The aim of the present investigation was to study hoarseness and its perceptual, acoustic and physiological characteristics in ten-year-old children’s voices. Fifty-eight children’s voices were perceptually evaluated along 15 voice parameters. The rank ordered means of each parameter revealed a discontinuity in the distribution for all parameters except pitch, breathiness and vocal fry. This di...

Perceived vocal features of emotional speech have rarely been investigated. In this contribution, a procedure allowing to collect reliable judgments on the perception of voice characteristics of emotional speech is presented. Relations between acoustic parameters and perceived features of speech are described. Some benefits and potential drawbacks of studying perceived vocal features in emotion...

Voice conversion techniques attempt to modify speech signal so that it is perceived as if spoken by another speaker, different from the original speaker. In this paper, we present a novel approach to perform voice conversion. Our approach uses acoustic models based on units of speech, like phones and diphones, for voice conversion. These models can be computed and used independently for a given...

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is an autosomal dominant neurocutaneous disorder caused by mutations in the NF1 gene, which is located at the long arm of chromosome 17. Major characteristics include multiple café-au-lait spots and neurofibromas. Voice abnormalities have been reported to occur in this patient group. However, most studies relied on subjective measurements only. The present study r...

In this paper, we describe a perceptual voice recognition method to improve the naturalness of synthesized speech for Mandarin Chinese text-to-speech (TTS) baseline system. As a large TTS speech corpus, speech data always has different acoustic properties for different data recording conditions. Speech data recorded under different conditions can finally influence the naturalness of synthesized...

A major cause of degradation of speech quality in HMMbased speech synthesis is the use of a simple delta pulse signal to generate the excitation of voiced speech. This paper describes a new approach to using an acoustic glottal source model in HMM-based synthesisers. The goal is to improve speech quality and parametric flexibility to better model and transform voice characteristics.

We identify methods of distinguishing between correctly and incorrectly recognized utterances (scored by hand for semantic concept accuracy) for a speech recognition system, using acoustic/prosodic characteristics. The analysis was performed on data collected during independent experiments done with an interactive voice response system that provides travel information over the phone.

employees’ satisfaction based on their physical environment is an important factor that can improve employees’ performance, job satisfaction, and organizational productivity in office buildings. occupants’ environmental satisfaction are related to 10 different characteristics, including thermal comfort, air quality, lighting, acoustic quality, office layout, workspace furnishing, cleanliness an...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use connected speech patterns in acoustic analysis of voice to determine if variations in vocal patterns can be detected during different phases of the menstrual cycle. It was hypothesized that natural hormonal changes during menstrual cycle would alter the acoustic characteristics of voice. Method: This descriptive research design acoustically analyzed...

There is an increased risk for vocal and voice diseases due to the modern way of life. It is well known that most of the vocal and voice diseases cause changes in the acoustic voice signal. These diseases have to be diagnosed and treated during an early stage. Acoustic analysis is a non-invasive technique based on digital processing of speech signal. Acoustic analysis can be a useful tool to di...