Detection of high-frequency energy level changes in speech and singing

Abstract

Previous work has shown that human listeners are sensitive to level differences in high-frequency energy (HFE) in isolated vowel sounds produced by male singers. Results indicated that sensitivity to HFE level changes increased with overall HFE level, suggesting that listeners would be more "tuned" to HFE in vocal production exhibiting higher levels of HFE. It follows that sensitivity to HFE level changes should be higher (1) for female vocal production than for male vocal production and (2) for singing than for speech. To test this hypothesis, difference limens for HFE level changes in male and female speech and singing were obtained. Listeners showed significantly greater ability to detect level changes in singing vs speech but not in female vs male speech. Mean differences limen scores for speech and singing were about 5 dB in the 8-kHz octave (5.6-11.3 kHz) but 8-10 dB in the 16-kHz octave (11.3-22 kHz). These scores are lower (better) than those previously reported for isolated vowels and some musical instruments.

Questionable sound exposure outside of the womb: frequency analysis of environmental noise in the neonatal intensive care unit

“…The first (F1) and second (F2) formants frequencies (approximately 350–2500 Hz) are known to include much of the cues necessary for speech intelligibility and vowel discrimination . Although the acoustical energy of the human voice beyond 5000 Hz may contain potentially important information , for this particular study, the frequency range of human speech was considered between 501 and 3150 Hz, largely overlapping with the first two and most critical speech formants (F1 and F2).…”

Acoustic modeling of fricative /s/ for an oral tract with rectangular cross-sections

“…due to changes in facial expression, aging or wearable dental apparatuses such as braces or retainers. Although it might not be significant for listeners of normal hearing [28], this finding encourages further perceptual studies focusing on the high-frequency range for /s/ and fricatives in general as well as detailed studies on the potential impact of the baffle position and lips end termination.…”

Detection and Classification of Nasalized Vowels in Noise Based on Cepstra Derived from Differential Product Spectrum

“…of correctly detected frames of vowels No. of total frames of oral and nasalized vowels (21) For the purpose of comparison with the proposed method, we use the state-of-the-art method using MFCCs [40]. The velocity, acceleration and the energy parameters are added for both the MFCCs and MFPSCCs.…”

“…Research has been reported on many aspects of vowel nasalization in terms of acoustics, perception, and physiology [1,6,19,21,27,34]. Nasal pressure, nasal vibration, and nasal flow are measured by Horii by using a microphone as well as a sensing device at the nose [3,5,16].…”