Effects of Microphone Type on Acoustic Measures of Voice

Acoustic measures provide an objective means to describe pathological voices and are a routine component of the clinical voice examination. Because the voice sample is obtained using a microphone, microphone characteristics have the potential to influence the values of parameters obtained from a voice sample. This project examined how the choice of microphone affects key voice parameters and investigated how one might compensate for such microphone effects through filtering or by including additional parameters in the decision process. A database of 53 normal voice samples and 100 pathological voice samples was used in four experiments conducted in an anechoic chamber using four different microphones. One omnidirectional microphone and three cardioid microphones were used in these experiments. The original voice samples were presented to each microphone through a speaker located in an anechoic chamber, and the output of each microphone sampled to computer disk. Each microphone modified the frequency spectrum of the voice signal; this, in turn, affected the values of the voice parameters obtained. These microphone effects reduced the accuracy with which acoustic measures of voice could be used to discriminate pathological from normal voices. Discrimination performance improved when the microphone output was filtered to compensate for microphone frequency response. Performance also improved when spectral moment coefficient parameters were added to the vocal function parameters already in use.