[speaker002:] OK, so we're live.
[speaker001:] OK.
[speaker002:] Are we live or are we Memorex?
[speaker001:] We're somewhere in between.
[speaker003:] OK, so that's
[speaker001:] OK, so we have some sheets for uh [pause] some standard doohickies to [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Wait.
[speaker002:] Right. So.
[speaker003:] You're going to sit there?
[speaker002:] Is that alright?
[speaker003:] Yeah, OK, maybe I'll put this thing here then.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker001:] OK, so this is February second, eh, two thousand, this is eh meeting number one [pause] with Adam and Dan and Morgan, about five o'lock uh in the afternoon. A range of microphones.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] What's this one here? This [disfmarker] this one is [disfmarker] has a couple of cheezy electrettes and [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah, that's [disfmarker] [pause] that's the dummy [disfmarker] dummy PDA.
[speaker001:] That's connected too, or [disfmarker]?
[speaker002:] Yep.
[speaker003:] Yeah, it is.
[speaker001:] That's connected.
[speaker002:] Yeah, both channels.
[speaker001:] It's got two [disfmarker] to both channels.
[speaker003:] Oh, hang on.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] Yeah, it is at the moment.
[speaker001:] OK.
[speaker003:] Yep.
[speaker001:] OK. This is [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Although the gain [pause] is pretty low. So for the um [pause] read numbers task, I have extracted these [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] Hang on, let's [disfmarker] let's [disfmarker] OK let's just [disfmarker] let's just name the microphones.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker003:] So I'm speaking on the [pause] ear mounted [pause] uh wired headset thing. OK.
[speaker002:] Right and I'm now talking on microphone number two, uh, the wireless microphone number two.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Um, I have no idea which one I'm [disfmarker] I'm on.
[speaker002:] I'm [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] Oh one!
[speaker003:] You're on one.
[speaker001:] Oh, I'm number one.
[speaker003:] Absolutely.
[speaker001:] OK, [vocalsound] which is a [disfmarker] a l a lapel, in fact it's sticking through my [pause] lapel.
[speaker003:] Yes. OK so this is [disfmarker] this is the PZM nearest the eh eh the machine room end of the table.
[speaker002:] Actually, i
[speaker003:] Then [pause] there's [disfmarker] I know, but yeah. It's number three, it says, but [pause] we'll be able to figure it out. This is at the middle of the table This further down the table. And this [disfmarker] this one is right at the end of the table, OK? And then we've got the uh [disfmarker] This is the left side of the dummy PDA and this would be the right side.
[speaker001:] I think listening to this is gonna be like watching somebody's home movies.
[speaker002:] Yes, it'll be pretty horrible.
[speaker001:] Yeah, OK.
[speaker003:] Very exciting.
[speaker002:] So, what I have on these forms here is for the read numbers [disfmarker] read digits tasks and it's extracted directly from Aurora and uh [disfmarker] So what I was thinking is we could start just by filling it out and then reading [disfmarker] reading the numbers on the form.
[speaker001:] OK, what do we do with the stuff on top?
[speaker002:] Fill it out.
[speaker001:] But I [disfmarker] Do we say it after we [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] No.
[speaker002:] No, you don't need to.
[speaker003:] Just write it down.
[speaker001:] What are we [disfmarker] why are we writing it down?
[speaker002:] So that [pause] when we [pause] transcribe the data we can figure out who said it and their gender and the date and the time and what mike they were on and all that sort of thing.
[speaker001:] Oh. OK That's good. So I don't need to fill that out right now. So maybe we should just say it.
[speaker002:] W Why don't you want to fill it out right now?
[speaker003:] OK.
[speaker002:] Just so that [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] So then we're not spending the time writing it out. So that we're spending the time talking.
[speaker003:] Well, how about [pause] you give me one of those and we can fill it out and Morgan can read and then we can do it like that.
[speaker001:] I'm just uh concerned about a bunch of dead time while we all sit here and fill out the things.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker003:] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[speaker001:] Right?
[speaker002:] And so you have to be sure to pause [pause] between each line, since we're going to be segmenting it and then [pause] doing it that way.
[speaker001:] Oh. Right. OK, so this is Morgan. I'm going to read some numbers now. That's my group.
[speaker002:] So I definitely wasn't pausing enough between them.
[speaker003:] This is [disfmarker] these are things we will find out.
[speaker002:] That'll be an issue. Yep.
[speaker001:] Yeah. I don't know if I said mine was transcript zero, but it was.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm!
[speaker001:] Oh, good.
[speaker003:] OK.
[speaker001:] OK. That's a little bit.
[speaker003:] Can I have something to write on the back of?
[speaker001:] So, so where are we in this?
[speaker003:] Thanks.
[speaker001:] Let's see, so we now [disfmarker] we now have a few mikes that work. How long did it take you to set this up?
[speaker003:] Oh! It didn't [disfmarker] doesn't take [disfmarker] Well, I mean as you see we haven't really set it up that well, but it doesn't [disfmarker] it doesn't take long to set up. I mean, We just came up here [pause] one night after recording so it took like twenty minutes something like that.
[speaker002:] Right and that [disfmarker] that included a fair amount of fiddling around, since it's [disfmarker] it's more or less the first time we've tried to do it.
[speaker003:] I mean it's [disfmarker] Yeah, [pause] I mean the equipment [disfmarker] Right. The equip Me and Adam went through it yesterday, just looked at everything. But it's all kind of here and set up, so it's just a question of turning it all on. And, um [disfmarker] running the program.
[speaker002:] I mean, ev eventually we'll want to like tape that over and run them up through the center so that wires aren't [disfmarker] aren't [disfmarker] people aren't tripping over the wires and so on.
[speaker003:] Right.
[speaker001:] Are we gonna [disfmarker] I mean, is it gonna be over there, or is it gonna be in there?
[speaker003:] Um, it's [disfmarker] it's gonna b it's [disfmarker] for reasons [disfmarker] because of the microphones runs we want that chunk there. There's more equipment in there. But there's [disfmarker] [pause] the idea is that there are [pause] these microphones on the table, there are some cables coming down [pause] sort of under a nice [pause] mat, and then that's [disfmarker] [pause] they [disfmarker] a bunch of them get sort of converged with digital there. And the idea is that this gets replaced by a cabinet with doors, so that [disfmarker] [pause] so that it's not [pause] open to fiddling.
[speaker001:] So that's what's gonna happen.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker003:] That's
[speaker002:] Do we have like a [pause] cabinet on order or do we just need to do that?
[speaker003:] We need to do that. It's on a list of things to do. I keep on hoping that [pause] they're gonna get done but they don't.
[speaker002:] Well, I [disfmarker] [vocalsound] I can help them get done um one question is budget.
[speaker003:] I [disfmarker] Yeah!
[speaker002:] Do we have any money at all that we can go out and spend on things like cabinets or a hard drive or things like that.
[speaker001:] Oh [disfmarker] I mean, I don't know. Did we s did we spend our [disfmarker] the budget already that we had?
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Uh, how much [pause] are we talking about here?
[speaker003:] Um. I don't know. A cabinet is probably going to cost [pause] a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars something like that.
[speaker001:] Yeah, I mean, you know, we [disfmarker] we can spend under a thousand dollars or something without [disfmarker] without worrying about it.
[speaker003:] I mean. Yeah.
[speaker001:] I mean, I think [disfmarker] um [pause] I'm more worried about things being kept in a funky state long enough that [disfmarker] that uh stuff gets broken or [disfmarker] or you know.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Well, I think our intention at this point is when we're not using it to record a meeting we'll coil them all up and put them under [pause] so that people will not be tripping over them and so on.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] So.
[speaker003:] But, [pause] well we should get to a [disfmarker] a nice kind of working state of our set up [pause] as quickly as possible.
[speaker001:] Yeah, and there's also the minor matter, it'd be kind of nice to able to [pause] bring people in and say "yes, this is where we do such and such", and then be able to see uh, you know, [pause] some kind of [disfmarker] I mean it's less important than doing what we're doing right now
[speaker002:] Right. Not have it [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] but [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] So.
[speaker003:] I mean [pause] there's one big issue with the equipment still, which is um ultimately we're gonna [disfmarker] well the idea is to have any number of these wired headsets, but there's this amplification problem. I built this thing, it's [disfmarker] that's [disfmarker] it's very noisy. We're actually recording [disfmarker] I'm [disfmarker] I'm going through it at the moment, [pause] but it's so noisy that I am not using for this. it's [disfmarker] it's designed to be used for the [disfmarker] for the desktop meeting as well. But I'm using [disfmarker] running that through my uh [pause] damp machine as a pre amp as an alternative.
[speaker001:] Well, we should be able to just go buy some preamps, [pause] I would think.
[speaker003:] Yeah. It's just [disfmarker] it eh You see how clumsy this is right? I have to use these batteries to bias them. And I'm only get two channels and there're a bunch of [disfmarker] [pause] There are like three connectors in the circuit. The thing is, like, it's [disfmarker] it's not s it's not that the thing doesn't exist [pause] commercially, but there isn't one unit which does the whole thing in one [disfmarker] in one [pause] swoop. So it seemed like it was a good idea to make one. um And I'm still not sure. I mean, I think [pause] I probably know how to fix this.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] I can probably build it better so it doesn't have such noise, but it's kind of a buy.
[speaker002:] Well, ultimately we're gonna need to build one anyway.
[speaker001:] Are we?
[speaker002:] Sure.
[speaker003:] Well, we could just [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Because we we're gonna have to put it in a PDA.
[speaker001:] Well.
[speaker002:] Right? If we have microphones in a PDA it's gonna need bias and [pause] a pre amp.
[speaker001:] I guess I'd sort of figured that [disfmarker] that Jim would do that at some point.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] Right?
[speaker003:] Yeah. Well n Yeah. Jim is busy at the moment. That's the problem. I was kind of hoping that Jim was going to build this box. But um [disfmarker] but he hasn't had time.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] Well, I think [disfmarker] I think he is quite interested in doing it. But.
[speaker001:] OK. Well If it's too noisy and if there's something we can buy, again for, you know, moderate amount of price, even if it takes a couple boxes or something, maybe we should just do it.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Yeah.
[speaker001:] And then [disfmarker] and then later we can [pause] uh replace it with [disfmarker] Because there may be other considerations [pause] that will go into the design. I mean, uh our getting some experience with this may help to determine [pause] some of things that are [disfmarker] I don't know [disfmarker] might change this design, So.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm. Right.
[speaker001:] There was uh a statement made uh which I don't think is right, by the way, but [disfmarker] [pause] there was a statement made at the uh DARPA Communicator meeting I was at recently that um [pause] [vocalsound] microphone [disfmarker] multiple microphones [pause] at a distance of less than [pause] three feet or something like that were totally useless, completely irrelevant.
[speaker003:] Oh!
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] You [disfmarker] you mean for noise cancelling, or [disfmarker]?
[speaker001:] for nois noise cancelling. Um, my counter argument is [disfmarker] is an [disfmarker] uh uh um, a white rat. uh, which [pause] has th it's two microphones exceedingly close together and it works pretty well.
[speaker003:] Oh.
[speaker001:] Um but [disfmarker] Yeah.
[speaker003:] OK. This happened.
[speaker002:] Do they mean [pause] omnidirectional, is that their point? I mean all the noise cancelling mikes, they're [disfmarker] you know, they're a few m millimeters away from each other pointing in different directions.
[speaker003:] I think [disfmarker] [pause] uh, I mean, uh my guess is that means it's just that if it's [disfmarker] if it's near field, [pause] the mathematics of beam [disfmarker] [pause] beam steering is different.
[speaker002:] But. Oh, I see.
[speaker003:] If the f if the wavefronts are not approximately planar [pause] then you can't just do delay and sum and expect it to work.
[speaker002:] It's [disfmarker] Oh, OK, so they're not talking about [pause] how far apart the mikes are, they're talking about how far they are from the speaker.
[speaker003:] I guess. Yeah.
[speaker001:] Right. But I think that if [disfmarker] my point is I guess if you [disfmarker] if you have a um [disfmarker] a uh s a volume in between [pause] the two [disfmarker] the two uh uh sensors and you do something cleverer, there clearly are ways [pause] to get more out of it.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. I mean the [disfmarker] um The [disfmarker] the weird thing is that actually [pause] delay in some beam forming is not [disfmarker] is not the clever thing to do.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] The [disfmarker] the [disfmarker] the underwater guys do this stuff which is [pause] different. And it actually means that you should get the microphones as close together as possible. Rather than trying to get them far apart so you can get [pause] separation, you sort of [disfmarker] [pause] you want them very close. And [disfmarker] And [pause] the math is too difficult for me to understand but it's [disfmarker] but it's there.
[speaker001:] Yeah. Well, there are various points in meeting where people were making uh uh very strong statements as a matter of fact, like one shouldn't even question it and [pause] this was one of them that [pause] was kind of [pause] funny. Um but I [disfmarker] I [disfmarker] I [disfmarker] what I take it to mean is doing [disfmarker] doing the dumb thing uh with two microphones would be very difficult to get too much out of it
[speaker003:] Yeah. Yeah.
[speaker001:] but I think it will be interesting to do other things that aren't dumb. So I [disfmarker] I still think it's potentially [comment] [pause] interesting to do that.
[speaker002:] Hmm.
[speaker001:] Although we we'll have to be uh a aware of this if we're writing proposals about it, wherever, that there may well be reviewers who will say, "well everyone knows that [pause] you can't get anything out of it if it's [disfmarker] [vocalsound] if it's close".
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Do they believe you can get speaker location out of it? Cuz that's [disfmarker] that's one way we could sneak it in.
[speaker001:] Uh, that is an interesting point. Yeah.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Certainly you can get some [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Well we could [disfmarker] I mean. By the time [disfmarker] [pause] We'll have [disfmarker] we'll have data so we can actually [pause] you know, demonstrate that.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Well.
[speaker001:] Hopefully.
[speaker002:] Oh, you mean for location?
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker001:] Well, we're getting some [disfmarker] we we're getting some right now.
[speaker002:] Depends on who's working on it. Yeah, right. but someone has to write some software to [disfmarker] to actually do it.
[speaker003:] Right. Right. But I mean.
[speaker001:] Well someone someone might be interested in [disfmarker] in it.
[speaker002:] Someone might. Oh that's uh [disfmarker] I was just thinking one thing we may wanna do is put the fake PDA right in front of someone [pause] instead of in the middle of the table like we have it now.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] on the thought that [disfmarker] my vision of it is you know each of us will have our little PDA in front of us [pause] and so the acoustics [disfmarker] uh you might want to try to match the acoustics.
[speaker001:] Maybe.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] But on the other hand, [pause] suppose that uh, you're the only one uh who is advanced enough in this thinking to actually bring such a PDA to [disfmarker] to a meeting
[speaker002:] No, and I don't need to meet with those people.
[speaker001:] and [disfmarker] and [disfmarker] [vocalsound] and therefore you bring it in, and you probably want it to be as near to people as possible so you might in fact shove it to the middle of the table.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] Well.
[speaker003:] Yep, yep. For those those we can make several [disfmarker] several more of these [comment] and then we can have actual [pause] recording with you know three [pause] P D
[speaker001:] Yeah. Well, I think we should. I mean, I think at least with two.
[speaker003:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] Right?
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] Because uh one of the th one of the fantasies that was at least fun to talk about was that uh uh OK maybe you th [pause] you're [disfmarker] [pause] the range of things you can do with multiple microphones is limited if they're a few inches apart, but what if you have two of these things?
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] And you know we have this [disfmarker] this idea of the handshake [pause] back and forth and say "I'm here, I'm here"
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] "We're now an array."
[speaker003:] Right, right. Yeah. And that [disfmarker] that seems very uh [pause] easy to believe scenario, I mean, given the number of palm pilots we've got on the table right now, so.
[speaker002:] That's right. Three, right?
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah
[speaker002:] So I guess this a pretty dense group but it it's getting a lot higher.
[speaker003:] Yeah, but [disfmarker] But that [disfmarker] it's We're not, even, you know [pause] [disfmarker] It's [disfmarker] we're just [disfmarker] It's not like we [disfmarker] We [disfmarker] we may be technical, but we're not particularly PDA people. So it's [disfmarker] That's just how it is.
[speaker002:] Well, I'm trying to be. So.
[speaker003:] Well, I know. Well, that's true. I mean.
[speaker002:] Except I s got a PDA way before [disfmarker] Well I was doing hand I was doing wearable computers at Boeing, so I guess I sort of count.
[speaker003:] OK.
[speaker002:] But.
[speaker001:] So uh [disfmarker] so where are we [pause] uh now? I mean so we've just [disfmarker] uh We're doing this recording so we show [pause] we can [disfmarker] we're capable of doing recording
[speaker003:] Right.
[speaker001:] uh there's [pause] I guess a little more wiring to do or something to have [disfmarker] to have more [disfmarker] if we had more people participating in the meeting we'd wouldn't quite be ready for that.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] Uh.
[speaker003:] Well we've got [disfmarker] we've got [disfmarker] Right now we could have two more people on wireless,
[speaker001:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] with a trip to Leo's Audio we could get a third extra person on wireless, and uh [pause] right now we could have three more [disfmarker] [pause] three more people wearing mikes like this, and that would just work. I mean I'm not sure how [disfmarker] [pause] how good the quality is on this mike but I think it's going to be OK. So we could actually have [pause] eight people with [disfmarker] with headset mikes [pause] with, I mean, basically no extra effort.
[speaker002:] Well. Five with wireless. So we could have eight.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Nine.
[speaker002:] Nine. Excuse me, nine.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Five with wireless and four without, and four with wired.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Um, we don't have [pause] headsets though.
[speaker003:] Yeah. We have the um [disfmarker] the ones we've been using, the ones we got for the PC.
[speaker002:] Oh, OK so we just have to c [pause] wander around and collect them up.
[speaker003:] Yeah, yeah. I think we have three of those.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] So, and the h
[speaker002:] Uh, there's one in my office. So.
[speaker003:] Right, right. They don't all work, but the nice ones, the um Plan Plantronic ones work.
[speaker001:] OK.
[speaker002:] So, we'll just have to see if that works.
[speaker001:] So a little bit of futzing, there's the issue about a cabinet, we might want to change some pre amps.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] So we can do some more recordings but there's [disfmarker] there's a little [disfmarker] little bit of ramp up [pause] on that over the next month, [pause] say.
[speaker003:] Yeah, yeah.
[speaker002:] Right and also I would like to work out some of the [pause] software issues a little more [pause] completely. So, um, you know, we're gonna want to resample and con and bring them over to another machine and uh [pause] um [pause] organize the [disfmarker] how we're gonna store it all.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah we were talking about that a little bit over coffee today, that [disfmarker] that um uh if you downsample it sounded like it came [disfmarker] it sounded like it was something like a gig gigabyte an hour if you didn't downsample and once you downsampled then it was something like four hundred megabytes an hour, if you used all [disfmarker] if you used all [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Per channel, or [disfmarker]?
[speaker001:] no, if you used all the channels. Something like that?
[speaker003:] We figured out that it was t twelve gig twelve gigabytes an hour?
[speaker002:] It was more than that.
[speaker003:] For [disfmarker] for all the channels? Was that with or without the [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] I thought it was one gigabyte. It couldn't be twelve.
[speaker003:] Cuz no, we've only [disfmarker] no, I mean we've only got four gigabytes and that
[speaker002:] We said, four gigabytes [pause] would give us twenty minutes [pause] before we did anything else.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Right. And then we [disfmarker] then we cut it in half.
[speaker002:] And then we cut in half, [pause] by [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] How'd you cut it?
[speaker003:] But [disfmarker] By s [pause] saving sixteen bits on instead of thirty [disfmarker] instead of thirty two.
[speaker001:] OK, so that's [disfmarker] so that's two gigabytes. And then [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Well no I mean it's uh four gigabytes for forty minutes.
[speaker002:] That's forty minutes
[speaker001:] Right.
[speaker002:] So, six gigabytes.
[speaker001:] But that's at forty four kilohertz with sixteen channels.
[speaker003:] Forty eight kilohertz, [pause] yeah. So we can actually triple that.
[speaker001:] So you can [disfmarker] right, so you can
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] So, hang on [disfmarker] so that would [disfmarker] OK
[speaker002:] I came out at the gig an hour, [pause] at one point. That [disfmarker] that's one computation I did for sixteen channels, sixteen bit.
[speaker003:] Well I think it's [disfmarker] I think it's two gig an hour.
[speaker002:] Is it two gig an hour? I'm off by an order of magni That's alright. Order of two.
[speaker003:] Cuz like, we don't [disfmarker] [pause] Maybe we don't [disfmarker] We don't need to save all channels,
[speaker002:] Factor of two.
[speaker003:] right? So, on average. We could [disfmarker] we don't [disfmarker] we [disfmarker] we wouldn't use all the channels, necessarily.
[speaker001:] Oh, we'll do the higher math later, maybe but it's [disfmarker] so it's [disfmarker] so maybe like a gig or two a [disfmarker] an hour, um but [disfmarker] um [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] OK, that is a bit more than I thought.
[speaker002:] How much here would we have to reformat the drive in there to get some of the more space cuz it [disfmarker] I mean it's a nine gig drive and there's four gig on sc on scratch and there's [pause] about three gig unused, it looked like, on the home directory.
[speaker003:] Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah.
[speaker002:] I just don't know enough about LINUX. How hard is it to [pause] repartition?
[speaker003:] It's a pain.
[speaker002:] It's a pain.
[speaker003:] I mean, you know, because [disfmarker] cuz we've got data on "user", right? And then we'd have to back it all up and [pause] copy it back on again.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] Yeah so this'll take some thought cuz we have [disfmarker] we [disfmarker] um If we are in fact gonna have forty or fifty hours at some point and we [disfmarker] we wanna ha have part of our work be on feature extraction, it means that we need to have waveforms available [pause] somehow.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Hmm.
[speaker002:] Right. So I've [disfmarker] I've already created a "U [disfmarker] U, doctor speech, data, MR" directory, [pause] or had Jane do it and uh [pause] um [disfmarker] but there's not a lot of free space around.
[speaker003:] No.
[speaker002:] So it [disfmarker] it [disfmarker] it has currently about four gig on the drive that I think she's going to put it on um.
[speaker003:] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
[speaker002:] And so we need [disfmarker] we definitely need to go [pause] buy [pause] uh [pause] you know forty gig [disfmarker] fifty gig of drive [disfmarker] drive space.
[speaker003:] Yeah. We don't need all [disfmarker] we don't necessarily need it all on line. I mean it will be different subsets. So you won't [disfmarker] you won't, you know, do all [pause] sixteen channels in a single [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] That's true. I hadn't even thought about that, although it'd be kind of interesting.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] What would you do?
[speaker003:] You typically train [disfmarker] I mean you'd have fi you'd have fifty hours
[speaker001:] I mean [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] we'd only use [pause] one of the PZM channels, something like this, and so that would you wouldn't have to use all sixteen channels [pause] at once. But it's kind of [pause] painful for [disfmarker] because basically, if we put them on C Ds then each CD will have [pause] all the channels for one [pause] recording, and then when you want to build the P files, you just want to get one of those files off each of [pause] the sessions and [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Yeah, it's pretty horrible.
[speaker001:] So what would we do for training? So if we're [disfmarker] if we're training distant mi we'd just use one of them?
[speaker003:] Yeah. Well, maybe two of them, but I mean we wouldn't use [disfmarker] we'd only use the distant mikes,
[speaker001:] OK.
[speaker003:] right?
[speaker002:] Yeah so it might be four. Right? But it wouldn't be sixteen.
[speaker001:] Well, although we wanted to get alignments from the close mike [pause] stuff.
[speaker002:] But that's a separate training.
[speaker001:] Right. But you don't want to be constantly take [disfmarker] putting that on disk and off disk and on disk.
[speaker002:] No wait. More disk is better. Absolutely. I mean [pause] my [disfmarker] my preference would be to get [disfmarker] get ourselves a hundred gig of disk.
[speaker001:] Yeah. The thing is it's really not very expensive right now.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] And just not bother.
[speaker001:] So it's more of an issue of [disfmarker] of structuring it with uh the uh Sys Admin folks so we don't panic them and figuring out where it goes.
[speaker002:] And back up.
[speaker001:] Well, we don't [disfmarker] it doesn't need to be backed up.
[speaker003:] Right if [disfmarker] if we [disfmarker] if we burn it all on CD ROM, then, um,
[speaker002:] Right, then it doesn't need to be backed up.
[speaker003:] in fact, we could you know [disfmarker] we could throw away the Broadcast News stuff and put it on there or something like that.
[speaker002:] Yeah, we were talking about that.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] I'm not sure if anyone's [pause] still using it.
[speaker001:] I think the only one using it has been Javier,
[speaker003:] Somebody used it recently.
[speaker001:] but at this point I think it's [disfmarker] he's only been using it for features that he calculated quite a while ago, so if nobody else is doing [pause] feature calculation [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] I'll send mail to speech local.
[speaker001:] Pardon?
[speaker002:] I'll send mail to speech local and see if anyone's still using it.
[speaker001:] How much space is that using up? Do you have any idea?
[speaker003:] It's uh twenty C Ds, so that's twelve gigabytes.
[speaker002:] So that would last us for a while.
[speaker001:] Yeah, couple hours! Well, anyway for this [disfmarker] this recording we're fine
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] cuz we're only [disfmarker] we're only [disfmarker] how many mikes are we recording right now?
[speaker002:] Well, right now we don't have any choice. It r still records all sixteen channels. It's just most of them are all zeroes. So that [disfmarker] that's on our list too.
[speaker001:] OK. Yeah, well that we can do something about.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Yep. It's mostly a question of user interface. How do we [disfmarker] how do we specify which ones are on?
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Yeah, so we don't store any of our audio formats compressed in any way do we? So these large sections when you guys aren't talking [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah. Probably, we could [disfmarker] we could probably just run Shorten on them or something and it will get a big win. I think that's a good [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Run what on those?
[speaker003:] Shorten. Tony Robinson's [pause] uh lossless compression thing.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker001:] What's it do?
[speaker003:] Um, it [disfmarker] [pause] it does [pause] AR [pause] modeling and so it looks at a section, [pause] it runs an AR model to sort of r w to whiten it [pause] and then quantizes [pause] the residual [pause] with a nice [disfmarker] with the three bits it can get away with. Something like that. So I think it [disfmarker] On [disfmarker] on each block it'll [disfmarker] [pause] it'll compress you know if there's load on in any range it'll use ratio bits.
[speaker001:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] I think it does that.
[speaker002:] Yeah, so, P Z
[speaker003:] Yeah, well.
[speaker002:] Yeah. Yeah, it's something that [disfmarker] that we definitely need to look at with this. Maybe we shouldn't've [pause] subsampled it down to sixteen bits [pause] for our first try.
[speaker003:] Well, it's OK, it's only the first try. I [disfmarker] what I'm thinking is um [pause] obviously we can do the [disfmarker] we can [disfmarker] we can choose any sixteen bits from the twenty four, so we can just have different gain things that we use [pause] you know per channel.
[speaker002:] Right. Yeah, so we might wanna see if maybe the low sixteen bits on the P Z Ms are better than the middle [pause] sixteen bits.
[speaker003:] Yeah. I think [disfmarker] [pause] probably the bottom four bits are not any good,
[speaker002:] Regardless, yeah.
[speaker003:] Right? Although you know it claims they are. But probably the [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] W I was just noticing on the [disfmarker] on the [disfmarker] there's a view meter, software view meter and the PZM gain is real low.
[speaker001:] Yeah, so I think initially we should take up more space until we've analyzed this and get a better sense of it
[speaker002:] So.
[speaker001:] because [pause] uh we don I mean we're not talking about forty or fifty hours at this point
[speaker003:] Mm hmm.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] we're talking about [pause] a half hour of [disfmarker] of speech
[speaker002:] Yep.
[speaker001:] and so [pause] uh we should look at this carefully
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] but [disfmarker] Yeah, I was [pause] interested when I saw the twenty four on there.
[speaker003:] Oh, yeah!
[speaker001:] Wow, I mean that's probably eight bits of noise.
[speaker003:] Oh yeah!
[speaker001:] Yeah. So.
[speaker002:] Yeah, that's right. We've got lots of bits of noise.
[speaker003:] These theories things are pretty amazing.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] And And there's help [disfmarker] help they seem [disfmarker] they seem good though they seem to be
[speaker001:] It's some sort of oversampling thing I imagine, right? Didn't we already get that?
[speaker003:] Oh, God knows. Yeah, yeah.
[speaker001:] Cuz you [disfmarker] you can't have [pause] uh component tolerances that are [pause] uh [pause] sixteen million [disfmarker] one in sixteen million parts,
[speaker003:] Right.
[speaker001:] so.
[speaker003:] Right.
[speaker002:] Right the other [disfmarker] other thing [pause] another issue is just getting a sound card up here. You know, I assumed that we could just put a sound blaster in if we want sound output.
[speaker003:] That [disfmarker] that card [disfmarker] that machine's got sound [disfmarker] They've got a sound blaster built into it.
[speaker002:] Oh, it's just not working.
[speaker003:] I just [disfmarker] I just disabled it cuz I wanted to find out [pause] how well the [pause] sound infrastructure would deal with both at once
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker003:] but I think yeah, that's, uh [disfmarker] [pause] probably it will be fine.
[speaker002:] Yeah, that way we don't [disfmarker] we can't listen to it [pause] on this machine.
[speaker001:] I'm s
[speaker003:] There's no,
[speaker001:] Oh!
[speaker003:] For a couple of reasons. Well, but the [@ @] [disfmarker] [pause] There are two ways we could listen to it. There's a sound [disfmarker] there's actually sound output built into this thing.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] But the driver [disfmarker] I haven't [disfmarker] the driver may not support it yet. And then there's also the sound or the sound card built in.
[speaker001:] Hmm.
[speaker003:] But I don't know how to [disfmarker] I don't know how the [pause] operating system would like having two sound cards.
[speaker001:] But we can FTP stuff over, right?
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] So [pause] it's connected.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] And we've looked at it so we know it's working. I mean, you can see the little squiggles, and it looks like speech [pause] so
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] You just can't listen.
[speaker001:] Yeah. OK. Um. One suggestion I have is that um I think this [disfmarker] [pause] maybe we should just read some more [disfmarker] you made more of these, right?
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] I think we should read some more because [disfmarker] because this is very f
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker001:] we [disfmarker] [pause] we need to [disfmarker] to work the [disfmarker] the [disfmarker] the uh [disfmarker] the talkers more because we're not gonna have that many meetings
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] and this is a pretty tiny amount of data.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] So maybe we should do another [pause] number list and [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Well right I [disfmarker] I just did ten per page I could easily do twenty per page. It's just a question of uh [pause] of how much uh annoyance I wanted to put uh people going to meetings through.
[speaker001:] Yeah. Well this is us. We'll have a fair amount of annoyance
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] yeah I think uh. So, can we do [disfmarker] we do another set?
[speaker002:] Sure.
[speaker001:] Are we [disfmarker] are we [disfmarker] are we [disfmarker] sort of [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Sure.
[speaker001:] we talked out about what we're [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Well no, OK, the question I still have about what we're going to do is what is [disfmarker] what [disfmarker] eh [disfmarker] OK, so we can get the equipment set up so that basically we're in a situation where we can [disfmarker] [pause] with, you know, ten minutes of preparation, we can bring [pause] nine people in here and do a multi channel recording.
[speaker001:] OK. Right.
[speaker003:] Um. What are [disfmarker] wh When are we [disfmarker] Are we going to do that? Who are they going to be? What meetings are we going to record?
[speaker002:] Us, to begin with.
[speaker003:] So which [disfmarker] which meetings [disfmarker] What meetings do we have?
[speaker002:] I think that's the intention.
[speaker003:] I mean like "us" being the Meeting Recorder people or "us" being anything that speech [pause] local does.
[speaker002:] Well, I think [disfmarker] [pause] I think, um, certainly us, Meeting Recorder.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Um, us other groups. It just depends on how many meetings we're [disfmarker] we're having. Um. Jerry also said it would be [disfmarker] he would be willing to have his group, some of the AI meetings do it as well.
[speaker003:] And we should have like [disfmarker] we should have Decoder meetings and stuff.
[speaker002:] And uh Exactly exactly. I think there are enough [pause] incidental meetings for us to [disfmarker] to do this. And if [pause] we can get it set up so it is convenient enough, um, then you can just do spontaneous meetings as well.
[speaker003:] Yeah, I mean that's the thing. It's OK to g Right.
[speaker002:] Which I'm interested in. I mean, that's one of the things, the whole reason I want a PDA as opposed to a wired room is for spontaneous meetings.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Right. Well, we've got to make it really really easy to start it going then in that case.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker003:] Cuz that [disfmarker] that's the real [pause] goal.
[speaker002:] That's right. That's why I put ten on here instead of thirty or forty or fifty.
[speaker003:] Right. But I mean if we [disfmarker] if we want [pause] Jerry's group to [pause] use it then we probably [@ @] won't ask them to read any numbers, right?
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker003:] Cuz.
[speaker002:] Well, I [disfmarker] I bet they would be willing to do it the first few times, just for the novelty.
[speaker003:] Yeah. Yeah.
[speaker001:] I think they would. And also he's [disfmarker] he's [disfmarker] he's got [pause] at least one woman.
[speaker003:] That's great.
[speaker002:] Oh, that's a good point!
[speaker003:] I know.
[speaker001:] And we're [disfmarker] we have a little problem of [pause] no women,
[speaker002:] Boy, that's abs I had never [disfmarker] I hadn't even thought about that.
[speaker003:] I know, it's a disaster.
[speaker001:] Yeah, well, when L when Liz uh Shriberg starts coming, then there's another woman although she [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Oh, man!
[speaker003:] It's alright she doesn't mind as long as we don't video her,
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] right?
[speaker001:] Ah, that's right. That was it. So.
[speaker002:] Maybe we should have the reading group here and force Jane to come.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah. No, well, actually we could have Jane uh [disfmarker] Jane's interested and curious about this stuff so she could attend one of [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] probably not the decoder meeting but some of the other stuff she [pause] would be interested enough and have her read [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] We could [disfmarker] we could have the reading group in here.
[speaker002:] Yeah, I mean it's a different style.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] I mean.
[speaker002:] But I think that's alright.
[speaker003:] Yeah, it's great.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Um, [pause] [vocalsound] we were joking about having lunch up here but eating with the microphones [disfmarker] Um, [pause] I had another question briefly about transcription.
[speaker003:] OK.
[speaker002:] So are we going get an external service or are we gonna do it? I mean who's gonna [pause] generate the transcripts?
[speaker001:] Um I think that one of the neat things about having this little pilot thing from today is we should try it a couple different ways,
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] so we should [pause] try to do it internally, maybe ask [disfmarker] ask Jane if we could get her to do it or [disfmarker] or [disfmarker] or have her [pause] supervise a linguistics student or somebody
[speaker003:] Mm hmm
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] and uh see how long it takes, and you know, multiply out the cost, and then send [disfmarker] send the same thing out, or maybe split it in halves or something [disfmarker] something like that to a [disfmarker] to an outside service
[speaker003:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] and uh see what that costs and how much hassle that is.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] And then we can assess it.
[speaker002:] Yeah, the [disfmarker] the problem of course is that it's [pause] you know, in [disfmarker] in this meeting it's three four five six seven eight, it's nine transcripts, [pause] potentially.
[speaker003:] Well, Except that you wouldn't transcribe them all individually,
[speaker001:] No.
[speaker003:] right? You would send [disfmarker] I mean, [pause] uh a transcriber is used [disfmarker] I mean, I don't know, assume [disfmarker] presumably a transcriber [pause] transcribes a single meeting,
[speaker001:] No.
[speaker003:] right? And so they [disfmarker] they just have to [pause] indicate that the [pause] speaker changes.
[speaker001:] Right. This was [disfmarker] this was the point of having near zero skew.
[speaker003:] Right?
[speaker001:] Right? So you just pick one, with the best sounding one, and give it to somebody and they transcribe it.
[speaker002:] Oh, you're right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Right. So [pause] the only thing we'll have to be careful with is that they're [disfmarker] well, what are they listening to?
[speaker003:] So [disfmarker] so they [disfmarker] they're gonna [disfmarker] they're gonna have to make speaker assignments [pause] or something like this.
[speaker002:] They're going to have to make speaker assignments, and wh and which recording are they gonna listen to?
[speaker003:] For one of [disfmarker] one of [@ @]. Or we could mix [disfmarker] we could mix the [disfmarker] the headset mikes, you know, just to make a single high q high quality [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] Right.
[speaker003:] and we could do [disfmarker] and we could do all kinds of weird things like having you know squelch so that [pause] you only, you know [disfmarker] you only [disfmarker] you cut it out when there's no energy.
[speaker002:] Oh, that would be interesting.
[speaker003:] So you don't [@ @] noise.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] Yeah, you could do fancy things, but it seems like that's enough.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] Yeah. I mean there's [disfmarker] it's [disfmarker] If we [disfmarker] if we do something which is have a little bit of human input to get the words then we can [pause] leverage that a lot by some clever cross thing to figure out which channel they really belong to and stuff like this, probably.
[speaker002:] OK. Mm hmm. Yet. So that [disfmarker] I mean, that's one chunk of work and just segmenting for this is gonna be another chunk of work. Um.
[speaker003:] Yeah. And [disfmarker] Yeah. As much work as you want.
[speaker001:] Yeah But uh I don't know. This meeting, so, say it's maybe going to be a half hour or something, and [disfmarker] [pause] and uh we've heard estimates ranging between ten and twenty [pause] times uh real time to do this kind of transcription
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] um [pause] so you know in [disfmarker] in principle then it'll take somebody a day for somebody to deal with this.
[speaker003:] Mm hmm. Wow. Yeah.
[speaker001:] And uh we'll see [pause] which one of those seems closest to right and if they [disfmarker] [pause] ramped up, if towards the end it was faster you know, get some sort of sense from them uh from whoever does it
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] and um then uh like I say, check it out with an external service and see [pause] if it's faster, cheaper, better, worse, whatever.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] Then we'll go from there.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm. Yeah, one of the things I was thinking with transcript is that if we take the near field and [pause] we do an initial [pause] recognition pass, is it easier for a transcriber to correct a transcript, if the [pause] near field mike does a reasonably good job?
[speaker003:] Hmm.
[speaker002:] I bet it isn't, unless it's really close to right.
[speaker003:] Yeah. I have [disfmarker] just because it's such an un The transcribing is sort of something I can imagine doing, whereas having this distraction of having sort of something that looks like it might be right but has got some [comment] very wrong bits in is sort of a less [disfmarker] less easy thing to do.
[speaker002:] Right. Some errors, yeah.
[speaker001:] I don't know. I do I don't know the answer to that.
[speaker003:] I'm sure the professional transcribers obviously don't have any use for [disfmarker]
[speaker001:] I don't know.
[speaker003:] Yeah Yeah, that's true,
[speaker001:] Well, I mean there's this Cyber Transcriber service, right?
[speaker003:] that's true.
[speaker001:] And at least supposedly the way they work is by feeding them what is the output of the recognizer.
[speaker003:] Yeah, by fixing up [pause] transcripts.
[speaker001:] So maybe it depends on what the software tools are like.
[speaker003:] Yeah, but [disfmarker] Yeah.
[speaker001:] If it's [disfmarker] you know, if they can easily flip through stuff and get to the right thing, or do you point, or I don't know. There's supposed to be some out [disfmarker] out [disfmarker] out of work shepherders or something in [vocalsound] Scotland but [disfmarker]
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Ah, the internet.
[speaker003:] They should all be in India right now. That's where the good, but the cheap English speakers are.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Not in Scotland.
[speaker001:] Inexpensive.
[speaker003:] I'm sorry, yeah.
[speaker002:] Not in Scotland.
[speaker003:] Well they don't speak [pause] such clear English
[speaker002:] They [disfmarker] they sheep [disfmarker] they s they [disfmarker] they speak cheap English, right?
[speaker001:] OK so we're degenerating, right. Are [disfmarker] are [disfmarker] are we done with uh MR business,
[speaker003:] Yep.
[speaker002:] Sure.
[speaker001:] or [disfmarker]? I mean what what's [disfmarker] maybe we should [disfmarker] what are our action items? So there's [disfmarker] there's the continuing process of [pause] cleaning up the stuff and making it easier to do that. There's taking [pause] the results of this meeting [pause] and putting it in some kind of decent form, probably getting [pause] some kind of single channel [pause] merged sum data or something so that you can give a simple [pause] sound file of some sort to a transcriber to deal with it rather than this massive thing.
[speaker003:] Mm hmm.
[speaker002:] Mm hmm.
[speaker003:] Mm hmm.
[speaker001:] That's a little bit of [pause] stuff to do.
[speaker002:] Right.
[speaker001:] Right?
[speaker002:] And then [pause] do some segmenting and recognition [disfmarker] initial recognition would be interesting to do.
[speaker001:] Yeah, although it [disfmarker] it [disfmarker] it [disfmarker] it may be separating out these numbers [pause] from the rest.
[speaker002:] That's what I mean.
[speaker001:] Yeah. And then
[speaker002:] Yeah just doing a digits on it [disfmarker] uh, connected digits.
[speaker001:] Yeah [pause] and uh Right. So, with this next [disfmarker]
[speaker002:] You wanna read?
[speaker001:] Sure. OK. How many more you got?
[speaker002:] Oh I on I did ten but I can [disfmarker] I have a script to generate them automatically.
[speaker001:] Well, let's do some more while we got them here.
[speaker003:] Wow.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker003:] What fun [pause] it is.
[speaker001:] Well, you know, it's not, but
[speaker003:] It's interesting that um it m it's not clear whether it's better to have them written as [disfmarker] as words or [disfmarker] or [pause] figures. But, of course, to get zero and "O"s distinguished we [disfmarker] you have to do it.
[speaker002:] That's why, yep.
[speaker003:] But [pause] it's kind of weird to read.
[speaker001:] Yeah, there's just two more. uh
[speaker002:] Go ahead.
[speaker001:] OK. So.
[speaker003:] Thanks.
[speaker002:] OK, go ahead and read it and then [pause] fill it out.
[speaker001:] OK.
[speaker003:] OK.
[speaker001:] OK. I'd say we're done.
[speaker002:] OK.
[speaker003:] Oh, I wonder [disfmarker] I wonder if we ran out of disk space yet.
[speaker001:] So, is it [disfmarker] it's going to disk, or is this [disfmarker] And how [disfmarker] how much disk do we have?