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PubMed1988

Automatic phonetogram recording supplemented with acoustical voice-quality parameters.

A new method for automatic voice-quality registration is presented. The method is based on a technique called phonetography, which is the registration of the dynamic range of a voice as a function of fundamental frequency. In the new phonetogram-recording method fundamental frequency (Fo) and sound-pressure level (SPL) are automatically measured and represented in an XY-diagram. Three additional acoustical voice-quality parameters are measured simultaneously with Fo and SPL: (a) jitter in the Fo as a measure for roughness, (b) the SPL difference between the 0-1.5 kHz and the 1.5-5 kHz bands as a measure for sharpness, and (c) the vocal-noise level above 5 kHz as a measure for breathiness. With this method, the voice-quality parameter values, which may change substantially as a function of Fo and SPL, are pinned to a reference position in the patient's total vocal range. Seen as a reference tool, the phonetogram opens the possibility for a more meaningful comparison of voice-quality data. Some examples, demonstrating the dependence of the chosen quality parameters on Fo and SPL are given.

Humans↗
PubMed2005

Application of psychometric theory to the measurement of voice quality using rating scales.

Rating scales are commonly used to study voice quality. However, recent research has demonstrated that perceptual measures of voice quality obtained using rating scales suffer from poor interjudge agreement and reliability, especially in the mid-range of the scale. These findings, along with those obtained using multidimensional scaling (MDS), have been interpreted to show that listeners perceive voice quality in an idiosyncratic manner. Based on psychometric theory, the present research explored an alternative explanation for the poor interlistener agreement observed in previous research. This approach suggests that poor agreement between listeners may result, in part, from measurement errors related to a variety of factors rather than true differences in the perception of voice quality. In this study, 10 listeners rated breathiness for 27 vowel stimuli using a 5-point rating scale. Each stimulus was presented to the listeners 10 times in random order. Interlistener agreement and reliability were calculated from these ratings. Agreement and reliability were observed to improve when multiple ratings of each stimulus from each listener were averaged and when standardized scores were used instead of absolute ratings. The probability of exact agreement was found to be approximately .9 when using averaged ratings and standardized scores. In contrast, the probability of exact agreement was only .4 when a single rating from each listener was used to measure agreement. These findings support the hypothesis that poor agreement reported in past research partly arises from errors in measurement rather than individual differences in the perception of voice quality.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Relating objective measurements to expert evaluation of voice quality in Western classical singing: critical perceptual parameters.

Communication between voice pedagogues and voice scientists is often impeded by reliance on colorful and sometimes seemingly contradictory descriptions of vocal production and voice quality. A recent study identified perceptual criteria which are generally used by voice experts for the assessment of voice quality in classical singing. In the present study, performances by singers of various voice types and levels of accomplishment were rated by panels of expert voice teachers according to four perceptual criteria: "resonance/ring," "color/warmth," "clarity/focus," and "appropriate vibrato." Subjective ratings were related to objective measurements taken from acoustic analysis of the voice signal. Possible acoustic correlates of critical perceptual parameters influencing judgments of voice quality were thus identified. Results could help bridge the terminology gap between vocal artists and scientists, and help to promote understanding of the way in which acoustic stimuli influence perception of voice quality.

Humans↗
PubMed1986

The laryngeal vestibule and voice quality.

Most of the literature on voice quality focuses on the vocal folds while six other gestures involving the laryngeal entry and epilaryngeal structures are largely ignored. Whole organ tracer series histograms of the larynx are examined and suggestions are made as to which muscles and/or forces might cause these gestures. An examination of photographs of the larynx indicates that the latter must be described in three dimensions: medio-lateral, antero-posterior, and vestibule cross-sectional area. The article is aimed at laryngologists in general, not surgeons in particular, and has implications for laryngology (being a putative model of diagnostic procedures), physiology (what forces create epilaryngeal configurations?), neuroscience (does the motor cortex control single muscles or whole gestures?), speech pathology (what is the ragbag called "hypertenseness"?), linguistics (how is one to describe lower pharynx phenomena?) and paralinguistics (what is the extrasystemic laryngeal component of voice quality?).

Humans↗
PubMed2002

Perception of synthesized voice quality in connected speech by Cantonese speakers.

Perceptual voice analysis is a subjective process. However, despite reports of varying degrees of intrajudge and interjudge reliability, it is widely used in clinical voice evaluation. One of the ways to improve the reliability of this procedure is to provide judges with signals as external standards so that comparison can be made in relation to these "anchor" signals. The present study used a Klatt speech synthesizer to create a set of speech signals with varying degree of three different voice qualities based on a Cantonese sentence. The primary objective of the study was to determine whether different abnormal voice qualities could be synthesized using the "built-in" synthesis parameters using a perceptual study. The second objective was to determine the relationship between acoustic characteristics of the synthesized signals and perceptual judgment. Twenty Cantonese-speaking speech pathologists with at least three years of clinical experience in perceptual voice evaluation were asked to undertake two tasks. The first was to decide whether the voice quality of the synthesized signals was normal or not. The second was to decide whether the abnormal signals should be described as rough, breathy, or vocal fry. The results showed that signals generated with a small degree of aspiration noise were perceived as breathiness while signals with a small degree of flutter or double pulsing were perceived as roughness. When the flutter or double pulsing increased further, tremor and vocal fry, rather than roughness, were perceived. Furthermore, the amount of aspiration noise, flutter, or double pulsing required for male voice stimuli was different from that required for the female voice stimuli with a similar level of perceptual breathiness and roughness. These findings showed that changes in perceived vocal quality could be achieved by systematic modifications of synthesis parameters. This opens up the possibility of using synthesized voice signals as external standards or "anchors" to improve the reliability of clinical perceptual voice evaluation.

Communication Devices for People with Disabilities↗
PubMed2005

Anatomical and functional correlates of voice quality in tracheoesophageal speech.

The purpose of the current study was to assess the anatomic and functional correlates of voice quality in tracheoesophageal speech, with dynamic imaging studies of the neoglottis. Videofluoroscopy (providing a lateral view), digital high-speed endoscopy (providing a "birds-eye" view), and their relationships with perceptual evaluations of voice quality were investigated. Several significant relationships were found. Imaging with videofluoroscopy revealed that the following anatomic and functional parameters (established during phonation) are related to voice quality: presence of a neoglottic bar, regurgitation of barium, tonicity of the neoglottis, and minimal neoglottic distance. Furthermore, the index of the increase of the maximal subneoglottic distance from rest to phonation also showed a significant relationship with voice quality. Imaging with digital high-speed endoscopy revealed features relevant to voice quality, including amount of saliva, visibility of the origin of the neoglottis, shape of the neoglottis, and regularity of the vibration. Knowledge of the anatomic and functional correlates of tracheoesophageal voice quality provides prerequisite information for future (phono-) surgical and/or clinical improvements to the voice quality of postlaryngectomy (prosthetic) voice production.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Do patients and physicians agree on the assessment of voice quality in laryngeal cancer?

Information is available regarding tumor control rate and survival for patients with cancer of the larynx. Less well known are the effects of treatment upon the patient's quality of voice and way of life because there is at present no suitable method for the routine clinical assessment of these effects. This paper reports some results of the evaluation of one assessment technique using linear analogue scales, and it examines the agreement between patients' and physicians' assessment of severity of voice related function and sound. Each of 20 patients taped a voice recording and subsequently rated his overall functional ability and the sound of his voice. Twenty physicians rated the sound of the 20 patients' voices from the recording and judged functional ability from a written description. Agreement between the scores of patients and physicians indicated that despite being strongly correlated, they were often not the same. Implications of this technique are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

[Evaluation of voice quality. Experimental approach and modeling of the prosthetic voice of laryngectomized patients].

The authors describe their initial results with the parametric assessment of voice quality, which still is mainly subjective. This analysis will be used both in audiology and phonology. A first approach is made on the experimental model of a laryngectomee with a Bordeaux-type phonatory implant. Such patients allow a simpler analysis of voice production both incoustics and with an electromyographic control. The analysis of the data and their statistical validation is based on the use of original computer software.

Acoustics↗
PubMed2005

Reliability in perceptual analysis of voice quality.

This study focuses on speaking voice quality in male teachers (n = 35) and male actors (n = 36), who represent untrained and trained voice users, because we wanted to investigate normal and supranormal voices. In this study, both substantial and methodologic aspects were considered. It includes a method for perceptual voice evaluation, and a basic issue was rater reliability. A listening group of 10 listeners, 7 experienced speech-language therapists, and 3 speech-language therapist students evaluated the voices by 15 vocal characteristics using VA scales. Two sets of voice signals were investigated: text reading (2 loudness levels) and sustained vowel (3 levels). The results indicated a high interrater reliability for most perceptual characteristics. Connected speech was evaluated more reliably, especially at the normal level, but both types of voice signals were evaluated reliably, although the reliability for connected speech was somewhat higher than for vowels. Experienced listeners tended to be more consistent in their ratings than did the student raters. Some vocal characteristics achieved acceptable reliability even with a smaller panel of listeners. The perceptual characteristics grouped in 4 factors reflected perceptual dimensions.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Pathological voice quality assessment using artificial neural networks.

This paper describes a prototype system for the objective assessment of voice quality in patients recovering from various stages of laryngeal cancer. A large database of male subjects steadily phonating the vowel /i/ was used in the study, and the quality of their voices was independently assessed by a speech and language therapist (SALT) according to their seven-point ranking of subjective voice quality. The system extracts salient short-term and long-term time-domain and frequency-domain parameters from impedance (EGG) signals and these are used to train and test an artificial neural network (ANN). Multi-layer perceptron (MLP) ANNs were investigated using various combinations of these parameters, and the best results were obtained using a combination of short-term and long-term parameters, for which an accuracy of 92% was achieved. It is envisaged that this system could be used as an assessment tool, providing a valuable aid to the SALT during clinical evaluation of voice quality.

Acoustic Impedance Tests↗
PubMed2004

Association between birth control pills and voice quality.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: The objective was to extend our knowledge of the effect of birth control pills on voice quality in women based on various acoustic measures. STUDY DESIGN: A longitudinal comparative study of 14 healthy young women over a 36- to 45-day period. METHODS: Voices of seven women who used birth control pills and seven women who did not were recorded repeatedly approximately 20 times. Voice samples were analyzed acoustically, using an extended set of frequency perturbation parameters (jitter, relative average perturbation, pitch period perturbation quotient), amplitude perturbation parameters (shimmer, amplitude average perturbation quotient), and noise indices (noise-to-harmonics ratio, voice turbulence index). RESULTS: Voice quality and stability were found to be better among the women who used birth control pills. Lower values were found for all acoustic measures with the exception of voice turbulence index. Results also provided preliminary indication for vocal changes associated with the days preceding ovulation. CONCLUSION: In contrast to the traditional view of oral contraceptives as a risk factor for voice quality, and in keeping with the authors' previous work, the data in the present study showed that not only did oral contraceptives have no adverse effect on voice quality but, in effect, most acoustic measures showed improved voice quality among women who used the birth control pill. The differences in the noise indices between groups may also shed light on the nature of the effect of sex hormones on vocal fold activity. It was suggested that hormonal fluctuations may have more of an effect on vocal fold regulation of vibration than on glottal adduction.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Integrality in the perception of tongue root position and voice quality in vowels.

In English and a large number of African and Southeast Asian languages, voice quality along a tense-lax dimension covaries with advancement of the tongue root in vowels: a laxer voice quality co-occurs with a more advanced tongue root. As laxing the voice increases energy in the first harmonic relative to higher ones and advancing the tongue root lowers F1, the acoustic consequences of these two articulations may integrate perceptually into a higher-level perceptual property, here called spectral "flatness." Two Garner-paradigm experiments evaluated this interaction across nearly the entire range of tense-lax voice qualities and a narrow range of F1 values. The acoustic consequences of laxness and advanced tongue root integrated into spectral flatness for tenser and laxer but not for intermediate voice qualities. Detection-theoretic models developed in earlier work proved highly successful in representing the perceptual interaction between these dimensions.

Humans↗
PubMed1996

Singing power ratio: quantitative evaluation of singing voice quality.

This paper presents a parameter for objectively evaluating singing voice quality. Power spectrum of vowel sound /a/ was analyzed by Fast Fourier Transform. The greatest harmonics peak between 2 and 4 kHz and the greatest harmonics peak between 0 and 2 kHz were identified. Power ratio of these peaks, termed singing power ratio (SPR), was calculated in 37 singers and 20 nonsingers. SPR of sung /a/ in singers was significantly greater than in nonsingers. In singers, SPR of sung /a/ was significantly greater than that of spoken /a/. By digital signal processing, power spectrum of sung /a/ was varied, and the processed sounds were perceptually analyzed. SPR had a significant relationship with perceptual scores of "ringing" quality. SPR provides an important quantitative measurement for evaluating singing voice quality for all voice types, including soprano.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Comparing internal and external standards in voice quality judgments.

A new descriptive framework for voice quality perception (Kreiman, Gerratt, Kempster, Erman, & Berke, 1993) states that when listeners rate a voice on some quality dimension (e.g., roughness), they compare the stimulus presented to an internal standard or scale. Hypothetically, substituting explicit, external standards for these unstable internal standards should improve listener reliability. Further, the framework suggests that internal standards for vocal qualities are inherently unstable, and may be influenced by factors other than the physical signal being judged. Among these factors, context effects may cause drift in listeners' voice ratings by influencing the internal standard against which judgments are made. To test these hypotheses, we asked 12 clinicians to judge the roughness of 22 synthetic stimuli using two scales: a traditional 5-point equal appearing interval (EAI) scale and a scale with explicit anchor stimuli for each scale point. The stimulus set included a relatively large number of normal and mildly rough voices. We predicted that this would produce an increase in the perceived roughness of moderately rough stimuli over time for the EAI ratings, but not for the explicitly anchored ratings. Ratings made using the anchored scale were significantly more reliable than those gathered using the unanchored paradigm. Further, as predicted, ratings on the unanchored EAI scale drifted significantly within a listening session in the direction expected, but ratings on the anchored scale did not. These results are consistent with our framework and suggest that explicitly anchored paradigms for voice quality evaluation might improve both research and clinical practice.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Formal perceptual evaluation of voice quality in the United Kingdom.

This document is a position statement on the formal perceptual evaluation of voice quality in the United Kingdom (UK). It addresses a number of clinical issues pertaining to the complexity of voice quality analysis. There is also a brief description of the three formal perceptual protocols most commonly used in the UK: The Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA), GRBAS and The Buffalo III Voice Profile. Potential clinical problems with perceptual voice quality evaluation are highlighted. Problems associated with the lack of defined terminology, limitless variety of voice quality, general lack of reliability data and difficulties in determining specificity and sensitivity are discussed. A practical guide for selecting an evaluation scheme is described. The conclusion is that the GRBAS scheme should be recommended as the absolute minimum standard for practising UK voice clinicians. However, there is a clear need to develop a more satisfactory perceptual rating scheme that is clinically realistic, theoretically sound, internationally acceptable and has proven reliability.

Female↗
PubMed2000

Sources of listener disagreement in voice quality assessment.

Traditional interval or ordinal rating scale protocols appear to be poorly suited to measuring vocal quality. To investigate why this might be so, listeners were asked to classify pathological voices as having or not having different voice qualities. It was reasoned that this simple task would allow listeners to focus on the kind of quality a voice had, rather than how much of a quality it possessed, and thus might provide evidence for the validity of traditional vocal qualities. In experiment 1, listeners judged whether natural pathological voice samples were or were not primarily breathy and rough. Listener agreement in both tasks was above chance, but listeners agreed poorly that individual voices belonged in particular perceptual classes. To determine whether these results reflect listeners' difficulty agreeing about single perceptual attributes of complex stimuli, listeners in experiment 2 classified natural pathological voices and synthetic stimuli (varying in f0 only) as low pitched or not low pitched. If disagreements derive from difficulties dividing an auditory continuum consistently, then patterns of agreement should be similar for both kinds of stimuli. In fact, listener agreement was significantly better for the synthetic stimuli than for the natural voices. Difficulty isolating single perceptual dimensions of complex stimuli thus appears to be one reason why traditional unidimensional rating protocols are unsuited to measuring pathologic voice quality. Listeners did agree that a few aphonic voices were breathy, and that a few voices with prominent vocal fry and/or interharmonics were rough. These few cases of agreement may have occurred because the acoustic characteristics of the voices in question corresponded to the limiting case of the quality being judged. Values of f0 that generated listener agreement in experiment 2 were more extreme for natural than for synthetic stimuli, consistent with this interpretation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

EMG biofeedback as a function of voice-quality change.

Changes in electromyography (EMG) accompanying changes in voice quality are reported. Audio recordings were obtained from four normal speakers during production of sustained vowels, counting and reading. These were uttered first in a normal voice and then in a voluntarily produced harsh voice. Perceptual ratings of voice quality of these utterances were made and compared to averaged EMG values obtained during the productions. The surface electrode placement remained unchanged over each of the cricothyroid areas for both normal and harsh voice. For one of the speakers, changes in EMG paralleled changes in vocal quality. For the other three, changes in EMG were variable, and sometimes minimal, in comparison to changes in voice. The results are discussed in relation to the clinical use of EMG for voice disorders.

Biofeedback, Psychology↗
PubMed2004

Effects of HearFones on speaking and singing voice quality.

HearFones (HF) have been designed to enhance auditory feedback during phonation. This study investigated the effects of HF (1) on sound perceivable by the subject, (2) on voice quality in reading and singing, and (3) on voice production in speech and singing at the same pitch and sound level. Test 1: Text reading was recorded with two identical microphones in the ears of a subject. One ear was covered with HF, and the other was free. Four subjects attended this test. Tests 2 and 3: A reading sample was recorded from 13 subjects and a song from 12 subjects without and with HF on. Test 4: Six females repeated [pa:p:a] in speaking and singing modes without and with HF on same pitch and sound level. Long-term average spectra were made (Tests 1-3), and formant frequencies, fundamental frequency, and sound level were measured (Tests 2 and 3). Subglottic pressure was estimated from oral pressure in [p], and simultaneously electroglottography (EGG) was registered during voicing on [a:] (Test 4). Voice quality in speech and singing was evaluated by three professional voice trainers (Tests 2-4). HF seemed to enhance sound perceivable at the whole range studied (0-8 kHz), with the greatest enhancement (up to ca 25 dB) being at 1-3 kHz and at 4-7 kHz. The subjects tended to decrease loudness with HF (when sound level was not being monitored). In more than half of the cases, voice quality was evaluated "less strained" and "better controlled" with HF. When pitch and loudness were constant, no clear differences were heard but closed quotient of the EGG signal was higher and the signal more skewed, suggesting a better glottal closure and/or diminished activity of the thyroarytenoid muscle.

Adult↗