The mes/signaix package was developed to display, label and process speech signal, according to the "Software Lego" principles. That is, it was designed as a toolbox composed of a series of subtools, each devoted to solving a unique, specific problem. This package has grown out of a number of Unix-based speech analysis tools that have been developed over a period of several years to assist in phonetic research.

mes is the signal display/label tool, signaix is a set of speech processing tools and graphical utilities.Each tool is a shell level command, which may be run independently.As much as possible, non-graphical tools are designed as 'Unix filters'.

Main features

At each movement of a signal window, or at each movement of a cursor on the signal, mes may run synchronously various 'treatments' (signal processing, various parameters displaying, signal playing, etc...), called 'link treatments'. A 'link treatment' is generally a shell script combining processing, graphic or general tools. Then any (speed enough) script may be a 'link treatment'.More ever,a 'link treatment' generating a processed signal for example, may start an other instance of mes , and then send it a 'reload message' to update its display (ie the processed signal) and its eventual 'link treatments'.

The package was designed as a simple and open system: The maintenance, the modularity and the customization are made easier by using various interpreters (Korn shell, TclTk, awk..), there are no complex headers to be compatible with the other Unix tools.

Main tools

• graphic tools: 2-D and 3-D ('sona' like) display, electropalatogram display
• signal processing: RMS energy, zero-crossing rate, spectral analysis (FFT,LPC spectrum,sonagram, filtering, pitch detection(several methods), and modelisation, pitch and/or speech rate modification.

A free version of mes_signaix can be downloaded to your system for non-commercial, non-military purposes (see our user agreement). This version has been developed for Linux and Solaris 2.4 and greater. It has been tested under Solaris 2.4, 2.5 on Sun Workstations and PC 486s, and Linux RedHat 5.1 and greater. At run time it needs :

• The Motif (or Lesstif) library (Solaris 2.5 includes it)
• A TclTk interpreter (Tcl 7.x , Tk 4.x ) wish

To compile this package, gmake is necessary. Gnu C compiler (gcc) or Sun C compiler may both be used. For details, please read carefully the README in the archive file.