Nist Sphere format files

Question

In order to read NIST sphere format files, I'm trying to install NIST SPHERE software downloaded from here, but I encountered some errors:

make[2]: Entering directory `/home/ibtissem/tools/nist/src/bin'
gcc  -I/home/ibtissem/tools/nist/include -L/home/ibtissem/tools/nist/lib -g -g -DNARCH_linux h_add.c  -lm -o h_add
h_add.c:31: error: undefined reference to 'sp_verbose'
h_add.c:31: error: undefined reference to 'sp_verbose'
h_add.c:28: error: undefined reference to 'hs_getopt'
h_add.c:42: error: undefined reference to 'sp_verbose'
h_add.c:42: error: undefined reference to 'sp_get_version'
h_add.c:44: error: undefined reference to 'hs_optind'
h_add.c:50: error: undefined reference to 'hs_optind'
h_add.c:53: error: undefined reference to 'hs_optind'
h_add.c:55: error: undefined reference to 'hs_optind'
h_add.c:71: error: undefined reference to 'sp_create_header'
h_add.c:93: error: undefined reference to 'sp_write_header'
h_add.c:103: error: undefined reference to 'sp_fpcopy'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [h_add] Error 1

Does someone have any idea about this error?

Answer 1

There is a new version of sphere here： http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/mig/tools.cfm

The second tool in Corpus Building Tools. According to the readme file of the package, it has been tested on the following plantforms:

Mac OS X (10.6)
Linux (Ubuntu 11.04)
Cygwin (1.7 under Windows XP)

Answer 2

I'd recommend using Sound Exchange. It includes both a converter:

sox foo.sph foo.wav

As well as a simple player:

play foo.sph

It's also well-maintained and does all sorts of other useful things. You can easily download packages without compiling it.

Answer 3

sphere_2.6a.tar.Z is very outdated package not supported in modern systems

To decode SPHERE files download sph2pipe instead:

ftp://ftp.ldc.upenn.edu/pub/ldc/misc_sw/sph2pipe_v2.5.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.ldc.upenn.edu/pub/ldc/misc_sw/sph2pipe_v2.5.README_1ST