Analysis of high-frequency energy in long-term average spectra of singing, speech, and voiceless fricatives

Brian B. Monson, Andrew J. Lotto, Brad H. Story

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

45 Scopus citations

Abstract

The human singing and speech spectrum includes energy above 5 kHz. To begin an in-depth exploration of this high-frequency energy (HFE), a database of anechoic high-fidelity recordings of singers and talkers was created and analyzed. Third-octave band analysis from the long-term average spectra showed that production level (soft vs normal vs loud), production mode (singing vs speech), and phoneme (for voiceless fricatives) all significantly affected HFE characteristics. Specifically, increased production level caused an increase in absolute HFE level, but a decrease in relative HFE level. Singing exhibited higher levels of HFE than speech in the soft and normal conditions, but not in the loud condition. Third-octave band levels distinguished phoneme class of voiceless fricatives. Female HFE levels were significantly greater than male levels only above 11 kHz. This information is pertinent to various areas of acoustics, including vocal tract modeling, voice synthesis, augmentative hearing technology (hearing aids and cochlear implants), and training/therapy for singing and speech.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1754-1764
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume132
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2012

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics

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