Open-Source Large Vocabulary CSR Engine Julius

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  About Julius

  "Julius" is a high-performance, two-pass large vocabularycontinuous speech recognition (LVCSR) decoder software forspeech-related researchers and developers. Based on word N-gram andcontext-dependent HMM, it can perform almost real-time decoding onmost current PCs in 60k word dictation task. Major search techniquesare fully incorporated such as tree lexicon, N-gram factoring,cross-word context dependency handling, enveloped beam search,Gaussian pruning, Gaussian selection, etc. Besides search efficiency,it is also modularized carefully to be independent from modelstructures, and various HMM types are supported such as shared-statetriphones and tied-mixture models, with any number of mixtures,states, or phones. Standard formats are adopted to cope with otherfree modeling toolkit such as HTK, CMU-Cam SLM toolkit, etc.

  The main platform is Linux and other Unix workstations, and also workson Windows. Most recent version is developed on Linux and Windows(cygwin / mingw), and also has Microsoft SAPI version. Julius isdistributed with open license together with source codes.

  Julius has been developed as a research software for Japanese LVCSRsince 1997, and the work was continued under IPA Japanese dictationtoolkit project (1997-2000), Continuous Speech RecognitionConsortium, Japan (CSRC) (2000-2003) and currently Interactive Speech TechnologyConsortium (ISTC).

  Features

  • An open-source software (see terms and conditions of license)
  • Real-time, hi-speed, accurate recognition based on 2-pass strategy.
  • Low memory requirement: less than 32MBytes required for work area (<64MBytes for 20k-word dictation with on-memory 3-gram LM).
  • Supports LM of N-gram, grammar, and isolated word.
  • Language and unit-dependent: Any LM in ARPA standard format and AM in HTK ascii hmmdefs format can be used.
  • Highly configurable: can set various search parameters. Alsoalternate decoding algorithm (1-best/word-pair approx., wordtrellis/word graph intermediates, etc.) can be chosen.
  • Full source code documentation and manual in Engligh / Japanese.
  • List of major supported features:
    • On-the-fly recognition for microphone and network input
    • GMM-based input rejection
    • Successive decoding, delimiting input by short pauses
    • N-best output
    • Word graph output
    • Forced alignment on word, phoneme, and state level
    • Confidence scoring
    • Server mode and control API
    • Many search parameters for tuning its performance
    • Character code conversion for result output.
    • (Rev. 4) Engine becomes Library and offers simple API
    • (Rev. 4) Long N-gram support
    • (Rev. 4) Run with forward / backward N-gram only
    • (Rev. 4) Confusion network output
    • (Rev. 4) Arbitrary multi-model decoding in a single thread.
    • (Rev. 4) Rapid isolated word recognition
    • (Rev. 4) User-defined LM function embedding

  Contact

  For any questions, e-mail to julius-info atlists.sourceforge.jp.

  The chief developer and maintainer of Julius (Unix) is LEE Akinobu(ri at nitech.ac.jp).

  A forum has been opened. Please post questions, look for information, or share knowledges in Julius forum.

  Latest version: 4.3.1

  The latest version is 4.3.1, released on January 15, 2014.

  Version 4.3.1 is a bug fix release. Several bugs has been fixed.
  
  See the "Release.txt" file for the full list of updates.
  Run with "-help" to see full list of options.
  

  Download Julius

  Note: you should prepare a language model and an acoustic model to run a speech recognition with Julius, See About Models below.

  Get current version

  • Source tarball
    • Julius: julius-4.3.1.tar.gz (1.7MB)
  • Pre-compiled binaries
    • Linux: julius-4.3.1-linuxbin.tar.gz (2.4MB)
    • Win32: julius-4.3.1-win32bin.zip(2.6MB)
  You can get old version from Development site.

  Get the latest codes via CVS

  You can get the current snapshot of source tree via anonymous CVS:

  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/julius co julius4
  

  Please note that current CVS repository has moved to "julius4" instead of "julius".You can also receive update notices by subscribing to [email protected] will be sent each time the source has been changed on theCVS. Anyone can subscribe from [email protected] page.

  Get Julius for Windows SAPI

  Julius for SAPI is MS Windows version of Julius/Julian which implementsMicrosoft(R) Speech API (SAPI) 5.1.You can use this version of Julius as a SAPI Voice Recognizer inapplications created for SAPI (e.g. Office XP).

  The recent version is fully SAPI-5.1 compliant, and it also supportsSALT extension.

  Julius for SAPI assumes that the user language and the application'sgrammar is in Japanese. So it is a little troublesome in case of theother languages because Julius for SAPI does not know thepronunciation of the words in a grammar. If you define pronunciationsto each of these, it may work, but we have not tried it.

  Please read following documents for detail.

  • Julius for SAPI README (Japanese)
  • Julius for SAPI Documents for Developers (Japanese)
  Download: you should install both of them. (last updated: 2004/02/05 for ver. 2.3)
  • Julius for Windows SAPI ver. 2.3 (installer)
  • Japanesestandard language model and acoustic model installer
  • Sample programs:
    • JavaScript
    • Win32 Application (C++, Microsoft Visual C++ 7.0)
    • Win32 Application (C++, OpenGL, Robot manipulation, executable binaries and part of sources).
    • SALT (for Microsoft .NET Speech SDK 1.0 beta2)
    • SALT (for Microsoft .NET Speech SDK 1.0 beta3)

  Related Tools

  word / phoneme segmentation kit

  This toolkit helps performing "forced alignment" with speechrecognition engine Julius with grammar-based recognition.This kit uses Julius to do forced alignment to a speech fileby generating grammar for each samples from transcription.
  • julius4-segmentation-kit-v1.0.tar.gz

  HTK-to-Julius grammar converter

  This toolkit converts an HTK recognition grammar into Julian format.A word network (SLF) will be converted to DFA format, and the wordsin the SLF are extracted from the dictionary to be used in Julian.Furthermore, word category will be automatically detected and definedto optimize performance in Julian.
  • slg2dfa-1.0.tar.gz

  About Models

  Since Julius itself is a language-independent decoding program, youcan make a recognizer of a language if given an appropriate languagemodel and acoustic model for the target language. The recognition accuracylargely depends on the models.

  Julius adoptsacoustic models in HTK ascii format, pronunciation dictionary inalmost HTK format, and word 3-gram language models in ARPA standardformat (forward 2-gram and reverse 3-gram trained from same corpus).

  We had already examined English dictations with Julius, and anotherresearcher has reported that Julius has also worked well in English,Slovenian (see pp.681--684 of Proc. ICSLP2002), French, Thai language,and many other Languages.

  Here you can get Japanese and English free language/acoustic models.

  • Japanese
    • Japanese language model (20k-word trained by newspaper article) and acoustic models (Phonetic tied-mixture triphone / monophone)

    More various types of Japanese N-gram LM and acoustic models are available at CSRC. For more detail,please contact [email protected].

  • English
    
    • We currently have a sample English acoustic model trained from the WSJdatabase. According to the license of the database, this model*cannot* be used to develop or test products for commercialization,nor can they use it in any commercial product or for any commercialpurpose. Also, the performance is not so good. Please contact to usfor further information.
    • The VoxForge-project is working on the creation of an open-source acoustic model for the English language.

  If you have any language or acoustic model that can be distributed as a freeware, would you please contact us?We want to run dictation kit on various languages other than Japanese,and share them freely to provide a free speech recognition systemavailable for various languages.

  Documents and Notes

  Documentation

  We are also making a complete documentation of Julius, fully updatedfor the current version. The document is called "Juliusbook", and its initial release has been done in Japanese. We are now making English version.
  • The Juliusbook (command manuals and option descriptions only)
  • The Juliusbook (Online Documentation)
  • New features in Julius rev.4.0
  • JuliusLib API Reference
  • JuliusLib application callbacks
  • Julius book for rev.3.2:an old document but has many informations.

  • full source code browser generated by Doxygen.
  • The recognition grammar format of Julius

  How to write a grammar for Julius

  The format of recognition grammar for Julius is briefly described here.

  References

  • Developmentsite (older versions here)
  • All documents (mostup-to-date but in Japanese)
  • Papers: (each link refers to its PDF reprints)
    • A. Lee and T. Kawahara."Recent Development of Open-Source Speech Recognition Engine Julius" Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC), 2009.
    • A. Lee, T. Kawahara and K. Shikano."Julius --- an open source real-time large vocabulary recognitionengine." In Proc. European Conference on Speech Communication andTechnology (EUROSPEECH), pp. 1691--1694, 2001.
    • T. Kawahara, A. Lee, T. Kobayashi, K. Takeda, N. Minematsu,S. Sagayama, K. Itou, A. Ito, M. Yamamoto, A. Yamada, T. Utsuro andK. Shikano."Free software toolkit for Japanese large vocabulary continuous speechrecognition." In Proc. Int'l Conf. on Spoken Language Processing(ICSLP) , Vol. 4, pp. 476--479, 2000.

  ChangeLog

  4.3.1 (2014.1.15)

  Fixed bugs:
  - Compilation error on OS X.
  - Unnecessary debug messages in adintool.
  - Several bugs around reading / applying "-cmnload".
  

  4.3 (2013.12.25)

  New features:
  - FBANK and MELSPEC support.
  - Network-based feature vector and outprob vector input.
  - Static mean/variance for cepstral mean/variance normalization.
  - State output probability (i.e. outprob) vector input for DNN-HMM decoding.
  - State ID "" extension of hmmdefs for DNN-HMM decoding.
  - Real-time feature extraction and network transmittion by 'adintool'.
  
  Modified:
  - "mkbinhmm" now keeps the state order and id of the original hmmdefs.
  - For portaudio, pause / resume operation synced between engine and audio I/O
  - Load / save cepstral mean/variance of CMN/CVN in HTK text format.
  
  New options:
    [-input vecnet]       read feature / outprob vectors from network
    [-input outprob]      read outprob vectors from HTK parameter file
    [-outprobout [file]]  save computed outprob vectors to HTK file (for debug)
  

  4.2.3 (2013.6.30)

  New features:
  - Add function "j_reload_adddict()" to reload dictionaries.
  - Add option "-lvscale factor" and func "j_adin_change_input_scaling_factor()"
  to scale the amplitude of captured audio by the factor.
  - Add option "-rejectlong msec" to reject too long input.
  - Add minimum bayes risk decoding, contributed by H. Nanjo and R. Furutani
  - Support binary N-gram symbol charset conversion by "mkbingram".
  
  Fixes:
  - Fix sending audio stream via network with incorrect byte order at
  big-endian machines.
  - Fix occasional failure of closing audio device at j_close_stream().
  - Fix segfault when reading binary hmm created at 64bit env. with embedded parameters.
  - Fix memory leak when failed to read an N-gram file.
  - Fix memory leak when input length overflow is detected.
  - Fix unable to load feature vector plugin.
  - Update microphone input code for recent MacOSX.
  

  4.2.2 (2012.8.1)

  Fixes:
  - Now can be compiled without flex library
  - Fix failure of reading binary N-gram when compiled with "--enable-words-int"
  - Fix incorrect handling of file paths with backslash in jconf file at Windows
  - Fix segfault when reading an errorous word dictionary.
  - Fix occasional segfault which may occur while search.
  

  4.2.1 (2011.12.25)

  New features:
  - Add support for per-word insertion penalty setting at grammar
    recognition. You can set different word insertion score for each word
    entry at .dict file. For example, if you have an entry
          15 [a] a
    in .dict file and want to assign word insertion score of "-2.0" to
    this word, you can write like this:
          15 @-2.0 15 [a] a
    The figure after "@" is the insertion penalty. The third
    element should be the same as the first element.
  
  - New option "-chunk_size" can specify the audio fragment size in
    number of samples. The default value is 1000.
  
  - At "adintool", enable input detection by default for standard input.
  
  Fixed bugs:
  - (IMPORTANT) CMN is not performed for C0 coef.  This bug exists in
    the versions from 4.1.3 to 4.2.
  - "-forcedict" won't work for additional dictionaries given by "-adddict".
  - Corrupted header of recorded WAV file when interrupted by CTRL+C.
  - Occasional segfault when reading a wrongly formatted dictionary.
  - Won't compile with configure option "--enable-word-graph".
  - Segfault of "mkbingram" and "generate-ngram" at cygwin.
  

  4.2 (2011.5.1)

  New features:
  - Additional score-based pruning at the 1st pass.  It is disabled by
    default, you can enable by using an option "-bs arg". The argument
    is score range.
  - New support for PulseAudio (--with-mictype=pulseaudio)
  - New Option "-adddict", "-addword" to read additional dictionaries / words.
  - Portaudio library updated to V19.  Audio capture device can be
    changed by env. "PORTAUDIO_DEV_NUM".  The device list will be
    output at start up.
  
  Changed behavior:
  - "mkbinhmmlist" now saves pseudo phone list extracted from AM for
    faster start up. The output should be used with the same AM
    specified at generation.  Note that the converted binhmmlist file
    can not be used with older Julius.
  - Audio library linking was modified at configure script.
    When "--with-mictype=..." is explicitly specified, Julius will link
    ONLY the audio library.  If not specified, Julius will link all the
    audio devices whose development file was detected by the configure.
  
  Library functions:
  - j_config_load_string_new(char *str): like j_config_load_file(), but
    parse the given string to set parameters.
  - add_dict(), add_word(): the same as "-adddict" and "-addword".
    (They should be called at start up before starting engine)
  - (portaudio/Windows) j_open_stream(recog, NUMSTR) to choose device NUM.
    ex. 'j_open_stream(recog, "1")' will open device number one.
  - (portaudio/Windows) get_device_list(): obtain list of available devices.
  
  Fixes:
  - Improved tree lexicon structure for better memory management.
  - Reduce malloc calls at reading N-gram.
  - Eliminated memory leaks using Valgrind.
  - Workarounds to avoid crash with j_close_stream().
  - Now allow "-iwsp" only with multi-path acoustic model.
  

  4.1.5.1 (2010.12.25)

  Modified:
   - Fixed problem related to the license.
  

  4.1.5 (2010.6.4)

  Bug fixes:
   - Language model / decoding (these bugs may affect the ASR performance):
     - Several wrong word insertion penalty handling on grammar was found and fixed.
     - Now correctly add the prob. of the first word at the second pass.
   - MFCC computation:
     - Support MFCC computation when liftering parameter (CEPLIFTER) = 0.
   - Compilation:
     - Fixes to build Julius on cygwin and MSVC.
     - Supports "gcc -mno-cygwin" on cygwin.
     - Compilation error with configure "--disable-plugin"
   - Module mode:
     - Unable to send grammar from jcontrol.
     - Not working "DELPROCESS" command when SR and LM has different names.
   - Other fixed bugs:
     - wrong parsing of "-mapunk" option.
     - "-htkconf" in a jconf file now correctly handles the file path as relative to the jconf file.
     - "-input stdin" now supports WAV format.
     - not working "-plugin DIRNAME" on Win32/MSVC.
  

  4.1.4 (2009.12.25)

  New feature:
   - added function to choose input audio device on MSVC compiled Julius,
     by specifying a device ID with env. var. "PORTAUDIO_DEV_NUM".
     The available device IDs will be listed in the system log at start up.
   - You can now set a locale for a LM in Julius.cpp.
  
  Bug fixes:
   - now can be compield on Mac OS X (OS X 10.6 SDK).
   - fixes around portaudio for smaller latency and compatibility (Windows).
  

  4.1.3 (2009.11.2)

  New features:
   - new MSVC support: please read "msvc/00README.txt"
   - extended N-gram to support arbitrary N
   - portaudio external library (V19) can be used instead of internal V18.
     When configure detects portaudio library installed in your system,
     Julius will use it instead of internal V18.  You can also choose
     input device by "PORTAUDIO_DEV" env. var. at V19library.  See the
     log text at start up to know how to set it.
   - allow word alignment output (-walign) in module mode
  
  Modified:
   - ! now Julius do not perform CMN on 0'th cepstral coefficients,
     which is the same as the old 4.0.x versions.
   - j_get_current_filename() added on JuliusLib
   - improved "--enable-wpair" handling
  
  Bug fixes:
   - many bugs around audio open/close API on JuliusLib
   - fail to do make in julius-simple
   - unable to record inputs at cygwin
   - segfault on adintool with "-server"
   - occasional segfault at grammar recognition
  

  4.1.2 (2009.2.12)

  [SRILM support]
  - Added swapping "<s>" and "</s>" when reading BACKWARD ARPA file trained by SRILM. It will be automatically detected. If detection fails, you can specify an option "-swap" in mkbingram to do that.
  - Internally modify the unigram probability of "<s>" or "</s>", since they may be set to "-99" in SRILM model. The same value as opposite will be assigned.
  [N-gram]
  - Size limit extended from 2GB to 4GB for big N-gram.
  - "<unk>" and "<UNK>" can be changed by "-mapunk".
  - More strict check for unknown words: Julius now terminates with error when dictionary has OOV words and N-gram is not open (no unk word).
  [Improvements]
  - Faster successor list building algorithm
  - Update yomi2voca.pl to cover more minor Japanese pronunciation.
  - Workaround for audio buffer overrun in ALSA
  [JuliusLib]
  - Added API function "j_close_stream()" to exit main recognition loop.
  [Bug Fixes]
  - Fixed segfault on adintool when specifying multiple servers.
  - Fixed compilation error on cygwin (libesd)
  - Fixed segfault when not specifying "-input" option.
  

  4.1.1 (2008.12.13)

  Bug fixes:
  
  [N-gram]
  - sometimes could not read an ARPA N-gram file trained by SRILM.
  [A/D-in]
  - "-input stdin" does not work.
  - "SOURCERATE" at "-htkconf" is ignored.
  [Forced alignments]
  - now can be used in isolated word recognition and with "-1pass".
  - "-palign", "-walign" and "-salign" can not be run together at a time.
  [Module mode]
  - freezes when a grammar is specified by its ID number.
  - wrong grammar ID in recognition result (GRAM=.. always 0)
  - "SYNCGRAM" will cause crash at isolated word recognition.
  - unable to receive/activate/dactivate on isolated word recognition.
  [Others]
  - fails to compile on several OS (needs "-ldl").
  - does not handle backslash escaping correctly in Jconf file.
  - does not output the 1st pass result as a final result with "-1pass".
  [Tools]
  Jcontrol
  - does not support "graminfo" command.
  - can not send a dictionary to Julius running isolated word recognition.
  mkdfa
  - segfault on mkfa
  - fails to read a grammar file on DOS format.
  adintool
  - wrong behavior when splitting a long audio file.
  - now output time of each segment.
  

  4.1 (2008.10.03)

  New plugin extension:
    - supported types:
        - A/D-in plugin
        - feature vector input plugin
        - audio input monitor / postprocess plugin
        - feature vector monitor / postprocess plugin
        - result plugin
        - can add arbitrary JuliusLib callback via plugin
    - sample codes is included, with full documentation of function spec.
    - run on Linux, Windows and other unix variants with dlopen() capability
  
  Newly supported features:
    - multi-stream feature input
    - MSD-HMM (compatible with "HTS" toolkit)
    - CVN 
    - frequency warping for VTLN (no estimation yet)
    - "-input alsa", "-input oss" and "-input esd"
    - perl version of jcontrol client "jclient-perl"
  
  Modified:
    - Restrict option orders when multiple instances defined (-AM, -LM, -SR):
        - Option should be just after correspondence instance declaration. 
          (ex. LM options should be placed after "-LM" and before other 
          instance declaration.)
        - Global option should be before any instance declaration, or
          just after "-GLOBAL" option.
      This new restriction can be removed by "-nosectioncheck" option.
  
  Fixed bugs:
    - "-record" fails to record the first silence part!
    - Not working "-multigramout"
    - environment variable expansion sometimes fail within jconf file.
    - limits extended:
       maximum HMM name length = 256 char, Number of HMM states unlimited.
    - Module mode error message on grammar command.
  
  Documents:
    - Alpha version of "Juliusbook" (contains only manuals at this time)
    - Unix manuals are moved to "man" directory.
  

  4.0.2 (2008.05.27)

  New features:
  
    - New option "-fallback1pass" will output 1st pass result as final result
      when the 2nd pass fails.
    - Added support for "USEPOWER=T" on feature extraction.
  
  Modified:
    - "-AM_GMM" becomes optional: GMM will share AM params if not specified.
  
  Fixed:
    - GMM rejection does not work (since 4.0.1)
    - Cannot specify other A/D device on Linux/ALSA correctly.
    - Sometimes fails to read a big N-gram.
    - Sometimes crush with "-record" option.
    - Callback timing modified on real-time input with sp-segment/GMM/VAD.
    - Other minor fixes.
  

  4.0 (2007.12.19)

  - Re-constructed all data structures and re-organize source code.
  - Core engine now becomes a library called JuliusLib, with API and callbacks.
  - Multi-model decoding now available.
  - Modularize language model handling, and merge Julian to JuliusLib.
  - Support longer N-gram (N > 3).
  - User-defined LM function support.
  - Handy isolated word recognition mode.
  - Confusion network output.
  - Improvements in short-pause segmentation, especially for live input.
  - GMM-based VAD.
  - Decoder-based VAD.
  - Integrated many compile-time options.
  - Reduce memory usage.
  - Sample application to use the JuliusLib is included: "julius-simple".
  - Update tools:
     - "adintool" supports multi-server mode.
     - "generate-ngram" newly added to generate sentences from N-gram
  

  3.5.3 (2006.12.29)

    o  Improved Performance:
       - acoustic computation optimized: now becomes 20%-40% faster!
       - optimize memory access: re-use work area of deleted hypothesis
         in the 2nd pass.
       - some memory allocation improvement on dictionary and word trellis.
  
    o  New Grammar Tools:
       - "dfa_minimize", "dfa_determinize" will minimize/determinize DFA.
          mkdfa.pl now calls dfa_mimize in it.
       - "slf2dfa": a toolkit to convert HTK slf to Julian dfa (separate kit)
  
    o  Embedding HTK Acoustic Parameters:
       - add option to load HTK Config file to set correct acoustic parameter
         configuration at recognition time. 
       - the acoustic parameter configuration can be embedded into
         header of a binary HMM file.
  
    o  Improved Word Graph:
       - add an option to completely separate graph words: words with
         different phone contexts can be output separatedly by
         "-graphrange -1".
  
    o  Support for online energy normalization:
       - Preliminary support for live recognition using acoustic model with
         energy normalization. (approximate with maximum energy of last input)
  
    o  Code refinements:
       - re-organize libsent/src/wav2mfcc.
       - modularize acoustic parameter (Value) handling.
       - output compile-time configuration of libsent with "--setting" option.
       - Doxygen 1.5.0 support.
       - "[email protected]" becomes the official contact address.
       - fixed typo on copyright notice.
  
    o  Fixed bugs:
       - sometimes unable to read a binary LM on "--enable-words-int".
       - memory leaks around option handling, global variables and local buffers.
       - segmentation fault on very long input.
       - doublely counted initial state of DFA.
       - mkdfa.pl: unable to find mkfa on some OS.
       - adintool: makes empty output file on termination.
       - adintool: miss last inputs when killed.
       - other small changes.
  

  3.5.2 (2006.07.31)

    o  Speed-up and improvement on Windows console:
       - Support DirectSound for better input handling
       - Support input threading utilizing callback API on portaudio.
       - Support newest MinGW (tested on 5.0.2)
  
    o  More accurate word graph output:
       - Add option to cut the resulting graph by its depth
         (option -graphcut, and enabled by default!)
       - Set limit for post-processing loop to avoid infinite loop
         (option -graphboundloop, and set by default)
       - Refine graph generation algorithm concerning dynamic word merging
         and search termination on the second pass.
  
    o  Add capability to output word graph instead of trellis on 1st pass:
       - 1st pass generates word graph instead of word trellis as
         intermediate result by specifying "--enable-word-graph".
         In that case, the 2nd pass will be restricted on the graph, not
         on the whole trellis.
       - With "--enable-word-graph" and "--enable-wpair" option, the
         first pass of Julius can perform 1-pass graph generation based
         on 2-gram with basically the same algorithm as other popular
         word graph based decoders.
  
    o  Bug fixes:
       - configure script did not work on Solaris 8/9
       - "-gprune none" did not work on tied-mixture AM
       - Incorrect error message for AM with duration header other than "NULLD"
       - Always warns about zero frame stripping upon MFCC
  
    o  Imprementation improvements:
       - bmalloc2-based AM memory management
  

  3.5.1 (2006.03.31)

    o  Wider MFCC types support:
       - Added extraction of acceleration coefficients (_A).  Now you
         can recognize waveform or microphone input with AM trained with _A.
       - Support all MFCC qualifiers (_0, _E, _N, _D, _A, _N, _Z) and their
         combination 
       - Support for any vector lenth (will be guessed from AM header)
       - New option: "-accwin"
       - New option "-zmeanframe": frame-wise DC offset removal, like HTK
       - New options to specify detailed analysis parameters (see manual):
            -preemph, -fbank, -ceplif, -rawe / -norawe, 
            -enormal / -noenormal, -escale, -silfloor
  
    o Improved microphone / network recognition by MAP-CMN:
       - New option "-cmnmapweight" to change MAP weight
       - Option "-cmnload" can be used to specify the initial cepstral
         mean at startup
       - Cepstral mean of last 5 second input is used as an initial mean
         for each input.  You can inhibit updating of the initial mean
         and keep the value loaded by "-cmnload" by option "-cmnnoupdate".
  
    o Module issue:
       - Julius now outputs "" when recognition starts, and
         "" after recognition stopped by module command.
         Use this for safer server-client synchronization.
       - now can specify grammar name from client by specifying a name
         after a command like "ADDGRAM name" or "CHANGEGRAM name".
  
    o Bug fixes:
       - Sometimes segfault on pause/resume command on module mode while input.
       - Can not read N-gram with tuples > 2^24.
       - Can not read HMM with 3-state (1 output state) model on multi-path.
       - Sometimes omit the last transition definition in DFA file.
       - Sometimes fails to compile the gramtools on MacOSX.
  

  3.5 (2005.11.11)

    o  New features:
       - Input verification / rejection using GMM (-gmm, -gmmnum, -gmmreject)
       - Word graph output (--enable-graphout, --enable-graphout-nbest)
       - Pruning on 2nd pass based on local posterior CM (--enable-cmthres)
       - Multiple/per-grammar recognition (-gram, -gramlist, -multigramout) 
       - Can specify multiple grammars at startup: "-gram prefix1,prefix2,..."
         or "-gramlist listfile" where listfile contains list of prefixes.
       - General output character set conversion "-charconv from to"
         based on iconv (Linux) or Win32API+libjcode (Windows)
  
    o  Improved audio inputs on Linux:
       - ALSA-1.x support. (--with-mictype=alsa)
       - EsounD daemon input support. (--with-mictype=esd)
       - Fixed some bugs on USB audio input.
       - Audio capturing device can be specified via env. "AUDIODEV".
       - Extra microphone API support using portaudio and spLib API.
  
    o  Performance improvements:
       - Reduced memory size for beam operation on the 1st pass.
       - Slightly optimized tree lexicon by removing redundant data.
       - Reduced size of word N-gram index (reduced from 32 bit to 24 bit).
  
    o  Fixed bugs:
       - Not working spectral subtraction.
       - Memory leak when stack exhausted ("stack empty") on 2nd pass.
       - Segmentation fault on a very short input of 1 to 4 frames.
       - AM trained with no CMN cannot be used with waveform/mic input.
       - Wrong short-pause word handling on successive decoding mode.
         (--enable-sp-segment)
       - No output of "maxcodebooksize" at startup.
       - No output of the number of sentences found when stack exhausted.
       - No output of "-separatescore" on module mode.
       - Beam width does not adjusted when grammar has been changed and 
         full beam options (-b 0) is specified in Julian.
       - Wrong update of category-aware cross-word triphones when
         dynamically switching grammar on Julian.
       - No output of grammar to stdout on multiple grammar mode.
       - Unable to send/receive audio data between different endian machines.
       - (Linux) crash when compiled with icc.
       - (Linux) some strange behavior on USB audio.
       - (Windows) confuse with CR/LF newline inputs in several text inputs.
       - (Windows) mkdfa.pl could not work on cygwin.
       - (Windows) sometimes fails to read a file when not using zlib.
       - (Windows) wrong file suffix when recording with "-record" (.raw->.wav)
  
    o  Unified source code:
       - Linux and Windows version are integrated into one source.
       - Multi-path version has been integrated with the normal version
         into one source.  The multi-path version of Julius/Julian, that
         allows any transitions of HMMs including model skip transition,
         can be compiled by "--enable-multipath" option.  The part of
         source codes for the multi-path version can be identified 
         by the definition "MULTIPATH_VERSION".
  
    o  Other improvements:
       - Now can be compiled on MinGW/MSYS on Windows
       - Totally rewritten comments in entire source in Doxygen format.
         You can generate fully browsable source documents in English.
         Try "make doxygen" at the top directory (you need doxygen installed)
       - Install additional executables of julius/julian with version and setting
         names like "julius-3.5-fast" when "make install" is invoked.
       - Updated LICENSE.txt with English translation for reference.
  
    o  Changed behaviors:
       - Binary N-gram file format has been changed for smaller size.
         The old files can still be read directly by julius, in which
         case on-line conversion will be performed at startup.
         You can convert the old files (3.4.2 and earlier) to the new
         format with the new mkbingram by involing the command below:
  	       "mkbingram -d oldbinary newbinary"
         Please note that since mkbingram now output the new format
         file, it can not be read by older Julius.
         The binary N-gram file version can be detected by the first 17
         bytes of the file: old format should be "julius_bingram_v3" and
         new format should be "julius_bingram_v4".
       - Byte order of audio stream via tcpip fixed to LITTLE ENDIAN.
       - Now use built-in zlib by default for compressed files.  This may
         make the engine startup slower, and if you prefer, you can still
         use the previous method using external gzip command by specifying
         "--disable-zlib".
       - (Windows) Changed the compilation procedure on VC++.  You can build
         Julian by only specifying "-DBUILD_JULIAN" at compiler option,
         and do not need to alter "julius.h".
  

  3.4.2 (2004.05.07)

  - New option "-rejectshort msec" to reject short input.
  - More stable PAUSE/RESUME on module mode with adinnet input.
  - Bug fixes:
    - Memory leak on very short input.
    - Missing Nth result when small vocabulary is used.
    - Hang up of "generate" on small grammar.
  - Cosmetic changes:
    - Cleanup codes to confirm for 'gcc -Wall'.
    - Update of config.guess and config.sub.
    - Update of copyright to 2004.
  

  3.4.1 (2004.02.25)

  - Search algorithm is slightly modified to make search more stable at
    of 2nd pass.  These modification are enabled by default, and
    MAY IMPROVE THE RECOGNITION ACCURACY as compared with older versions.
    - fixed overcounting of LM score for the expanded word.
    - new inter-word triphone approximation (-iwcd1 best #) on 1st
      pass.  This new algorithm now becomes default.
  - Newly supports binary HMM (original format, not compatible with HTK).
    A tool "mkbinhmm" converts a hmmdefs(ascii) file to the binary format.
  - MFCC computation becomes faster by sin/cos table lookup.
  - Bugs below have been fixed:
    - (-input adinnet) recognition does not start immediately after speech
  		     inputs begin when using adinnet client.
    - (-input adinnet) together with module mode, speech input cannot
  		     stop by pause/terminate command.
    - (-input adinnet) unneccesary fork when connecting with adinnet client.
    - (-input rawfile) error in reading wave files created by Windows
                       sound recorder.
    - (CMN) CMN was applied any time even when acoustic models does not want.
    - (AM) numerous messages in case of missing triphone errors at startup.
    - (adintool) immediately exit after single file input.
    - (sp-segment) fixed many bugs relating short pause word and LM
    - (sp-segment) wow it works with microphone input.
    - (-[wps]align) memory leak on continuous input.
  - Add option to remove DC offset from speech input (option -zmean).
  - (-module) new output message:
    '<INPUTPARAM FRAMES="input_frame_length" MSEC="length_in_msec">'
  - Optional feature "Search Space Visualization" is added (--enable-visualize)
  - HTML documentations greatly revised in doc.
  
  New argument: "-iwcd1 best #" "-zmean"
  New configure option: "--disable-lmfix", "--enable-visualize"
  

  3.4 (2003.10.01)

  - Confidence measure support
    - New parameter "-cmalpha" as smoothing coef.
    - New command "-outcode C" to output CM in module output
    - Can be disabled by configure option "--disbale-cm"
    - Can use an alternate CM algorithm by configure option "--enable-cm-nbest"
  - Class N-gram support
    - Can be disabled by configure option "--disable-class-ngram"
    - Factoring basis changed from N-gram entry to dictionary word
  - WAV format recording in "adinrec", "adintool" and "-record" option
  - Modified output message
      startup messages,
      engine configuration message in --version and --help,
  - Fixes:
      some outputs in module mode,
      bug in only several frame input (realtime-1stpass.c),
      long silence at end of segmented speech
      miscompilation with NetAudio,
      word size check in binary N-gram,
      bug in acoustic computation (gprune_none.c).
      "-version" -> "-setting", "-hipass" -> "-hifreq", "-lopass" -> "-lofreq"
  

  3.3p4 (2003.05.06)

  - Fixes around audio input:
    - Fix segfault/hangup when microphone input runs for a long period.
    - Fix client hangup when input speech is too long in module mode.
      (now send an buffer overflow message to the client instead of hangup)
    - Fix audio buffering for very short input (<1000 samples).
    - Fix blocking in tcpip adin.
  - Some cosmetic changes (jcontrol, LOG_TEN, etc.)
  

  3.3p3 (2003.01.10)

  - New inter-word short pause handling:
    - [Julius] New option added for short pause handling.  Specifying
      "-iwspword" adds a short-pause word entry, namely " [sp] sp sp",
      to the dictionary.  The entry content to be changed by using "-iwspentry".
    - [multi-path] Supports inter-word context-free short pause handling.
      "-iwsp" option automatically appends a skippable short pause model at
      every word end.  The added model will also be ignored in context
      modeling.  The short pause model to be appended by "-iwsp" can be
      specified by "-spmodel" options.  See documents for details.
  - Fixes for audio input:
     - Input delay improved: the initial response to mic input now
       becomes much faster than previous versions (200ms -> 50ms approx.).
     - Would not block when other process is using the audio device, but
       just output error and exit.
     - Update support for libsndfile-1.0.x.
     - Update support for ALSA-0.9.x 
       (to use this, add "--with-mictype=alsa" to configure option.)
  

  patch for libsndfile-1.0.x (2002.11.19)

  - This patch fixes compilation error with libsndfile > 1.0.x.
  

  3.3p2 (2002.11.18)

  - Newly supports model-skip transition.  From this version, you can
    use "any" type of state transition in HTK format for acoustic model.
    (see Bugs above for limitation).
  - add new feature: "-record dir" records speech inputs sucessively
    into the specified directory.
  - fix segfault on Solaris with "-input mfcfile".
  - fix adin-cut bug when using module mode and adinnet together.
  - fix output flush after last recognition output.
  

  3.3p1 (2002.10.15)

  Fixed the following bugs:
  - Fixed incorrect default value of language weights for second pass (-lmp2).
  - Fixed sometimes read failure of dictionary file.
  - Fixed wrong output of "-separatescore" together with monophone
  model.
  
  

  3.3 (2002.09.12)

  The updates and new features from rev.3.2 is as shown below.
  
  - New features added:
  	- Server module mode - control Julius (input on/off, grammar switching)
  	  from other client process via network.
  	- Online grammar changing and multi-grammar recognition supported.
  - Noise robustness:
  	- Spectral subtraction incorporated.
  - Support more variety of acoustic models:
  	- "multi-path version" is available that allows any transition
  	   including loop, skip and parallel transition.
  - A little improvement of recognition performance by bug fixes
  - Other minor extensions (CMN parameter saving, etc.)
  - Many bug fixes
  
  English documents are available in
    o online manuals (will be installed by default), and
    o Translated full documentation in PDF format: Julius-3.2-book-e.pdf.
  We are sorry that current release contains only documents for old rev.3.2.
  We are now working to update it to catch up with the current rev.3.3 version.
  

Quick Download

• Source (tarball)
• Binary for Linux (tarball)
• Binary for Windows (zip)
• The Juliusbook
• The Juliusbook (Online Documentation)

 

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