Voice analysis

Purpose
We evaluated objective, auditive perceptual and subjective changes in the voices of children who underwent resonance voice therapy to treat vocal fold nodules.
Methods
We included 30 children with vocal fold nodules. All were evaluated prior to therapy and 6 and 8 weeks after therapy commenced via acoustic voice analysis, the grade, roughness, breathiness, asthenia, strain (GRBAS) scale, and the Turkish version of the pediatric voice handicap index. Fundamental frequency, jitter, and shimmer were recorded. The results were compared.
Results
The overall success rate was 86%. All data acquired before therapy differed significantly from those obtained after therapy.
Conclusion
Resonance voice therapy is effective for children with vocal fold nodules.

Vuonna 2001 ilmestyneellä Vespertine-levyllä Björk laulaa: ”You’re trying too hard. Surrender. Give yourself in.” Undo-kappaleessa, josta kyseinen sitaatti on peräisin, tiivistyy yksi levyn keskeisistä teemoista – antautuminen. Björkillä on mielenkiintoinen tapa tulkita äänellään kappaleen sanat. Hän kiinnittyy ruumiillaan sanoihin luoden äänensä ja sanojen välille kohtaamisen. Näin syntyy merkityksiä ja kappaleen tulkinta. Miten lähestyä tuota äänen ja sanojen kohtaamista? Ja millaisia merkityksiä laulun sanoihin aukeaa, kun kiinnitämme huomiota Björkin ääneen ja sen pieniin vivahteisiin? Entä miten laulun ”minä” muodostuu tässä merkitysten leikissä? Lähestyn artikkelissani Björkin tulkintaa Julia Kristevan (1993) semioottinen/symbolinen-erottelun sekä Daniel Sternin (1985) vitaaliaffekti-käsitteen avulla. Menetelminäni ovat lisäksi empaattinen ja analyyttinen kuunteleminen. Ensimmäinen pohjautuu tutkijan omalle ruumiilliselle kokemukselle ja toinen lauluäänen yksityiskohtien erottelemiselle puheentutkimuksen termejä apuna käyttäen.

These days, with the increasing demands and responsibilities of life, parents becoming busy most of the time which makes taking care of an infant incredibly difficult task as infants need the attention and supervision of caregivers all the time. However, the advancement of technology has led to the emergence of smart baby cradle as an intelligent system with numerous features to reduce the burden of parents and caregivers. The paper aims to enhance the quality of the existing baby cradle systems by incorporating a new module for managing baby cry. Managing baby cry involves providing analysis for baby cry, and accordingly, triggering the suitable device attached to the cradle. This research paper provides significant attention on detecting baby cry, more accurately, by integrating four-sub modules in the cry classification process including voice analysis, face image analysis, body gesture analysis, and finally decision fusion.

Demetrio Stratos (1945-1979) was a singer known for his creative use of vocal techniques such as diplophony, bitonality and diphony (overtone singing). His need to know the scientific explanation for such vocal behaviors, drove him to visit the ISTC in Padova (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies) in the late Seventies. ISTC technical resources and the collaboration with Franco Ferrero and Lucio Croatto (phonetics and phoniatric experts), allowed him to analyze his own phono-articulatory system and the effects he was able to produce.

This paper presents the results of a broad historical survey of Stratos’ research at the ISTC. The historic investigation is made possible by textual criticism and interpretation based on different sources, digital and audio sources, sketches, various bibliographical references (published or unpublished) and oral communications.
Sonograms of Stratos’ exercises (made at the time and recently redone) show that various abilities existed side by side in the same performer, which is rare to find. This marks his uniqueness in the avant-gard and popular music scene of the time.
The ultimate aim of this study was to produce a digital archive for the preservation and conservation of the sources related to this period.

Introduction: The Speech, Language and Hearing Science favors the performance of voice professionals, including actors. The movie actor has different demands of the stage actor, due to the influence of film language. There is a new field of activity for the speech therapist, whose work has developed in recent years. The aim of this study is to investigate the work with voice and speech in cinema, from the standpoint of professional environment, with emphasis on the speech session. Method: We conducted semi-open with three actors, four speech therapists and a director. The interviews weretranscribed and divided into the following categories: building character in the film, film interpretation,
the relationship with the director; fragmentation of interpretation; utterance in the film; specific vocal techniques, speech therapy, speech therapy and demand. Results: The work with oral expressiveness in cinema involves improving fitness and vocals, the intentions of the director and the actor. The demands are specific and involve actor, character, cast and direction. The audiologist is flexible to adapt to the needs of their knowledge and context is needed in the health care of the voice, the construction of the oral expression of the character - in the development and adaptation; continuity in vocal character; issues corner; at work issues of linguistic and para-linguistic, involving voice and speech, and communication mediated by the body in harmony with the voice. Conclusion: The role of speech therapy is still unknown, in their entirety by the professionals of the cinema, has brought many important solutions for domestic films, is in development.

Demetrio Stratos (1945-1979) was a singer known for his creative use of vocal techniques such as diplophony, bitonality and diphony (overtone singing). His need to know the scientific explanation for such vocal behaviors, drove him to visit the ISTC in Padova (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies) in the late Seventies. ISTC technical resources and the collaboration with Franco Ferrero and Lucio Croatto (phonetics and phoniatric experts), allowed him to analyze his own phonoarticulatory system and the effects he was able to produce. This paper presents the results of a broad historical survey of Stratos’ research at the ISTC. The historic investigation is made possible by textual criticism and interpretation based on different sources, digital and audio sources, sketches, various bibliographical references (published or unpublished) and oral communications. Sonograms of Stratos’ exercises (made at the time and recently redone) show that various abilities existed side by ...

Import 03/11/2016Hlasová analýza může být použita k mnoha účelům, například k diagnostice nebo k prevenci poškození hlasu. Hlas může být snadno poškozen zejména jeho nadměrným nebo nesprávným používáním. V této práci jsou popsány základy anatomie, fyziologie a patologie hlasu. Hlavní část je zaměřena na akustickou analýzu. Je zde popsán postup měření na hlasovém diagnostickém centru lingWAVES. V rámci praktické části byly naměřeny parametry vybraných samohlásek systémem Vospector a zpracována databáze výsledků měření hlasu jednotlivých pedagogů. Výsledky byly porovnány, vyhodnoceny a následně vloženy do grafů. Pro lepší vizualizaci výsledků byla vytvořena aplikace, která umožňuje vykreslení hodnocení všech vybraných samohlásek současně. Tato aplikace odstraňuje nedostatek hlasového diagnostického centra, které je schopno sledovat výsledky jednotlivých samohlásek, avšak neumožnuje jejich srovnání. Další výhodou vytvořené aplikace je, že rozděluje parametry do více oblastí, což umožňu...

Dysphonic voices are often analyzed using automated voice analysis software. However, the reliability of acoustic measures obtained from these programs remains unknown, particularly when they are applied to pathological voices. This study compared perturbation measures from CSpeech, Computerized Speech Laboratory, SoundScope, and a hand marking voice analysis system. Sustained vowels from 29 male and 21 female speakers with mild to severe dysphonia were digitized, and fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, shimmer, and harmonics- or signal-to-noise ratios were computed. Commercially available acoustical analysis programs agreed well, but not perfectly, in their measures of F0. Measures of perturbation in the various analysis packages use different algorithms, provide results in different units, and often yield values for voices that violate the assumption of quasi-periodicity. As a result, poor rank order correlations between programs using similar measures of perturbation were noted. Because measures of aperiodicity apparently cannot be reliably applied to voices that are even mildly aperiodic, we question their utility in quantifying vocal quality, especially in pathological voices.

With One Voice: Disambiguating Sung and Spoken Voices Through a Composer’s Experience.

Mary Midgley has pointed out how our drive towards specialisation has led us to value the differences between things over their connections. The voice is largely dislodged from educational development and has been divided by isolationist practices in and within music and speech. Technology has allowed microscopic details of the voice to become public property whilst the athletic, full-voiced singer moves ever closer to Lucie Manén’s  “…one timbre, according to their own psychological make-up.” I will discuss my experience of these issues in my work with singers of all styles, actors and the synthetic voice. . In relation to the title of this paper, I propose the disambiguation of spoken and sung words requires re-synthesis.

A model for gathering oral answers as part of testing the speaker skills (i.e. command of language, native or foreign) is presented, as well as the software used in the experimentation. The research presented here is a result of more than six (6) months’ work with TESOL experts, based on 60 test subjects who gave 240 answers.

Özet : Sesbilgisi ve sesbilimde kullanılan ses analiz yazılımı Praat olmakla birlikte tıp ve odyolojide, sıklıkla Pentax Multispeech (PM) kullanılmaktadır.Bu çalışmanın amacı Praat ile PM formant analiz yöntemlerinin farklarını saptamaktır. Formant analizleri FFT(Fast Fourier Transform) ve LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) yöntemleriyle [1] yapılmıştır. Bu çalışmanın sonuçları, sadece ortalama değerler üzerinden ele alındığında; alanyazınla uyumlu olarak yazılım ve yöntemler arasında son derece sınırlı farklılık olduğu söylenebilir. Ancak farklılaşan denek, sesbirim ve formantların oranına bakıldığında; kullanılan yazılımlar ve LPC yöntemlerinin farklı değerler ürettiği açıktır. (Bu bağlamda deneyimli elde, elle formant belirlenmesi hala daha değerli bir seçenektir.) Farklılıkların belirli bir oran ya da mantıkla açıklamanın mümkün olmaması, bu durumun seçilen değişkenlere ve yazılımların açıklanan ve açıklanmayan özelliklerine bağlı olduğunu düşündürmektedir.

In American English, the presence of creaky voice can derive from distinct linguistic processes, including phrasal creak (prolonged irregular voicing, often at edges of prosodic phrases) and coda /t/ glottalization (when the alveolar closure for syllable-final /t/ is replaced by or produced simultaneously with glottal constriction). Previous work has shown that listeners can differentiate words in phrasal creak from those with /t/ glottalization, which suggests that there are acoustic differences between the creaky voice derived from phrasal creak and /t/ glottalization. In this study, we analyzed vowels preceding syllable-final /t/ in the Buckeye Corpus, which includes audio recordings of spontaneous speech from 40 speakers of American English. Tokens were coded for presence of phrasal creak (prolonged irregular voicing extending beyond the target syllable) and /t/ glottaliza-tion (whether the /t/ was produced only with glottal constriction). Eleven spectral measures of voice quality, including both harmonic and noise measures, were extracted automatically and discriminant analyses were performed. The results indicate that the discriminant functions can classify these sources of creaky voice above chance, and that Cepstral Peak Prominence, a measure of harmonics-to-noise ratio, is important for distinguishing phrasal creak from glottalization.

Objectives. With the COVID-19 outbreak around the globe and its potential effect on infected patients’ voice, this study set out to evaluate and compare the acoustic parameters of voice between healthy and infected people in an objective manner. 
Methods. Voice samples of 64 COVID-19 patients and 70 healthy Persian speakers who produced a sustained vowel /a/ were evaluated. Between-group comparisons of the data were performed using the two-way ANOVA and Wilcoxon’s rank-sum test. 
Results. The results revealed significant differences in CPP, HNR, H1H2, F0SD, jitter, shimmer and MPT values between COVID-19 Patients and the healthy participants. There were also significant differences between the male and female participants in all the acoustic parameters, except jitter, shimmer and MPT. No interaction was observed between gender and health status in any of the acoustic parameters. 
Conclusion. The statistical analysis of the data revealed significant differences between the experimental and control groups in this study. Changes in the acoustic parameters of voice are caused by the insufficient airflow, and increased aperiodicity, irregularity, signal perturbation and level of noise, which are the consequences of pulmonary and laryngological involvements in patients with COVID-19

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to analyze the efficiency and applicability of the Kay CSL 4500 system with the Sona-Speech II software model 3650 (Kay Pentax, Lincoln Park, NJ) in the voice therapy of patients affected by hypofunctional dysphonia. DESIGN The study evaluated the effect of visual biofeedback, obtained with the Sona-Speech II software, on dysphonia associated with hypofunction dysphonia. SETTING The study was conducted with 40 male adults affected by hypofunctional dysphonia in the Otolaryngology Department of the University of Genoa (Italy) between April 2008 and April 2009. METHODS Before, at the end of, and 3 months after voice therapy, all subjects underwent an otolaryngology visit, videostroboscopy, and voice analysis through the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (Kay Elemetrics, Lincoln Park, NJ) as an evaluation of nasal resonance and the Voice Handicap Index (VHI). Each cycle of rehabilitation was characterized by 30 daily consecutive sessions, each for 25 m...

The aim of this study was to analyze the efficiency and applicability of the Kay CSL 4500 system with the Sona-Speech II software model 3650 (Kay Pentax, Lincoln Park, NJ) in the voice therapy of patients affected by hypofunctional dysphonia. The study evaluated the effect of visual biofeedback, obtained with the Sona-Speech II software, on dysphonia associated with hypofunction dysphonia. The study was conducted with 40 male adults affected by hypofunctional dysphonia in the Otolaryngology Department of the University of Genoa (Italy) between April 2008 and April 2009. Before, at the end of, and 3 months after voice therapy, all subjects underwent an otolaryngology visit, videostroboscopy, and voice analysis through the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (Kay Elemetrics, Lincoln Park, NJ) as an evaluation of nasal resonance and the Voice Handicap Index (VHI). Each cycle of rehabilitation was characterized by 30 daily consecutive sessions, each for 25 minutes. During each session, the ...

There has been recent growing interest in the analysis of various electronically recorded signals as potential tools for objective assessment of vocal dysfunction. In the past, analysis of such signals required an expensive multitrack FM recorder, mainframe computer system, customized software, and significant time commitment. This report describes an adaptation of commercially available components that allow digital recording of multiple electronic signals, storage of data, and subsequent signal analysis using an inexpensive personal microcomputer system. Commercially available software for manipulation and examination signals is discussed as adapted for examination of glottographic and acoustic signals. The relatively inexpensive availability of similar computer systems will, hopefully, encourage assessment of the clinical applications of objective techniques of voice quality.

To analyze the accuracy of recurrence measurements, both isolated and combined, to assess the intensity of vocal disorders in children. A total of 93 children of both sexes (48 girls and 45 boys), aged between 3 and 10 years, participated. The vocal-deviation intensity was evaluated by the consensus of three speech therapists from the pronunciation of vowel /ε/ using the visual analog scale. In the acoustic analysis, eight recurrence plot characteristics were evaluated and extracted with neighborhood radius values that maintained the recurrence rate at 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, and 5%. The classification was performed using quadratic discriminant analysis applied for individual and combined measurements. The performance was evaluated by measuring the accuracy, which related the cases correctly classified to all the analyzed cases. In the classification cases concerning individual measure performance, the trapping time and maximum length of the diagonal lines showed the best classification potential to discriminate between healthy and disturbed voices, with accuracy rates above 80%. In the healthy and mild deviation cases, the trend (TREND) measure was also relevant. For the mild versus moderate deviation classification, the best performance was obtained by the TREND measure (85.00% ± 7.64%). A gain was obtained in the classification rate when the measures of recurrence were combined, reaching an accuracy of 95.00% ± 5.00%, for discriminating between healthy voices and those with mild deviation. The measures of recurrence, either alone or combined, may be useful in detecting healthy and disturbed voices and in differentiating the intensity of vocal disorders in children.

Tarkastelen tässä artikkelissa käheyttä lauluäänen piirteenä, joka näyttäytyy erilaisena eri yhteyksissä: sairauden oireena, likaisuutena, hälynä, tietynlaisena materiaalisena määreenä sekä osana laulajan tulkintaa ja tyyliä. Samalla puran käheyden käsitettä sen erilaisissa yhteyksissään. Tarkoituksena on luoda teoreettista pohjaa lauluäänen esteettisten piirteiden tutkimukselle, jossa otetaan huomioon lauluäänen laadut osana laulajan taiteellista ilmaisua. Samalla, kun lähestyn käheyden käsitettä, tuon myös esille erilaisia näkökulmia laulajaan ja kuulijaan ruumiillisina olentoina. Tarkastelemani käheyden määritelmät kytkeytyvät erilaisiin tapoihin määritellä ruumis. Kutsun näitä erilaisia ruumiskonstruktioita fysiologiseksi, kokemukselliseksi ja kulttuurisesti määräytyväksi ruumiiksi. Pohdin myös, miten nämä eri näkökulmat toimivat yhdessä tutkimuksen teoreettisena lähtökohtana ja millaista tietoa ne yhdessä tuottavat. Tutkijana liikun näkökulmasta toiseen tarkastellen lauluääntä toisinaan fysiologisesta näkökulmasta ja toisinaan suhteessa ympäröivään laulukulttuuriin tai tutkijan omaan kuuntelukokemukseen. Artikkelissa yhdistyy näin sekä luonnon- että ihmistieteisiin pohjautuvia käsityksiä siitä, miten ihmistä voidaan lähestyä ruumiillisena olentona.

Objective
To analyze the accuracy of recurrence measurements, both isolated and combined, to assess the intensity of vocal disorders in children.

Method
A total of 93 children of both sexes (48 girls and 45 boys), aged between 3 and 10 years, participated. The vocal-deviation intensity was evaluated by the consensus of three speech therapists from the pronunciation of vowel /ε/ using the visual analog scale. In the acoustic analysis, eight recurrence plot characteristics were evaluated and extracted with neighborhood radius values that maintained the recurrence rate at 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, and 5%. The classification was performed using quadratic discriminant analysis applied for individual and combined measurements. The performance was evaluated by measuring the accuracy, which related the cases correctly classified to all the analyzed cases.

Results
In the classification cases concerning individual measure performance, the trapping time and maximum length of the diagonal lines showed the best classification potential to discriminate between healthy and disturbed voices, with accuracy rates above 80%. In the healthy and mild deviation cases, the trend (TREND) measure was also relevant. For the mild versus moderate deviation classification, the best performance was obtained by the TREND measure (85.00% ± 7.64%). A gain was obtained in the classification rate when the measures of recurrence were combined, reaching an accuracy of 95.00% ± 5.00%, for discriminating between healthy voices and those with mild deviation.

Conclusions
The measures of recurrence, either alone or combined, may be useful in detecting healthy and disturbed voices and in differentiating the intensity of vocal disorders in children.

Key Words:
Voice analysis, Acoustic, Children, Nonlinear analysis