Human voice phoneme directivity pattern measurements
Brian F. G. Katz, Fabien Prezat, Christophe d’Alessandro · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
The application of directivity patterns to radiating sources into computer simulations and auralizations is common for loudspeaker models. Few applications include the directivity patterns of natural sources, partly due to the lack of sufficient data. This work presents the results of a detailed measurement study on human voice directivity in three-dimensions. Unlike previous studies that have used average directivity data over read phrases, this work presents results that are measured for a number of sustained individual phonemes. Details of the measurement protocol and posttreatment processing are presented. Comparisons are made relative to phoneme, f0, spectral characteristics, and associated mouth geometry for several talker subjects. Studies have also been made on the directivity of the singing voice. Specifically, the variations in directivity relative to level (piano, fortissimo, etc.) and projection as controlled by the singer have been investigated. Results of this work are applicable to speech production research, talker simulator design, room acoustic sound field prediction, and virtual reality systems with talking avatars.