On the Separation and Measurement of Formant Frequencies
Manfred R. Schroeder · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1956
A method of separating and measuring formant frequencies is described. The procedure is based on various weightings of the short-time power spectrum of the speech wave to be analyzed [Chang et al. Proc. Inst. Radio Engrs. 39, 147 (1951)]. The performance under a variety of disturbances such as noise, spurious pulses, and low-frequency distortions is studied and compared to the respective performance of the conventional rate-of-axis-crossings method of frequency measurement. Another comparison is concerned with the influence of the fundamental frequency. In all cases the method proposed here seems to be remarkably superior. First experimental results on the measurement of the first, second, and third formants are given for a variety of vowel and semivowel sounds.