Assessing and Quantifying Air Added to the Voice by Means of Laryngostroboscopic Imaging, EGG, and Acoustics in Vocally Trained Subjects

Towards a Singing Voice Multi-Sensor Analysis Tool: System Design, and Assessment Based on Vocal Breathiness

“…A recent study [ 32 ] on 20 professional singers used a videonasoendoscopic camera system, a laryngostroboscopic system, an EGG, and a microphone to “assess and quantify singers’ strategies for adding air to phonation to sound ‘breathy’ in a healthy manner” [ 32 ] (p. 1). Finally, the study utilizing the set of sensors closest to the one described in the current work was published by Ternström et al [ 33 ], and reported findings from eight trained female singer regarding the effects of relative lung volume on the EGG waveform.…”

“…Vocal ‘breathiness’ is a qualitative vocal characteristic that has been studied quite extensively during the last decades [ 32 , 34 , 35 ]. It was chosen as an assessment case study due to (a) its association with all three parts of the vocal mechanism, (b) its connection to overall voice quality [ 36 ], and (c) its prevalence in children with dysphonia, a factor which the authors wish to control for in ASMA project.…”

“…The Consensus Auditory Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V) standardized clinical protocol definition of the breathiness vocal attribute is “audible air escape in the voice” [ 37 ] (p. 127), while the ABI introductory study [ 35 ] specifies the characterization of breathy voice by a “turbulent noise during phonation with excessively high frequency resulting from air leakage during glottal closure” (p. 511.e11). This attribute is of interest to vocal pedagogy [ 32 ] and linguistics [ 38 ], as it is a quality-defining perceptual characteristic [ 34 ], but also important to phoniatrics, as it has also been connected to pathological conditions, such as vocal nodules, vocal fold bowing, paralysis or paresis of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, and acute laryngitis [ 35 ]. Breathiness has long been reported as “quantitatively related” to insufficient vocal fold closure [ 39 ] (p. 5), resulting in continuous air leakage through the glottis (i.e., the opening/space between the two vocal folds).…”

“…This makes breathiness a particularly important characteristic, as insufficient vocal fold closure may imply a medical condition [ 40 ] but could also result in one [ 41 ]. Despite the apparent multidisciplinary interest in the ’breathy’ voice quality, there are still publications reporting a lack of adequate data correlating the ’breathy voice’ perceptual, qualitative feature, to the pertinent biomechanical functions and the resulting acoustical, quantitative measures [ 32 ].…”

“…21–22). This intentional use of the breathiness characteristic is sometimes referred to as “air added to the voice”, to distinguish it from involuntary breathy voice production [ 32 ] (p. 1). This study makes use of the term breathy as the perceptual characteristic, without differentiating between these conditions.…”