Voice evaluation · ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada AI Voice Evaluation
Human evaluation of your speech models: MOS and preference testing for TTS, WER-in-context review for ASR, and native-speaker judgement on naturalness and intelligibility. This page covers how that works specifically for Kannada, where north karnataka speech has markedly different intonation and lexicon from mysuru standard.
- Language
- Kannada (kn-IN)
- Dialects covered
- 5
- Typical programme
- 250-1,000 hours
- Cities
- Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad
What changes when the language is Kannada
The service specification stays constant across languages; the linguistics do not. For Kannada, three things drive the design of a voice evaluation programme.
- North Karnataka speech has markedly different intonation and lexicon from Mysuru standard
- Dialect spread: Bangalore urban, Mysuru (standard literary), Dharwad / North Karnataka, Mangaluru coastal
- Bengaluru is a migration city: Kannada speech there is mixed with English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Native-only Kannada cohorts recruited in Bengaluru are hard to fill without screening for years of residence.
Technical specification
| Parameter | Standard |
|---|---|
| TTS | MOS (1-5), MUSHRA, and A/B preference protocols |
| ASR | Error typing: substitution, deletion, insertion, code-switch failure |
| Panel | Native speakers of the target variety, screened and calibrated |
| Sample size | Powered per the effect size you need to detect |
| Reporting | Per-item scores plus aggregate with confidence intervals |
Kannada cohort design
Screen Bengaluru participants for native fluency and years of Karnataka residence; otherwise the cohort drifts towards second-language Kannada.
| Dimension | Typical split | Why it matters for Kannada |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | 50 / 50 | Pitch range differences change acoustic model behaviour; unbalanced cohorts bias recognition |
| Age | 18-25: 30%, 26-40: 40%, 41-60: 30% | Older speakers retain conservative Kannada forms that younger urban speakers have lost |
| Region | Karnataka / parts of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and others | Dialect spread across 5 recognised varieties |
| Education | Mixed, including below-graduate | Prompt-reading fluency correlates with education and skews prosody |
| Condition | Studio / quiet room / field | Match the noise profile of your deployment |
Process
- Protocol design and sample-size calculation
- Panel recruitment and calibration on reference items
- Blind evaluation with attention checks
- Statistical analysis
- Report with per-error-type breakdown
Kannada-specific quality rules
- Northern lexical items replaced with standard equivalents
- Inconsistent transliteration of English technical terms
- Sandhi in connected speech transcribed as separate words by some annotators and joined by others
Attention checks and reference anchors are embedded so unreliable raters are detected and excluded before analysis.
Deliverables
- Raw per-rater scores
- Aggregated results with confidence intervals
- Error-type analysis
- Recommended fix priorities
Worked example
A representative Kannada voice evaluation engagement: 250 hours from 500 speakers, 50/50 gender, ages 18-45, spread across Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad, recorded to the specification above and delivered in WAV with a per-utterance manifest.
Timeline: 1-3 weeks per evaluation round.
Where this data is missing today
Mysuru/Bengaluru standard dominates. North Karnataka (Dharwad, Kalaburagi) and coastal Mangaluru speech are barely represented in any public corpus.
Frequently asked
How much does Kannada voice evaluation cost?
Priced per delivered hour or unit against a written spec. The cost drivers for Kannada are dialect spread, demographic narrowness and recording condition, in that order.
Which Kannada dialects are included?
By default Bangalore urban, Mysuru (standard literary), Dharwad / North Karnataka, Mangaluru coastal and others, tagged per speaker. You can also commission a single-dialect corpus if you are targeting one region.
Can you deliver Kannada data in our format?
Yes. Raw per-rater scores is the default, but naming, schema and directory structure follow your pipeline.
How long does a Kannada programme take?
1-3 weeks per evaluation round.
Request a Kannada voice evaluation quote
Hours, speakers, dialects, deadline. Send what you have.