Speex Sample Files

[Ossama Khayaat <ossamak at nht dot com dot kw>]

Assalamou Alaikom everyone, 
I hope you enjoyed Eid vacation :)

* I've recorded Al-Fatiha in 32KHz WAV PCM files and converted
the files to speex using the options --vbr and --quality 5
as brother Mohammad Youssef requested. This will use Ultra-Wide
band audio and the sound is almost perfect for use.
I created two samples. One with quality of 5 and 6.
What I noticed is that, using quality 5, the sound is somehow
not clear, like if it's going up-and-down, so I tested the 
quality of 6 and found it much better with little difference in
size (quality 5 needs about 3KB a second, while quality 6 needs
about 3.5KB). I also tried quality 7, but for some reason it
wasn't as clear as 6, and quality 8 and higher needed about 2KB
more for each second (about 5KB). So if we do a simple
calculation, assuming the whole Qur'an will need about 30 hours
of audio, the total size of the whole Qur'an would be:
- quality 5: 3KB (1 sec) X 60 sec X  60 min X 30 hrs =~ 324MB
- quality 6: 3.5KB (1 sec) X 60 sec X  60 min X 30 hrs =~ 378MB
As you see, the difference is not that much, but I guess the
sound quality if really worth it.
I hope the sample file will soon be in the CVS directory of
Quran project, or if not yet you download the zipped files from
http://www.angelfire.com/linux/okhayat/fatiha_spx_q5.zip 
quality 5 and
http://www.angelfire.com/linux/okhayat/fatiha_spx_q6.zip
quality 6. I couldn't upload the files to the CVS because I'm
using a connection from behind a proxy and couldn't manage to
use CVS or WinCVS.

* I was also thinking. Why don't we put all Ayas (verses) of
each Sura in a separate .tar.gz so we make it easier for people
to download separate Sura(s) and conserve space.

* About the Quran font, hopefully, the handwriter (Khattat) will
be finished of preparing the letters soon and I'll start with 
creating the font (inshallah) as soon as possible.

regards,
Ossama Khayat

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