Dataset · ta-IN · Conversational Speech
Buy a Tamil conversational speech dataset
Two speakers hold an unscripted conversation seeded with a scenario, recorded on separate channels so overlap and turn-taking survive into the delivered files. Available for Tamil as a licensed build against your specification, with audio, verbatim transcripts, speaker metadata and consent records.
- Language
- Tamil (Tamil)
- Type
- Conversational Speech
- Per speaker
- 20–30 minutes of accepted audio per speaker, in pairs
- Accepted yield
- 55–65% of recorded time is accepted
How Tamil conversational speech is recorded
Two speakers hold an unscripted conversation seeded with a scenario, recorded on separate channels so overlap and turn-taking survive into the delivered files.
A 45–60 minute paired session with both speakers on isolated microphones, either in adjacent treated rooms or split-mic in one room with bleed measured and logged.
55–65% of recorded time is accepted. Overlap regions, crosstalk bleed and one-sided stretches all cost delivered time. The lowest-yield studio style we run, and priced accordingly.
What is in the package
- 16-bit PCM WAV audio, captured at 48 kHz / 24-bit and delivered at your target rate
- Verbatim Tamil transcripts with utterance-level timestamps
- Speaker-turn segmentation with start and end timestamps
- Overlap regions marked with participating speaker IDs
- Backchannel and interruption markers
- Per-pair relationship metadata: familiar or stranger
- Per-speaker metadata: age band, gender, region, dialect, education band, device
- Consent records mapped to speaker IDs and retained for audit
- Speaker-disjoint train / dev / test splits
Specification
| Field | Standard value |
|---|---|
| Language | Tamil (ta-IN) |
| Speech type | Conversational Speech |
| Per speaker | 20–30 minutes of accepted audio per speaker, in pairs |
| Channels | Two, one per speaker, never mixed down before delivery |
| Channel isolation | Bleed measured per session and logged; sessions over threshold are re-recorded |
| Overlap | Preserved, timestamped and labelled rather than edited out |
| File granularity | Per-channel session WAV plus a turn-level manifest with speaker IDs |
| Dialects covered | Chennai (Madras Bashai), Kongu (Coimbatore), Madurai, Nellai (Tirunelveli) |
| Recording cities | Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli |
| Transcription | Native verbatim, second-pass reviewed |
Quality gates applied to conversational speech
The failure modes this style is prone to: crosstalk bleed that makes clean per-speaker training targets impossible to recover afterwards
- Channel bleed measured on every session and rejected above the agreed threshold
- Diarisation labels verified against the isolated channels rather than inferred from the mix
- Turn boundaries and overlap regions checked by a native listener
- Speaking-time balance per pair audited, so a dominant speaker does not silently halve the session's value
Pricing and volumes
| Volume | Indicative range | Delivery |
|---|---|---|
| 50 hours (pilot-scale) | ₹1,60,000 – ₹3,25,000 | 3-4 weeks |
| 250 hours | ₹7,60,000 – ₹15,43,750 | 5-8 weeks |
| 1,000 hours | ₹27,20,000 – ₹55,25,000 | 10-16 weeks |
Bands, not a price list. A signed specification converts them into one fixed figure, and staged delivery lets you start training before the full corpus lands.
Why generic Tamil corpora underperform
Almost all public Tamil audio is literary read speech from news or scripture. Genuine colloquial Tamil, especially southern and Kongu varieties, is the single biggest gap for anyone building Tamil voice products.
Tanglish is the default urban register. Technology, finance, and workplace vocabulary is largely English embedded in Tamil syntax.
- Transcribers normalising spoken Tamil into literary Tamil, destroying the acoustic-text alignment
- ழ / ள / ல confusion
- Inconsistent handling of English insertions: Tamil script transliteration vs Latin script must be fixed in the guide
Licensing and compliance
- Perpetual, transferable licence covering model training, derivative models and commercial deployment
- Written informed consent from every speaker, retained and auditable
- Compliant with India's DPDP Act 2023 handling requirements and mapped to GDPR obligations for EU buyers
- No scraped, resold or re-licensed third-party audio in any delivery
How buying works
- Send your specification or use the standard one above
- Receive a fixed scope, price and delivery schedule within one working day
- Optional paid pilot of 10-20 hours against the same spec
- Recruitment and recording begin on signature, with staged batches
- Acceptance testing per batch, then final delivery with the full manifest
Frequently asked
Can I buy an off-the-shelf Tamil conversational speech dataset today?
We build to specification rather than reselling a fixed corpus, because off-the-shelf Tamil audio almost never matches a real deployment's dialect mix and noise profile. A 50-hour build ships in three to four weeks.
What licence do we get?
A perpetual, transferable licence with full IP transfer on delivery. You can train, distribute and commercialise models built on the data without further payment.
Can we get a free sample?
Yes — a short sample reflecting the agreed specification is provided before the pilot is signed, so you can check transcript quality and audio characteristics.
Which Tamil dialects are included?
By default Chennai (Madras Bashai), Kongu (Coimbatore), Madurai and others, with quotas set at recruitment. You can weight the mix to match where your product is deployed.
Related pages
Quote this Tamil dataset
Tell us the volume and dialect mix for Tamil conversational speech and you get a fixed price and delivery date.