Logo image
Back
Male-female specific changes in voice parameters under varying room acoustics
Conference proceeding   Open access   Peer reviewed

Male-female specific changes in voice parameters under varying room acoustics

Ahmed M. Yousef and Eric J. Hunter
Proceedings of meetings on acoustics, Vol.55(1)
187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
11/18/2024
DOI: 10.1121/2.0001979
PMCID: PMC11905397
PMID: 40092624
url
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11905397/pdf/nihms-2058714.pdfView
Open Access

Abstract

The assessment of voice and speech is an accessible, affordable clinical tool for evaluating vocal health, though the accuracy of analyzing voice and speech metrics can be impacted by surrounding room acoustics. This study simulates room reverberations to assess their effect on acoustic voice quality measures including male-female specific differences. Sustained /a:/ vowels were recorded in a sound booth from 18 individuals (7 female, 11 male). Different simulated reverberation intensities (T20) were added to the original recordings, using Audacity software. The analysis focused on six voice quality parameters—smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPs), alpha ratio, jitter, spectral slope, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR)—evaluated in the recordings, both with and without added reverberation. Linear regression models were applied to evaluate the sensitivity of these measurements across different simulated reverberation times, identifying differences between female and male recordings. Alpha ratio showed high sensitivity to reverberation only in female recordings, whereas jitter was more sensitive only in male recordings. Overall, shimmer was the most affected by reverberation, while spectral slope and CPPs were the most robust against high reverberation levels. Evaluating the sensitivity of acoustic metrics to room reverberation guides voice clinicians in carefully interpreting sensitive measures obtained in challenging room acoustics.

Details

Metrics

59 Record Views
Logo image