We propose a novel method of generating a frequency warping function by mapping formant parameters of the source speaker and the target speaker. Alignment and selection process are performed to ensure that the mapping formants can represent speakers’ difference well. This approach requires only a very small amount of training data for generating the warping function, which can greatly facilitat...

We describe an algorithm that automatically finds the smoothest formant trajectories for short segments of speech. The method selects for each segment the smoothest from a number of alternatives. The smoothness criterion is based on the modeling of formant tracks with polynomial functions and uses both the χ2 badness-of-fit as well as the variances of the polynomial coefficients. A great advant...

Acoustic-phonetic approaches to forensic voice comparison often include analysis of vowel formants. Such methods typically depend on human-supervised formant measurement, which is often assumed to be relatively reliable and relatively robust to telephonetransmission-channel effects, but which requires substantial investment of human labor. Fully-automatic formant trackers require minimal human ...

The perceptual grouping of a four-tone cycle was studied as a function of differences in fundamental frequencies and the frequencies of spectral peaks. Each tone had a single formant and at least 13 harmonics. In Experiment 1 the formant was created by filtering a flat spectrum and in Experiment 2 by adding harmonics. Fundamental frequency was found to be capable of controlling grouping even wh...

The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy with which listeners could identify the gender of a speaker from a synthesized isolated vowel based on the natural production of that speaker when (1) the fundamental frequency was consistent with the speaker's gender, (2) the fundamental frequency was inconsistent with the the speaker's gender, and (3) the speaker was transgendered. Ten m...

Developmental trends of durational and spectral parameters of five American English diphthongs are investigated by age and gender. Specifically, diphthong durations, the fundamental frequency (F0), and the first three formant (F1, F2, F3) trajectories as well as formant transition rates are analyzed as a function of age, gender and diphthong type. In addition, the distance between diphthong ons...

In this paper we propose to apply formant pattern recognition to Mandarin vowel pronunciation assessment. We devise a novel pitch cycle detection method and suggest estimating formant frequencies from observations of the frequency domain by using pitch-synchronous analysis. Statistically based classifiers are trained to discriminate formant patterns for vowel pronunciation assessment. Five conf...

The aim of the present study was to analyzed vowel and diphthong formant variation of a female patient diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for 12 months using acoustic analysis. Monophthongs /a, i, u/ and diphthongs /h+ja+da/, /h+wi+da/, /h+ɰi+da/ were used for test. As the result of analysis, fundamental frequency and loudness declined with the progress of ALS characterized by d...

This study examined how differently native speakers of Japanese discriminated between the American English vowels /e/ and /ae/ in /CVp/ syllables with 20 different initial consonants, and how the differing discrimination was related to the formant changes throughout the vowels in comparison with the Japanese vowels /e/ and /a/. A perceptual test and formant analyses of the English and Japanese ...

This study examines the potential role of the auditory spectral integration in phonetic vowel quality decisions. Synthetic stimuli included a “virtual formant (F2)” which was produced by inserting two pairs of sine waves below and above a “perceptual target frequency” (the spectral center-of-gravity, COG). Intensity weighting across the pairs of sine waves created a virtual F2, i.e., an F2 perc...