Speech Recordings in Public Schools in Germany - the Perfect Show Case for Web-based Recordings and Annotation

In the Ph@ttSessionz project, geographically distributed high-bandwidth recordings of adolescent speakers are performed in public schools all over Germany. To achieve a consistent technical signal quality, a standard configuration of recording equipment is sent to the participating schools. The recordings are made using the SpeechRecorder software for prompted speech recordings via the WWW. During a recording session, prompts are downloaded from a server, and the speech data is uploaded to the server in a background process. This paper focuses on the technical aspects of the distributed Ph@ttSessionz speech recordings and their annotation.