Jena Speaker Set (JESS)

The Jena Speaker Set (JESS) is a stimulus database of voice stimuli from 120 speakers, i.e. 61 young (18 - 25 years) and 59 old (60 - 81 years) female and male speakers. It comprises audio files of German sentences, read text, semi-spontaneous speech, syllables, and sustained vowel stimuli. Further information available for each individual speaker include: demographic information, personality traits, smoking habits, regional origin, acoustic analyses, as well es ratings by naïve listeners on speakers’ social traits, as based on the sound of their voices.

Terms of Use

The JESS has been developed and validated for research purposes between 2012 and 2019 by researchers of the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena and the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. The database is free to use for research purposes in a non-profit manner, without the need to register.

For details on the development and validation, please refer to the original paper by Zäske, Skuk, Golle, & Schweinberger (2020) which must be cited whenever samples of the JESS are used.

Stimuli and supplemental data are available from OSF: https://osf.io/m5zdf/