What is Read Speech?
Recordings of speakers reading specified text, with clear pronunciation and known text, the base material for TTS and ASR.
What buyers get wrong
The trap with read speech is that it is too clean — it comes out sounding like a news anchor, and a model trained on it underperforms in real conditions. We collect an extra set at natural speaking rate as a comparison.
The specification detail that decides everything
Studio (low noise floor) or home (real environment) — the two differ in both signal-to-noise ratio and price.
This is the line item that most often separates a dataset that works from one that gets re-ordered. It belongs in the specification before production starts, not in the delivery review.
How we source read speech
We do not hold inventory in this category. A requirement comes in, we match it to a producer who can meet the specification, and we agree the quality bar with both sides before recording begins. A pilot batch goes first so misalignments surface early.
Specification at a glance
| Category | Read Speech |
|---|---|
| Group | Speech data |
| Critical spec | Studio (low noise floor) or home (real environment) — the two differ in both signal-to-noise ratio and price. |
| Included by default | Pilot batch, metadata schema, source and consent documentation |
| Pricing | Quoted from specification — no published rates |
Read Speech across languages
This category is available in every language we cover. The difficulty changes with the language, which is why each language page documents its own constraints.
-
Hindi
South Asia
-
Arabic (MSA)
Middle East & North Africa
-
Indonesian
Southeast Asia
-
Thai
Southeast Asia
-
Turkish
Middle East & Europe
-
Vietnamese
Southeast Asia
-
Filipino
Southeast Asia
-
Persian
Middle East & North Africa
Related categories
-
Call Center Speech
Recorded customer-service calls, real or simulated, capturing both the agent and the caller side, used for call center QC, intent recognition, and dialogue systems.
-
Conversational Speech
Speech from natural conversation between two or more people, on open or semi-structured topics, used for conversational AI, voice assistants, and small talk models.
-
Singing Voice
Vocal recordings with melody, in both a cappella and accompanied form, used for singing voice synthesis, music information retrieval, and lyric alignment.
-
Speech Commands
Targeted recordings of short command words or phrases, usually with many speakers reading each entry several times over, used for wake words and on-device command recognition.
-
Podcast Speech
Long-form podcast and interview audio, either solo monologue or two-person conversation, used for long-form speech recognition and speaker modeling.
-
Multilingual Speech
Speech data covering multiple languages within one project, used for multilingual ASR, cross-lingual transfer, and language identification.
Questions about read speech
Do you have read speech available now?
No — we do not hold inventory. Everything is produced against a specification. That means the timeline starts when the spec is agreed rather than immediately, and it also means the data matches your requirement instead of approximately matching something already built.
Can this be combined with other categories in one delivery?
Yes, and it is common. A single specification can cover several categories across several languages, with one pilot batch and one quality bar. It usually reduces total cost because speaker recruitment and project setup are shared.
What does the consent documentation cover?
Signed speaker consent stating the intended use, the collection methodology, and the annotation guideline the data was produced under. For projects involving EU data subjects the chain is built to satisfy GDPR, including the transfer mechanism.
Request read speech
Tell us the language, the hours, and what the data needs to look like. You will get a real number and a real timeline — not a range. If we cannot source it well, we will tell you that instead.
- Pilot batch before the full run, so problems surface early.
- Consent documentation delivered with the data.
- No medical or clinical data. No recorded telephone calls.