Björkner, EvaResearcher, Doctoral Student

Address Helsinki University of TechnologyLaboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal ProcessingP.O. Box 3000FIN-02015 HUT

HOARSE sept ’03

Swedish

Singer

Teacher in singing and music

MR and Acoustic Study of Throaty Voice Quality

†*Eva Björkner, † Johan Sundberg

† Department of Speech Music Hearing, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

* Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing,

Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

HOARSE sept ’03

What is throaty voice quality?What is throaty voice quality?

How and why does it sound as it does?How and why does it sound as it does?

• The purpose of the present investigation was to further analyse acoustic and articulatory characteristics of throaty voice quality.

• The investigation focuses on the two lowest formant frequencies and area functions based on MR data from a male speaker contrasting throaty and normal/habitual voice quality in four vowels

HOARSE sept ’03

AUDIO data

Standard text read by 1 male speaker.

a. with habitual voiceb. with throaty voice

Listening test =>vowels [a, ae, i, u] most throaty

F1 & F2 for Habitual and Throaty version

HOARSE sept ’03

Formant frequencies after inverse filtering pressure signal

JS

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0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

F1 [Hz]

F2 [

Hz]

JS

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F1 & F2 in Normal [Hz]

F1

& F

2 in

Th

roa

ty [

Hz]

J S

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F3 & F4 in Normal [Hz]

F3 &

F4 i

n T

hro

aty

[H

z]

Habitual versus Throaty Quality

HOARSE sept ’03

F1 & F2 F3 & F4

MR imagingimaging

HOARSE sept ’03

The same 4 vowels were pronounced for about 15 seconds in both qualities, while MR-images were shot of 14 sections from the larynx to the nose tip

Teeth don´t show in MR images

MR analysis of male subjectMR analysis of male subject

HOARSE sept ’03

Vocal tract contour approximated by polygon

Determination of area, center of gravity, length co-ordinate

Image nr 10 Throaty [a]

Position in lateral plane [20 mm/div.]

Po

sitio

n in

co

ron

al p

lan

e [2

0 m

m/d

iv.]

Center of gravityArea = 869 mm2

The estimation of vocal tract length was not trivial.

Section one, closest to the glottis, was located at an unknown distance above the glottis level.

When constructing the area functions this distance was provisionally assumed to be 1 cm in all vowels.

As the location of the various sections were basically fixed relative to the body, the first section would have varied relative to the glottis if the larynx position was changed.

A rise of the larynx would shorten the vocal tract length, eventhough this was not evident from the MR images.

Also lip protrution and spreading caused similar problems as no information on larynx height and lip conditions was available.

Tricky estimationsTricky estimations

Normal Throaty: closer to glottis => smaller piriform sinuses

Piriform sinuses

Section 1: fixedDifferences in larynx height between the versions

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Length co-ordinate [cm]

Are

a [c

m2]

Normal

Throaty

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Length co-ordinate [cm]

Are

a [

cm2]

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Length co-ordinate [cm]

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a [

cm2]

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Length co-ordinate [cm]

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a [

cm2]

i

a

ae

u

Area functions

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0 5 10 15 20

Length co-ordinate [cm]

Are

a [c

m2]

Normal

Throaty

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Length co-ordinate [cm]

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a [

cm2]

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Length co-ordinate [cm]

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a [

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Narrowing Expansion

Conclusions

• Formants: Higher F1, lower F2 in front vowels, lower F4

• Vocal tract: - narrow lower pharynx - expansion near the middle of the vocal tract- higher larynx position

The pharyngeal narrowing produces an increase of F1 in the vowels /a, ae, i, u/ while the effects on F2 vary.

HOARSE sept ’03

- professor Didier Demolin, Laboratoire de Phonologie Université Libre de Bruxelles, and his associates for making the MR imaging possible

- professor Anne-Maria Laukkanen, Tampere University for running the listening test during her visit to the department of Speech Music Hearing, KTH.

This investigation was produced within the HOARSE Network project and was partly carried out at the Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing, Helsinki University of Technology.

Thanks to:

HOARSE sept ’03 Eva Björkner

This work as been presented at:

VOQUAL’03:VOQUAL’03:

VOICE QUALITY: FUNCTIONS, ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESISGENEVA - AUGUST 27-29, 2003

ISCA Tutorial and Research WorkshopInternational Speech Communication Association

The Voice Foundations 32The Voice Foundations 32ndnd Annual meeting in Philadelphia, USA, 4 - 8 june 2003