Integrated software for analysis and synthesis of voice quality.

Voice quality is an important perceptual cue in many disciplines, but knowledge of its nature is limited by a poor understanding of the relevant psychoacoustics. This article (aimed at researchers studying voice, speech, and vocal behavior) describes the UCLA voice synthesizer, software for voice analysis and synthesis designed to test hypotheses about the relationship between acoustic parameters and voice quality perception. The synthesizer provides experimenters with a useful tool for creating and modeling voice signals.

Measures of the glottal source spectrum.

Purpose: Many researchers have studied the acoustics, physiology, and perceptual characteristics of the voice source, but despite significant attention, it remains unclear which aspects of the source should be quantified and how measurements should be made. In this study, the authors examined the relationships among a number of existing measures of the glottal source spectrum, along with the association of these measures to overall spectral shapes and to glottal pulse shapes, to determine which measures of the source best capture information about the shapes of glottal pulses and glottal source spectra.

Method: Seventy-eight different measures of source spectral shapes were made on the voices of 70 speakers.