An acoustic analysis of vocal effort and speaking style
May Pik Yu Chan, Mark Yoffe Liberman · Proceedings of meetings on acoustics · 2021
Voice projection is a strategy used by every voice user. Work on singers’ voice projection found the use of the “singer's formant”, and a similar “actor's formant” has been found for actors. However, it remains unclear whether differences in source and/or filter strategies exist among voice users without vocal training in varying speaking styles. Recordings from the SRI-FRTIV corpus were used to examine the effects of vocal effort and speech style on vocal characteristics. The present work used a range of acoustic measures that are mostly based on long term spectral averages, to explore public speakers’ voice projection strategies in up to three levels of vocal effort in (1) reading, (2) interview, (3) conversation, and (4) oration tasks. Results show that both male and female speakers use source-related strategies in high vocal effort conditions, such as having tenser voicing. However, male speakers may also use filter related strategies. These voice projection strategies appear consistent across speaking styles.