How to install Speechalyzer/Labeltool

I wrote a java tool to annotate/transcribe speech data and would like to show in this blog how to run on your system.

First of all, the software is programmed in Java, so you need a java installation on your system, there are two flavours:

  • a JDK (java development kit) would be one to use if you plan to program in Java,
  • a JRE (Java runtime environment) is sufficient to run programs written in Java such as the Speechalyzer. so both (JDK or JRE) work

To test wether you got Java on your system you might want to open a shell/terminal/console (i.e. a window where you can type in system commands) and type

java -version

which either should output a response from the Java interpreter displaying the version or an error message that the program is not installed. As Java is requested to run Speechalyzer, please make sure it is installed.

The next step would be to download the Speechalyzer which actually comes as two softwares:

  • Speechalyzer is the main program which acts as a server to process audio files and actually can be run standalone.
  • Labeltool is the GUI client for Speechalyzer and can be started when Speechalyzer is running to interact with the program via point and click.

To install the programs, click on the links above, click on the "code" dropdown menues on the github pages and select either "as zip file" or use git. If you don't know git I strongly recommend to learn about it and use it it's a mighty tool to version and backup your work, but for now let's assume you use zip.

Save the zip files somewhere on your computer hard disk, perhaps create an own folder "programs" or "research" on your user home folder.

Unzip both folders.

Both of them have configuration files which should be edited with an arbitrary text editor.

Speechalyzer has a file called "speechalyzer.properties" which is located in the "res" folder in the main folder. So if you work with a linuy system, you might want to type

cd Speechalyzer-master
pico res/speechalyzer.properties

and change at least the values for "file type" and "sample rate" to something that makes sense for your audio files.

To adapt the Labeltool to your needs is a bit more complicated so I wrote an own blog post on this

If all went well you're set up and could try the Speechalyzer by printing out its useage in the shell:

java -jar Speechalyzer.jar -h

There are two options to load audio files:
1) copy them to the "recording" directory in the Speechalyzer folder
2) specify the path at startup:

java -jar Speechalyzer.jar -rd /path/to/my/audio/files

either way, you should see a startup message from the program stating how many files where loaded.

You might then want to open another shell/console/terminal, navigate to the Labeltool folder and start to program with

java -jar Labeltool.jar

which should results in a startup window with loaded audio files:

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