Voice Training and Changing Weight—Are They Reflected in Speaking Fundamental Frequency, Voice Range, and Pitch Breaks of 13-Year-Old Girls? A Longitudinal Study

Objective

Assessment of the voice-change progress of 20 girls (12–13 years) over 1 year by observing changes in speaking fundamental frequency (SFo), voice range, and register pitch breaks in the context of weight, height, voice training, and self-perception.

Study Design

One-year longitudinal collective case study.

Method

Twenty girls were recorded at the beginning and end of a year; nine girls were recorded another three times. SFo, vocal range, and characteristics were analyzed and interactions between these data assessed against weight and height to indicate pubertal development, and to test the hypothesis that changes in weight, height, SFo, and pitch breaks were related. Effects of training and the girls' self-perception of their voice use were also assessed.

Results

Vocal characteristics changed as the girls passed through different weight ranges. During 47.5–52.4 kg (called band 2) and 52.4–57.5 kg (band 3), there was progressive contraction of vocal range and in some girls a slight rise in SFo between recording times 1 and 5. Both high- and low-pitch breaks were present in 45% of girls' voices. Girls in band 4 (<57.5 kg) had an increased vocal range, and pitch breaks in vocal-range areas that indicated the development of adult vocal registers. In this study, voice-trained girls were heavier, had higher SFo, used wider speech-range inflection, had a higher vocal range, and greater voice-use confidence; all girls lost confidence in their voice use over the year.

Conclusions

In this longitudinal study of twenty 13-year-old girls, voice changes in SFo, vocal range, and pitch-break frequency were synchronous with certain weight ranges. Girls with training registered higher maximum phonational frequency and were more confident in their voice use than girls without training.     

Acoustic Analysis of Pathological Voices Compressedwith MPEG System

The MPEG-1 Layer 3 compression schema of audio signal, commonly known as mp3, has caused a great impact in recent years as it has reached high compression rates while conserving a high sound quality. Music and speech samples compressed at high bitrates are perceptually indistinguishable from the original samples, but very little was known about how compression acoustically affects the voice signal. A previous work with normal voices showed a high fidelity at high-bitrate compressions both in voice parameters and the amplitude-frequency spectrum. In the present work, dysphonic voices were tested through two studies. In the first study, spectrograms, long-term average spectra (LTAS), and fast Fourier transform (FFT) spectra of compressed and original samples of running speech were compared. In the second study, intensities, formant frequencies, formant bandwidths, and a multidimensional set of voice parameters were tested in a set of sustained phonations. Results showed that compression at high bitrates (96 and 128 kbps) preserved the relevant acoustic properties of the pathological voices. With compressions at lower bitrates, fidelity decreases, introducing some important alterations. Results from both works, Gonzalez and Cervera and this paper, open up the possibility of using MPEG-compression at high bitrates to store or transmit high-quality speech recordings, without altering their acoustic properties.     

Evaluation of the Kushida Method of short-term earthquake prediction

Kushida and Kushida found that FM radio waves from stations at distances over-the-horizon are received before earthquakes. Based on this finding, since the mid-1990’s, the Kushidas have been practicing “Earthquake Precursor Detection Experiment”. The performance of the Kushida method during 2000–2003 has been evaluated by checking their predictions against the actual seismicity. During the period, there were 92 Kushida predictions mentioning the possibility of M ≥ 5.5 event, whereas there were 49 M ≥ 5.5 earthquakes in the Japanese region. If the criteria for successful prediction are set as: the errors in date is less than one day, epicentral position is roughly within specified area, and error in M is less than 0.5, the success rate was 20% and the alarm rate was 12%. If we relax the criteria to: the errors in dates within 10 days, epicenter within additional 100 km of specified area and the magnitude error less than 1.0, the success rate was 40% and the alarm rate was 27%. These rates may look insufficient for a practical prediction method. Considering, however, the fact that no other short-term prediction has ever been made in Japan so far it is a significant achievement. Moreover, it was found that in almost all failed predictions, meaningful signals were detected although the interpretations were incorrect. This indicates that the method is promising provided further investigation is carried out. The same evaluation at the M ≥ 6.0 level showed that the general performance was similar to the M ≥ 5.5 level, except that both success rate and alarm rate were lower at the M ≥ 6.0 level. If this unexpected finding is real, it might be inherent to the methodology using scattering of short-wave length radio waves as suggested by M. Hayakawa and may contain important information in understanding the earthquake physics and LAI-coupling. The results of the present study indicate strongly that the earthquake prediction research using anomalous transmission of VHF FM radio waves should be enhanced in parallel with complementary research in other frequency ranges.     

Just noticeable differences of open quotient and asymmetry coefficient in singing voice

This study aims to explore the perceptual relevance of the variations of glottal flow parameters and to what extent a small variation can be detected. Just Noticeable Differences (JNDs) have been measured for three values of open quotient (0.4, 0.6, and 0.8) and two values of asymmetry coefficient (2/3 and 0.8), and the effect of changes of vowel, pitch, vibrato, and amplitude parameters has been tested. Two main groups of subjects have been analyzed: a group of 20 untrained subjects and a group of 10 trained subjects. The results show that the JND for open quotient is highly dependent on the target value: an increase of the JND is noticed when the open quotient target value is increased. The relative JND is constant: ΔO_q/O_q = 14% for the untrained and 10% for the trained. In the same way, the JND for asymmetry coefficient is also slightly dependent on the target value–an increase of the asymmetry coefficient value leads to a decrease of the JND. The results show that there is no effect from the selected vowel or frequency (two values have been tested), but that the addition of a vibrato has a small effect on the JND of open quotient. The choice of an amplitude parameter also has a great effect on the JND of open quotient.     

Acoustic characteristics of rough voice: Subharmonics

This study investigates the relationship between rough voice and the presence of Subharmonics, which correspond to smaller yet distinct peaks located between two consecutive harmonic peaks in the power spectrum. Spectrum analysis was undertaken in 389 pathologic voices, of which 20 had subharmonics. Although all 20 voices had roughness perceptually, 8 had normal jitter and/or shimmer. The degree of roughness had a significant inverse relationship with the frequency of subharmonics. By digital signal processing, sound samples with various types of subharmonics were synthesized and perceptually analyzed. Power and frequency of subharmonics in the synthesized sound also had significant relationships with the degree of roughness. Rough voice is acoustically characterized not only by jitter and shimmer but also by the presence of subharmonics in the power spectrum. Subharmonics are important acoustic properties for objective evaluation of rough voices.     

The young adult patient

The purpose of this paper is to 1) describe the unique issues of voice patients, ages 21–55; 2) outline the knowledge and clinical skills that speech language pathologists should possess to deal with those issues; and 3) provide suggestions for promoting vocal longevity.     

Movement of the velum during speech and singing in classically trained singers

The present study addresses two questions: (a) Is the action and/orposture of the velopharyngeal valve conducive to allow significant resonance during Western tradition classical singing? (b) How do the actions of the velo-pharyngeal valve observed in this style of singing compare with normal speech? A photodetector system was used to observe the area function of the velopharyngeal port during speech and classical style singing. Identical speech samples were produced by each subject in a normal speaking voice and then in the low, medium, and high singing ranges. Results indicate that in these four singers the velopharyngeal port was closed significantly longer in singing than in speaking samples. The amount of time the velopharyngeal port was opened was greatest in speech and diminished as the singer ascended in pitch. In the high voice condition, little or no opening of the velopharyngeal port was measured.     

Identify real gravitational wave events in the LIGO-Virgo catalog GWTC-1 and GWTC-2 with convolutional neural network

In recent years, machine learning models have been introduced into the field of gravitational wave (GW) data processing. In this paper, we apply the convolutional neural network (CNN) to LIGO O1, O2, O3a data analysis to search the released 41 GW events which are emitted from binary black hole (BBH) mergers (here we exclude the events from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers, and the events that are not detected simultaneously by Hanford (H) and Livingston (L) detectors), and use time sliding method to reduce the false alarm rate (FAR). According to the results, the 41 confirmed GW events of BBH mergers can be classified successfully by our CNN model. Furthermore, through restricting the number of consecutive prewarning from sequential samples intercepted continuously in LIGO O2 real time-series and vetoing the coincidences of noise from H and L, the FAR is limited to be less than once in 2 months. It is helpful to promote LIGO real time data processing.     

EPS网络的语音业务解决方案

本文介绍了行业内比较成熟的几种EPS网络语音解决方案,分析了解决方案的特点和具体的实现机制,并结合中国CDMA网络运营商的实际网络情况,给出了相应的建议。