一种语音信号非周期性、周期性及基频检测的改进方法

APP方法可以准确检测语音信号中的非周期性、周期性和基频,是近年提出的一种先进检测新方法,对于语音基础研究和语音技术应用研究有重要作用。APP方法的最大优点是可以同时检测语音信号的基频周期、周期成分和非周期成分的能量比例,而最大缺点是计算代价巨大,运行时间为110倍实时,成为实际应用的最大障碍。该文在深入剖析APP方法的基础上,从原理架构和技术实现两个方面消除不合理的冗余处理,提出新的改进途径,发展成为改进的APP方法,即MAPP方法。MAPP方法不但加强了APP方法处理机制的合理性基础,改善基频检测的准确性和鲁棒性,而且提高计算效率约1个数量级,在CPU时钟频率为1.70GHz和内存为512MB的Pentium 计算机上的运行时间加快到12.3倍实时。     

Voice F0 responses to pitch-shifted auditory feedback: a preliminary study

Auditory feedback has been suggested to be important for voice fundamental frequency (F₀) control. The present study featured a new technique for testing this hypothesis by which the pitch of a subject's voice was modulated, fed back over earphones, and the resultant change in the emitted voice F₀ was measured. The responses of 67 normal, healthy young adults were recorded as they attempted to ignore intermittent upward or downward shifts in pitch feedback while they sustained steady vowel sounds (/a/) or sang musical scales. Ninety-six percent of subjects increased their F₀ when the feedback pitch was decreased, and 78% of subjects decreased their F₀ when the pitch feedback was increased. Latencies of responses ranged from 104 to 223 ms. Results indicate people normally rely on pitch feedback to control voice F₀.     

External laryngeal frame function in voice production revisited: A review

Reserch indicates significant contribution of extrinsic laryngeal mechanisms to voice production. This article reviews the major theories of the role of the external laryngeal factors in voice production and relevant experimental data. The review suggests that partly neglected external factors and possibly even misinterpretation of some of the recently documented individual variation in physiological data may have unnecessarily complicated the issues pertaining to the interplay between the physiological mechanisms of the larynx. The implications of contemporary findings and documentation in the modeling of the extrinsic factors are discussed and a synthesis of empirical data into two simple models of the extrinsic forces of pitch control is presented. Also suggested by the review, a basic principle, probably underlying the laryngeal control of phonation, is put forward.     

Speaker-independent recognition of Chinese tones

This paper presents a reliable speaker-independent method of recog-nizing Chinese tones.An unbiased center-clipping autocorrelation algorithm ofpitch period extraction is proposed.A two-dimensional decision vector is usedfor recognizing Chinese tones by passing the pitch period sequence through theprocedures of data selection,error correction,data smoothing and curve fitting.The average correct rate of tone recognition for isolated Chinese syllables isover 98%.     

Revisiting the Pitch Controversy: Changes in Speaking Fundamental Frequency (SFF) After Management of Functional Dysphonia

Speaking fundamental frequency (SFF) and its perceptual correlate "habitual pitch" have been considered important and contentious parameters in voice assessment and treatment. In clinical circles, disagreement exists regarding the role of habitual pitch in the development, maintenance, and treatment of disordered voices. Despite these divergent opinions, few studies have objectively evaluated SFF changes associated with voice improvement after therapy. To determine whether consistent directional and magnitude changes in SFF occur after management, pretreatment and posttreatment audio recordings of 40 women with functional dysphonia were analyzed. All subjects were treated with manual circumlaryngeal therapy, a treatment approach that does not directly target pitch as a perceptual entity to be manipulated. Results indicated that, as a group, no significant change in mean SFF was observed after successful management. Although no consistent directional pattern was identified, 80% of the subjects experienced pitch changes greater than one semitone; this suggests that voice improvement is often accompanied by a shift in SFF. Clinical implications of the data are discussed.     

Discrimination Functions: Can They Be Used to Classify Singing Voices?

Researchers long have searched for invariant acoustic features that can be used to identify singing voice categories or even individual singers. Few researchers have examined how listeners perceive singing voice categories or individual voices. Timbre, the most studied perceptual dimension of the singing voice, is generally believed to vary systematically between singing voice categories but is often assumed to be invariant with an individual singer. To test this assumption, 2 mezzo-sopranos and 2 sopranos were recorded singing the vowel /a/ on the pitches A3, C4, G4, B4, F5, and A5. Trials of three stimuli were constructed. Two of the three stimuli in each trial were produced by the same singer at two different pitches (X₁ and X₂), while the third stimulus was produced by a different singer (Y). Three X₁X₂ conditions were created: (1) G4, B4; (2) C4, F5; and (3) A3, A5. For each singer and each condition, Y was varied across the three remaining singers and across all six pitches. Experienced and inexperienced listeners were asked to identify which stimulus was produced by the “odd” person. The ability to correctly choose the odd person varied greatly depending on pitch factors, suggesting that the traditional concept of an invariant timbre associated with a singer is inaccurate and that vocal timbre must be conceptualized in terms of transformations in perceived quality that occur across an individual singer's range and/or registers.     

Mechanical analysis of phase transition experiments of the bacterial flagellar filament

Bacterial flagellar filaments can undergo a polymorphic phase transition in both vitro and vivo environments. Each bacterial flagellar filament has 12 different helical forms which are macroscopically represented by different pitch lengths and helix radii. For external mechanical force induced filament phase transitions, there is so far only one experiment performed by Hotani in 1982, who showed a very beautiful cyclic phase transition phenomenon in his experiment on isolated flagellar filaments. In the present paper, we give a detailed mechanical analysis on Hotani＇s experiments. Through theoretical computations, we obtained a phase transition rule based on the phase transition mechanism. The theoretical analysis provides a foundation facilitating the establishment of phase transition theory for bacterial flagellar filaments.     

Helical twisting properties of new chiral dopants with double (S)-1, 2-propanediol units for nematic liquid crystals

<正>A novel series of chiral dopants synthesized from(S)-1,2-propanediol and mesogenic carboxylic acids were characterized by FT-IR,~1H NMR,elemental analysis and their helical twisting properties were investigated by doping the chiral dopants into a nematic liquid crystal host(SLC-1717).The results show that,the helical pitch of N~*-LC mixture exhibited a terminal alkyl chain length dependence and the molecular twisting power β also exhibited a temperature dependence(increasing β with increasing temperature).     

Characterisation of organic residues in pottery vessels of the Roman age from Antinoe (Egypt)

In the framework of a study on the Egyptian ceramic vessels belonging to the archaeological collection of the Istituto Papirologico Vitelli (Florence), the characterisation of organic residues from three findings of the 5th–7th centuries A.D. has been performed. The materials were identified by two analytical procedures based on Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and on gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC–MS), respectively. The first procedure is suitable for detecting the functional groups of organic substances and thus for distinguishing them; the second permits the simultaneous analysis of several natural substances such as vegetable resins and oils, bitumen, tar and pitch, and waxes.The presence of monocarboxylic acids, α,ω-dicarboxylic acids, long-chain dihydroxylated acids, and terpenic species, highlights that although the organic residues showed a high heterogeneity in composition, they mainly consisted of materials of vegetable origin. In particular, the presence of oxidation products of characteristic unsaturated fatty acids suggests the occurrence of oil produced from plant seeds of the Cruciferae family, some of which are reported to have been used in ancient Egypt to produce oil. Moreover, the presence of characteristic diterpenic biomarkers in two of the three pieces of pottery enables us to assess the use of both pine resin and pine pitch.