Original Recording of Freiburg Words for Testing Hearing with Speech

The files contain recordings of the monosyllabic words, polysyllabic numbers, and CCITT noise (ITU, 1993) of the Freiburg Speech Test (Hahlbrock, 1953). The words are given in DIN 45621-1:1995. The 400 monosyllables are organized in 20 test lists à 20 nouns. They are stored in "Einsilbige Wörter.zip". The name of each wav-file includes the number of the test list (L01, L02, …) and the position of the word within the test list (W01, W02, …). The 100 polysyllables are organized in 10 test lists à 10 numbers. They are stored in "Mehrsilbige Wörter (Zahlen).zip" with similar nomenclature. DIN 45626-1:1995 describes the recordings. Speech signals were recorded in 1969 in the studios of Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg, Germany, with the speaker Claus Wunderlich (Brinkmann, 1974). The recordings were processed by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany, and Polygram International, Hannover, Germany. Later, the recordings were digitalized by Siemens AG and distributed on compact disc by "Siemens Audiologische Technik GmbH" (legal successor WS Audiology A/S) with the title "Wörter für Gehörprüfung mit Sprache" ("Words for hearing tests with speech") under item no. 7970155. The words were cut out as accurately as possible, i.e., with as little background before and after each word as possible (see Winkler and Holube, 2016a). The CCITT noise was originally included for calibration purposes, but is often used as noise masker when the monosyllables are presented in background noise.