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.     

A Pilot Survey of Vocal Health in Young Singers

The objective of this study was to determine the incidence of vocal problems in young choir singers and to correlate vocal problems with demographic and behavioral information. A questionnaire addressing vocal habits and hygiene was offered to 571 young choir singers, up to 25 years of age, who sing at least weekly; 129 (22.6%) responded. More than one-half of the respondents had experienced vocal difficulty, particularly older adolescents. Detrimental behaviors and circumstances surveyed were not reflective of the incidence of vocal difficulty, except for morning hoarseness, chronic fatigue, insomnia, and female gender after puberty. Voice care professionals should be aware that self-reported voice difficulties are common among young choral singers, especially postpubescent girls, and children with symptoms consistent with reflux (morning hoarseness) and emotional stress (insomnia). Laryngologists should communicate with choral conductors and singing teachers to enhance early identification and treatment of children with voice complaints, and to develop choral educational strategies that help decrease their incidence.     

Expert consensus in solo voice performance evaluation

Experts were interviewed to identify criteria for evaluation of vocal performance. A scale was then constructed and inter- and intrajudge reliability assessed. Experts listened to 19 different performances, plus 6 presented a second time. Interjudge reliability for one judge was modest, but increased dramatically as the size of the judge panel increased. The most reliable items were overall score and intonation accuracy. Diction was less reliable than other items. Intrajudge reliability was higher for overall score than for any other item. A factor analysis on the test items yielded factors labelled intrinsic quality, execution, and diction. Another factor analysis, using the experts as variables, revealed two underlying evaluative dimensions. It was found that 13 experts were primarily influenced by execution, and that 8 were mainly affected by intrinsic quality. Interjudge and intrajudge reliabilities of these two groups differed.     

Vowel Intelligibility in Classical Singing

Vowel intelligibility during singing is an important aspect of communication during performance. The intelligibility of isolated vowels sung by Western classically trained singers has been found to be relatively low, in fact, decreasing as pitch rises, and it is lower for women than for men. The lack of contextual cues significantly deteriorates vowel intelligibility. It was postulated in this study that the reduced intelligibility of isolated sung vowels may be partly from the vowels used by the singers in their daily vocalises. More specifically, if classically trained singers sang only a few American English vowels during their vocalises, their intelligibility for American English vowels would be less than for those classically trained singers who usually vocalize on most American English vowels. In this study, there were 21 subjects (15 women, 6 men), all Western classically trained performers as well as teachers of classical singing. They sang 11 words containing 11 different American English vowels, singing on two pitches a musical fifth apart. Subjects were divided into two groups, those who normally vocalize on 4, 5, or 6 vowels, and those who sing all 11 vowels during their daily vocalises. The sung words were cropped to isolate the vowels, and listening tapes were created. Two listening groups, four singing teachers and five speech-language pathologists, were asked to identify the vowels intended by the singers. Results suggest that singing fewer vowels during daily vocalises does not decrease intelligibility compared with singing the 11 American English vowels. Also, in general, vowel intelligibility was lower with the higher pitch, and vowels sung by the women were less intelligible than those sung by the men. Identification accuracy was about the same for the singing teacher listeners and the speech-language pathologist listeners except for the lower pitch, where the singing teachers were more accurate.     

Discrete storage processes and their Poisson flow and fluid flow approximations

Consider discrete storage processes that are modulated by environmental processes. Environmental processes cause interruptions in the input and/or output processes of the discrete storage processes. Due to the difficulties encountered in the exact analysis of such discrete storage systems, often Poisson flow and/or fluid flow models with the same modulating environmental processes are proposed as approximations for these systems. The analysis of Poisson flow and fluid flow models is much easier than that of the discrete storage processes. In this paper we give sufficient conditions under which the content of the discrete storage processes can be bounded by the Poisson flow and the fluid flow models. For example, we show that Poisson flow models and the fluid flow models developed by Kosten (and by Anick, Mitra and Sondhi) can be used to bound the performance of infinite (finite) source packetized voice/data communication systems. We also show that a Poisson flow model and the fluid flow model developed by Mitra can be used to bound the buffer content of a two stage automatic transfer line. The potential use of the bounding techniques presented in this paper, of course, transcends well beyond these examples.Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9308149.