Below are details of the SIL acoustic phonetics programs CECIL and WinCECIL. CECIL is a DOS program (using special hardware) and WinCECIL is a Windows program (using a sound card or an in-built sound system). Also included are instructions for obtaining CECIL and WinCECIL.
System Name : CECIL (Computerised Extraction of Components of
Intonation in Language)
Version : CECIL 2.1, January 1994
Additional programs : UTTPLAY - facilitates language learning
UTTWARP - modifies duration and amplitude of segments
State of completion : Released for general use. Only one known bug, when
attempting to print using Qume emulation on Toshiba
printers.
Availability : The hardware and software is the copyrighted property of
the Summer Institute of Linguistics. However, in the
interest of sharing the fruit of our research with the
larger academic community, the user of the CECIL
software is granted the right to share copies of the
distribution diskette with friends and associates,
provided this is not done for commercial gain.
There are charges for media, manuals & special hardware
(see below).
For purchases, contact computer.sales.jaars@sil.org
For s/w only, contact softwarelibrary.jaars@sil.org
Documentation : There are 3 manuals:
1. 'Interpreting CECIL' - how to use CECIL for field
linguistics
2. 'CECIL Reference Manual' - Hardware and software
installation, configuration and use; recording
techniques; problems and recovery; hardware servicing.
3. 'Technical Support Manual for the CECIL Interface
(CI500)' (not included in the standard CECIL package)
- Hardware information for the maintenance
technician; assistance for the programmer
developing speech software to be used with the
CECIL hardware.
Intended user : Field-based acoustic phonetician or phonologist
Platform : IBM compatibles with VGA, EGA, CGA or DSCGA graphics
adaptors and MS-DOS 3.3 or later
Special requirements : An SIL 'CECIL Hardware Interface' (a 12 volt
rechargeable battery operated box that plugs into the
parallel port, with a loudspeaker & throughput
connection to a printer).
Author Name(s) : Philip Brassett (Coordinator: Geoffrey Hunt)
Author Email(s) : philip.brassett@sil.org
geoffrey.hunt@sil.org
Description: Provides a portable acoustic phonetics laboratory with the
following features:
a) viewing of one or two sound waves at a time, with zooming to a single cycle
or less,
b) manual marking of segments, using IPA,
c) playback in normal, faster or slowed modes, while retaining the original
pitch and spectral qualities. There are special playback features to help
identify changeover between phones.
d) easy measurement of the duration of segments (to 0.001 of a second),
e) graph of average amplitude, including a numerical readout (termed
'loudness' in the program, in order to encourage the non-specialist),
f) graph of voicing pitch, including precise readouts in Hz and semitones
(the maximum permitted range is 50 Hz to 500 Hz),
g) 4 different graphs of 'Change of sound quality',
h) any of the above graphs can be overlaid on any other for purposes of
visual comparison or output,
i) spectrograms, including modification of the shading,
j) spectra, including customized calculation using a second cursor,
moving specta and measurement of formant frequencies,
k) output to printer, graphics file (PCX) and data file
l) variable sampling speed (a 3 second utterance can be handled at a
sampling speed of 22,000 Hz, 6 seconds at 11,000 Hz).
m) two different utterances or two copies of the same utterance can be
loaded at any one time, and may be overlaid,
n) context-sensitive helps available at all times, and these may be
translated into other languages without any programming,
o) one of the manuals give a general approach to analyzing a tonal
language,
p) an additional UTTPLAY program to assist the user in language learning,
q) an additional UTTWARP program to enable the specialist to distort the
duration or amplitude of parts of an utterance and test reactions of a
speaker.
r) printing of Bark axes for plotting vowels.
WinCECIL provides the same facilities as CECIL, but in a different operating environment. The notes below only indicate the differences between WinCECIL and CECIL.
System Name : WinCECIL
Version : WinCECIL 2.1b, December 1995
Additional programs : WinUttPlay - facilitates language learning
: AudioCon - converts audio files from the CECIL/WinCECIL
UTT format to Windows WAV format. Also converts
within a given format from one sampling speed to
another, and/or from 16-bit to 8-bit and vice-versa.
State of completion : Version 2.1b is ready to be released (12 December 1995).
No known bugs in version 2.1b. A final version, 2.2,
containing a simplified pitch extraction algorithm
and formant tracking may be introduced. Versions 2.1
and 2.1a contained a file-overwriting bug that could
occur after spectrograms had been generated.
Documentation : There is one manual - 'Interpreting CECIL' (see above).
It only has occasional reference to the program as
such, and these might by now be inaccurate.
There is an extensive Windows help file available from
within the program.
Platform : IBM compatibles with Windows 3.1 or later
Special requirements : A Windows-compatible sound system, either a sound card
or an in-built system. Software that comes with the
sound system must include a program to manipulate the
gain for recording and volume of playback.
Description: The following notes indicate further differences between CECIL
and WinCECIL.
a) The CECIL hardware contained a hardware high-pass active filter with a knee
at 72 Hz and a falloff of 24 dB/octave to get rid of unwanted low-frequency
noise. Windows sound cards do not provide such a feature. So, beginning
with WinCECIL 2.1a, an optional software high-pass filter was added. This
could be used either when recording or copying the sound wave from one
frame to another.
b) The term 'loudness' (used instead of 'average amplitude') has been changed
to 'magnitude' in version 2.1a.
c) Production of graphics files is done by 'Capturing the Window'. This
copies the whole of the WinCECIL screen to the clipboard (the size of the
resulting file can be changed by altering the size of the window) and
editing it in an appropriate program, such as Paintbrush or Paint Shop, and
saving it in the required format.
d) High-quality printouts of spectrograms to laser printers.
(1) To download CECIL and WinCECIL now, click on these links:
(2) To obtain CECIL and WinCECIL using a command-line FTP client:
FTP to ftp.sil.org and log in as anonymous.
To retrieve CECIL, do these commands:
cd [.software.dos]
binary
get cecil21.zip
To retrieve WinCECIL, do these commands:
cd [.software.dos]
binary
get wincecil22.zip