SpeaK Web

What is the SpeaK project?

The SpeaK project is a platform for organizing, presenting and sharing sound lexicons

Access to the complete SpeaK Documentation

Reference to mention : Susini, P., Houix, O., Misdariis, N., Faramaz, P., & Pellerin, G. (2022, April). The SpeaK project: A collaborative platform for presenting and sharing sound lexicons. In 16ème Congrès Français d'Acoustique, CFA2022.

The SpeaK project was developed under the surpervision of the Sound Perception and Design group (Ircam STMS Lab).

With the SpeaK project, we invite contributors, sound perception researchers, sound engineers, sound designers, sound collectors, ... to use this web platform to create and share sound lexicons, in order to improve our knowledge on sounds, and our skills to talk about sounds, and consequently, to foster our hearing ability, because they also depend on words at our disposal.

In the SpeaK project, a lexicon is defined by:

  • a list of words used to describe sound characteristics
  • a definition to explain the meaning of each word of the list
  • a corpus of sound examples to foster the perception of the characteristics

SpeaK allows to group:

  • the words in different typologies such as temporal or spectral morphologies.
  • the sounds in different categories such as wind and string instruments for example.

The SpeaK platform is available in two versions on the Ircam Forum:

SpeaK fo Web (JavaScript)

The version accessible here is a web version based on the version SpeaK for Max, with the great advantage of allowing to create and share sound lexicons online.

  • web developement: Patrick Faramaz & Martin Desrumaux
  • graphic & ergonomic design: Patrick Faramaz, Guillaume Pellerin & Patrick Susini
  • project management: Guillaume Pellerin
  • free access with logins : https://forum.ircam.fr/projects/detail/speak-web/

SpeaK for Max

SpeaK for Max was the first version developed for the SpeaK project. It is a downloadable Max patch, and still accessible.

Both SpeaK platfoms, for Max or Web, are free. If you are interested please contact patrick.susini at ircam.fr

The first sound lexicon available on both platforms is the lexicon words4sounds.speak providing a list of words frequently used to describe the perceived characteristics of a sound. The words4sounds.speak lexicon was developed within the Sound Perception and Design group (Ircam STMS Lab) in English and French.