acoustic and language models are available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx/files/A coustic%20and%20Language%20Models/

Building Your Own Acoustic Model and Language Model

Building your own models is time consuming Acoustic models require
Lots of recordings of people saying words and sentences
Not that difficult to do Time consuming

Accurate transcription of the recording There are many acoustic models available online It is possible to take an existing model are quickly adapt it to a particular speaker

Language Model
Different systems need different language models
A voice control for your TV needs to recognize only a few words like volume up, change channel, A voice driven email composer needs to recognize a different set of words

The performance of the recognizer is improved if your language only considers the relevant words. You can take an existing language model and trim it to what you need, or make on from scratch
Many models are available from http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Catalog/index.jsp

example
To explore acoustic and language models, get the AN4 database
http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/databases/an4/index.html Save it to your CMUSphinx directory Decompress

Also, explore the PDA dataset

http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/databases/pda/index.html

This data is from letters and numbers, e.g., A, B, 19 We can test this system by saying things like A, B, etc.

 The acoustic model is used to translate recorded sounds into labeled phones,
e.g., recorded sound in file asc.wav is AH

Acoustic model

Roughly speaking, acoustic models take the sound sample as input and the quality of fit as output
asc.wav -> AH-Model-> -12 asc.wav -> AY-Model-> -14 AH-Model gives a better fit of the recorder sound

Making a acoustic model is called training

Inputs to training are audio files and transcriptions

Challenge: Usually the audio file has many phones, not just one
E.g., from AN4 data set, an audio file contains a recording of the words TWO SIX EIGHT FOUR FOUR ONE EIGHT
CMUSphinx\an4\wav\an4_clstk\fash\cen7-fash-b.wav

E.g. from PDA data set, an audio file might contain a recording of the words: MARGINS HISTORICALLY HAVE PEAKED BY MID YEAR HE SAYS
CMUSphinx\PDA\PDAs\001\PDAs01_001_1.wav

Transcriptions

Approach one: the recording from the PDA set is transcribed as: M AA R JH AX N Z SIL HH IX S T AO R IX K AX L IY SIL ... Two problems with approach one
If the word margins are in other files, we need to enter the pronounciation of the word twice There are two ways that people pronounce historically
HH IX S T AO R IX K AX L IY HH IX S T AO R IX K L IY (this one actually says historicly, which is incorrect)

Two stage transciptions (results in many files)

Transcription file: gives the words spoken
This file contains one line for each file used in training The line contains the text of the words spoken and the filename (without extension such as .wav)
The AN4 dataset includes the file an4_train_transcription and it includes the line: <s> TWO SIX EIGHT FOUR FOUR ONE EIGHT </s> (cen7-fash-b) The PDA dataset includes the file PDAs.train_all.sent and it includes the line: MARGINS HISTORICALLY HAVE PEAKED BY MID YEAR HE SAYS (PDAs01_041) Hmm, this is missing the <s> and </s>, I think that the software requires <s> and </s>.. To use the pda data set, add <s> and </s>

Dictionary file
A mapping from words to phones (elementary spoken sounds) Allows words to have multiple pronunciations E.g., the AN4 dataset includes the file an4.dic and it includes the lines
ELEVEN ELEVEN(2) E IH L EH V AH N IY L EH V AH N IY

By combining the transcript file and dictionary file, the sounds in each recorded audio file can be determined This is a major challenge facing training Recall, the overall goal of training is to find models for each sound. But to make the training process easier for the users, we only provide recordings of words and sentences.

However, it is a bit tricky to determine which part of the audio file corresponds to which sound.

Files needed

Training
path/filename (without extension!) The path is from where the SphinxTrain program is executed E.g., an4_train.fileids path is relative to where AN4 /etc directory. So SphinxTrain needs to be run from this directory

your_db_train.fileids - List of files used for training

E.g., AN4 includes an4_train.fileids Format

your_db_train.transcription - Transcription for training (described on previous slide) your_db.dic - Phonetic dictionary (described on previous slide) your_db.filler - List of fillers and what they map to
Fillers are things like silence, breathing, um etc. Fillers should also be used in the transcript
E.g., <s> TWO +UM+ SIX EIGHT FOUR FOUR ONE EIGHT </s> Fillers use the + sign before and after

During training, models for fillers will be computed Decoding is more complicated
Fillers are allowed to be added, but there is some penalty the fillers are ignored when computing the probability of a sequence of words E.g., the language model might tell us that go to bed is common, and go up bed is uncommon. If the decoder detect go um to bed it translates it to go to bed For some reason, fillers are not used in the an4 and PDA transcript files <s>, </s>, SIL are silence are included SMACK is listed in the PDA filler file, but not in the transcript </s> <s> <sil> ++INHALE++ SIL SIL SIL +INHALE+

File format

your_db.phone - Phoneset file

a list of all labels of phones used (sounds), including fillers E.g., an4.phone: AA, AE, AH,
Every phone label used in the dictionary must be in the .phone file AND the filler labels

 Must have sphinxtrain/bin/debug in path Must copy sphinxbase.dll to sphinxtrain/bin/debug or set path to Move pocketsphinix exe and dll Edit sphinxtrain.in to remove /log and set prefix to path Must use python 2.7 Delete an4.html before running
This is a log file. Will not exist before the first run. But if you run and find errors, you can check it. But make sure to delete it before running so you can see the errors

Change an4.ug.lm.DMP to an4.lm.DMP

Language model
Language models define which combinations of words are allowed.
And, which combinations are more common or less common How often a word appears
Words: Go, stop, hi, bye Combinations with 2 words: Go forward; go back; Note that the length of these sequences can be 2, 3, .. The language cannot specify all combinations of any length. So only combinations up to some length (e.g., 2 or 3) are specified

Language model defines

How often combinations of word appear

.ARPA files specify the language with a particular format

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh378460.aspx for some details See next slide

There is an online language maker that takes sentences, counts the combinations of words and makes a ARPA file If you make your own arpa file,
you must sort it before using
sphinx_lm_sort < unsorted.arpa > sorted.arpa sphinx_lm_convert I sorted.arpa o sorted.lm.DMP Note that sometimes files that end in .lm are in the arpa format

Then convert to lm The DMP can be used to decode

<header - information ignored by applications> \data\ ngram 1=9 ngram 2=11 ngram 3=3 \1-grams: -0.8953 <unk> -0.7373 -0.7404 </s> -0.6515 -0.7861 <s> -0.1764 -1.0414 When -0.4754 -1.0414 will -0.1315 -0.9622 the 0.0080 -1.4393 Stock -0.3100 -1.0414 Go -0.3852 -0.9622 Up -0.1286 \2-grams: -0.3626 <s> When -0.1736 -1.2765 <s> the 0.0000 -1.2765 <s> Up 0.0000 -0.2359 When will 0.1011 -1.0212 will </s> 0.0000 -0.4191 will the 0.0000 -1.1004 the </s> 0.0000 -1.1004 the Go 0.0000 -0.6232 Stock Go 0.0000 -0.2359 Go Up 0.0587 -0.4983 Up </s> \3-grams: -0.4260 <s> When will -0.6601 When will the -0.6601 Go Up </s> \end\

ARPA format
/data/ specifies how many entries The numbers are log10 of probabilities For the 3-gram entry
-1.2 go to bed -.1. The first number, -0.2 is log10 of the probability that the last word (bed) occurs given the first two words have occurred
There might be other 3-grams like go to sleep, etc.

The second number is the probability that no words occur after this 3-gram -.2 go to -10.1 The first number is the log10 of the probability that to occurs after go The second number is the probability that no words will come after go to
Not so likely

For the 2-gram entry

For the 1-gram

-1.041 go -0.27 The first number is the probability that go occurs
Go can occur by itself

The second number is not the log10 of a probability, but is log10 of a weight (it could be log10 of a probability, but does not have to be)

I could only get this working on Linux.

Running pocketsphinx on android

Windows might be possible (I didnt try MAC)

The instructions here http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/2011/05/buildingpocketsphinx-on-android/ are almost correct Follow instructions for getting and compiling sphinxbase and pocketsphinx Get PocketSphinxDemo.tar.gz
Import that to eclipse
File->import->Existing Projects into workspace-(next)Select Select archive file browse and select PocketSphinxDemo.tar.gz

In an editor, open eclipse/workspace/PocketSphinxDemo/jni/Anroid.mk In the second to last line

Change
LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := sphinxutil sphinxfe sphinxfeat sphinxlm pocketsphinx LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := pocketsphinx sphinxlm sphinxfeat sphinxfe sphinxutil

To

(back to instructions from web page) Build,

Change directory to eclipse/workspace/PocketSphinxDemo/jni Android/andtroid-ndk-r7b/ndk-build B

Adjust properties->Builders as described on web page

Im not sure how important this is.
Swig makes an interface between java and c++, but these files have already been down loaded. ndk is run from the command line

On phone
(the directory should be /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx) adb shell mkdir /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx cd /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx Make directory struction as shown on web page
/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/hmm /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx /hmm/en_US /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx /hmm/hub4wsj_sc_8k
Not sure if this is needed.

/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx /lm /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/lm/en_US

Cd to CMUSphinx/pocketsphinx/model/hmm/en_US/
Android/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb push ./hub4wsj_sc_8k /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/hmm/en_US/hub4wsj_sc_8k

Cd to CMUSphinx/pocketsphinx/model/lm
Android/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb push ./en_US /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/lm/en_US/

In eclipse
In RecognizerTask.java, change code to include the correct path
This path must match the path where the model files are located

pocketsphinx.setLogfile("/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/pocketsphinx.log"); Config c = new Config(); /* * In 2.2 and above we can use getExternalFilesDir() or whatever it's called */ c.setString("-hmm", "/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/hmm/en_US/hub4wsj_sc_8k"); c.setString("-dict", "/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/lm/en_US/hub4.5000.dic"); c.setString("-lm", "/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx/lm/en_US/hub4.5000.DMP"); c.setString("-rawlogdir", "/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/edu.cmu.pocketsphinx"); // Only use it to store the audio
Note that these lines are also changed if you use different models Build, run and test

Windows install
Requires Android NDK Flex for windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/fle x.htm Bison for windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/bi son.htm Get CMUSphinix from here: ??
Note that this contains the

 Follow directions from

http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/2011/05/buildi ng-pocketsphinx-on-android/ Or google: pocketSphinx android

Or:
But order of libs at the end need to be reversed Only compiles on linux, because is need yacc

 resources: http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinxman/

Voice activity detection

VAD is used to detect if anyone is speaking