The female voice—Experiments and overview
Gunnar Fant, Christer Gobl, Inger Karlsson, Qiguang Lin · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1987
Results from recent experiments at the KTH directed to the study of aerodynamics and voice source flow will be presented. These include simultaneous recordings of glottal airflow and supraglottal pressure from a Rothenberg mask. A number of females served as subjects producing isolated syllables and, in one instance, complete sentences. For one subject, the subglottal pressure was also recorded. Typical temporal profiles of these measures, including glottal leakage, will be discussed. In a separate study, data were collected on glottal flow waveforms from inverse filtering of the speech pressure wave. A parametrization and resynthesis in terms of the four-parameter LF model has been undertaken, which allows a comparison with a set of male voices. Theoretical studies of source-vocal-tract interaction effects provide a basis for interpretation of results and modeling of female specific characteristics. Finally, a review is presented of accumulated insight in the properties of female speech including factors other than source mechanisms.