DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18228940
title: Harmonic Frontier Audio - Whisper and Aspiration (Preview Pack v0.9)

description: Harmonic Frontier Audio – Whisper and Aspiration (Preview, v0.9)

A high-fidelity human vocal dataset designed for AI training, speech research, and expressive voice modeling.

Whisper and Aspiration (Preview), created by Harmonic Frontier Audio, provides a compact reference set demonstrating the quality, formatting, and metadata conventions used in the Harmonic Frontier Audio Human Vocality Primitives series.



 

🔎 Summary

This dataset provides high-quality, rights-cleared recordings of whisper phonation and aspiration-based vocal gestures — fundamental airflow-driven vocal behaviors that exist at the boundary between voiced speech and unvoiced breath noise.

The recordings emphasize:



airflow texture

mouth shape variation

fricative articulation

transitions into and out of silence


These characteristics make the dataset valuable for AI speech modeling, phonetics research, voice synthesis, breath modeling, and human-aligned vocal control systems.

Developed by Harmonic Frontier Audio, this preview follows The Proteus Standard™ for dataset provenance, transparency, and ethical AI use.Learn more about the Proteus Standard → https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/proteus-standard

Full dataset details and licensing information are available at:https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/datasets/whisper-aspiration

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a 🤍 on Hugging Face to help others discover it.



 

🌬️ About Whisper and Aspiration

Whisper phonation occurs when air passes through the vocal tract without sustained vocal fold vibration, producing noise-shaped speech sounds rather than pitched phonation.Aspiration refers to breath-driven sound components that accompany or replace voiced articulation, including transitions into silence and near-noise airflow events.

These phenomena are foundational to:



speech production

expressive voice synthesis

breath-aware AI voice systems

phonetic and physiological modeling


This dataset presents a neutral, non-linguistic, non-performative representation of whisper and aspiration.It is not designed to encode semantic speech content, but rather to isolate acoustic primitives that underlie whisper-based vocal behavior.



 

📂 Contents

 

Audio Files (.wav)



Recorded at 96 kHz / 24-bit WAV format

Exported as mono

Fade-ins and fade-outs of 3–5 ms applied for consistency

No compression, normalization, or creative processing applied

High-pass filtered at ~40 Hz to remove subsonic rumble


This preview includes 5 representative audio files, selected to demonstrate:



sustained whisper phonation

neutral and constrained mouth shapes

fricative-based whisper gestures

transitions into silence




 

Metadata (.csv)

Includes structured fields for:



file name

sound source type

airflow type

phonation type

gesture and articulation descriptors

microphone and recording chain

sample rate, bit depth, and dataset version


Metadata follows the Harmonic Frontier Audio – Foundations schema.



 

🎤 Recording Notes



Recorded in a treated studio environment using a single-mic setup:



Microphone: Rode NT1-A condenser microphone

Recording chain: Rode NT1-A → Zoom F8n Pro



Captured at 96 kHz / 32-bit float, rendered as 96 kHz / 24-bit mono WAV for release.

Natural room tone and subtle breath noise were preserved to retain acoustic realism.




 

⚡ Usage

This preview pack is designed for:



Evaluation of Harmonic Frontier Audio dataset quality and structure

Testing AI and DSP systems that model unvoiced or breath-driven sounds

Research in phonetics, speech synthesis, and expressive vocal modeling

Creative sound design involving breath, noise, and vocal texture


👉 Note: This is not a full dataset.The complete Whisper and Aspiration dataset includes a substantially larger set of whisper, aspiration, and airflow primitives and is available for licensing.



 

💡 Full Dataset Availability

This is a preview pack of the Whisper and Aspiration Dataset.The complete dataset is available for commercial licensing.

For licensing inquiries:📩 info@harmonicfrontieraudio.com



📜 License

Released under CC BY-NC 4.0.



Free for non-commercial use, testing, and research

Commercial licensing available via Harmonic Frontier Audio

A formal rights declaration is included in this dataset bundle




 

📧 Contact

Harmonic Frontier Audio📩 info@harmonicfrontieraudio.com🌐 https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/



 







🗒️ Release Notes

Version 0.9 (Jan. 2026) – Initial Preview Pack release for Whisper and Aspiration.See CHANGELOG.md for detailed version history.



Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

Pullen, B. (2026). Whisper and Aspiration Dataset (Preview) [Data set]. Harmonic Frontier Audio. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18228940

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4527-0178