• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.133-149
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• 2006

This study attempted to compare acoustic parameters, physiological observation and perceptual evaluation values obtained from the treatment and control groups in order to find out which of the self voice feedback therapies was better and which methods to train them were more effective. The experimental group carried out various self voice feedback therapies while the control group did only vocal hygiene. The acoustic measurement and voice manipulation for providing the patients visual, auditory feedback were done by a speech analysis software, Praat. The authors designed vocal hygiene, abdominal respiration and Praat self voice feedback therapies and applied them to 15 patients while applying only one vocal hygiene to 15 of the control group. For the purpose of examining the degree of their voice improvement after the treatment, pre- mid- and final evaluations were made for the two groups at the beginning, the 6th week and immediately after the 8th treatment session. Results of this study were as follows: The treatment group showed much improvement after receiving the voice treatment. In particular, acoustical and physiological indices from the optical endoscopy, pitch variation(Jitter), amplitude variation (Shimmer), maximum phonation time(MPT), and psychoacoustic evaluation showed statistically significant improvements over the control groups.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.135-146
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• 2018

The Modified Voiced Lip Trill (MVoLT) training is a variant of voiced lip-till training characterized by increased loudness, lowered laryngeal position, and lip contact facilitated with fingers. The purpose of the current study was to assess the effect of the MVoLT training program on vocal changes of musical singing theater students. A total of 32 musical theater students (17 males and 15 females, age ranging from 18 to 29) participated in the study. For about three months, each participant was tutored using a systematic program focussing on the MVoLT training, accompanied by certain facilitating strategies. Pre- & post-training multi-dimensional vocal characteristics were assesed and compared. Results showed that cepstral peak prominence during vowel phonation increased after training, while its standard deviation and Cepstral Spectral Index of Dysphonia decreased. When an aerodynamic assessment was performed, maximum phonation time, subglottal pressure, mean airflow rate increased, while electroglottographic measures did not change. In addition, decreased psychometric measures, higher maximum pitch, and increased vocal range were noted after training. In conclusion, the MVoLT was proven to have a potential as an effective and safe training method for musical theater singing.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 2024

Closed quotient (CQ) represents the time ratio for which the vocal folds remain in contact during voice production. Because analyzing CQ values serves as an important reference point in vocal training for professional singers, these values have been measured mechanically or electrically by either inverse filtering of airflows captured by a circumferentially vented mask or post-processing of electroglottography waveforms. In this study, we introduced a novel algorithm to predict the CQ values only from audio signals. This has eliminated the need for mechanical or electrical measurement techniques. Our algorithm is based on a gated recurrent unit (GRU)-type neural network. To enhance the efficiency, we pre-processed an audio signal using the pitch feature extraction algorithm. Then, GRU-type neural networks were employed to extract the features. This was followed by a dense layer for the final prediction. The Results section reports the mean square error between the predicted and real CQ. It shows the capability of the proposed algorithm to predict CQ values.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.5-12
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• 1996

We propose a two-channel(Speech & EGG) pitch detection algorithm. The EGG signal monitors the vibratory motion of vocal folds very well. Therefore, using the EGG signal as well as speech signal, we obtain a reliable and robust pitch detection algorithm that minimizers problems occuring in the pitch detection with speech only. The proposed algorithm gives precise pitch markers that are synchronized to the speech in the time domain. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the two-channel pitch detection algorithm over the conventional method, and it can be used in obtaining reference pitch for evaluation of other pitch detection algorithms.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1994.06c
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• pp.103-106
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• 1994

Generally we are used to apply waveform coding method obtaining the high quality synthesized speech. But we have to solve the problems, memory capacity and pitch alteration, for applying the waveform coding method to speech synthesis by rule. The former problem is conquered by improving the integrated semiconductor technology, but the latter problem remains. In this paper, we compare the methods that have proposed for pitch alteration in our laboratory until now. These methods are not change properties of vocal tract formants and only altered the pitch halving method, 1.14% for cepstrum analysis method, and 2.36% for hamonics compensated with the phase method.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.06c
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• pp.147-150
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• 1998

In the case of speech synthesis, the waveform coding method with high quality is mainly used to the synthesis by analysis. Because the parameters of this coding method are not classified as both excitation and vocal tract parameters, it is difficult to apply the waveform coding method to the synthesis by rule. Thus, in order to apply the waveform coding method to the synthesis by rule, a pitch alteration is required for the prosody control. In the speech synthesis method by the conventional PSOLA technique, applying symmetric window function to asymmetric speech waveform, it occurs the unbalance phenomenon of energy according to the overlapped degree of pitch interval adjustment. In this paper to overcome the unbalance phenomenon of energy, we proposed a new method that can convert asymmetric waveform to symmetric one by time-frequency conversion. As a result, we can obtain an average spectrum distortion ratio with 6.38% according to the pitch alteration ratio.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1995.06a
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• pp.123-126
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• 1995

The waveform coding are concerned with simply preserving the wave shape of speech signal through a redundancy reduction process. In the case of speech synthesis, the wave form coding with high quality are mainly used to the synthesis by analysis. However, because the parameters of this coding are not classified as either excitation and vocal tract parameters, it is difficult to applying the waveform coding to the synthesis by rule. In this paper, we proposed a new pitch alteration method that can change the pitch period in waveform coding by using scaling the time-axis and compensating the spectrum. This is a time-frequency domain method that is preserved in the phase components of the waveform and that has a little spectrum distortion with 2.5% and less for 50% pitch change.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.213-219
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• 2004

This paper proposes speaker recognition algorithm which includes the pitch parameter for the peak and valley. The time-frequency hybrid method for pitch extraction is valuable in that it can improve resolution in the time domain and accuracy in the frequency domain at the same time. It makes reference pattern using membership function and performs vocal track recognition of common character using fuzzy pattern matching in order to include time variation width for non-linear utterance for proposed method, speaker recognition experiments are carried out using vowels and number sounds.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.2
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• pp.89-94
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• 1997

This study was attempted to analyze the acoustic characteristics of profoundly deaf students. The 59 profoundly hearing-impaired and 36 normal subjects were divided into 3 age groups: 6-10 yrs group, 11-15 yrs group, and 16-20 yrs group. The voice was sampled in /a/ prolongation, counting, reading, and conversation using the Computerized Speech ,Lab (CSL). The vocal pitch of the deaf subjects was significantly higher than the normal subjects. The younger in age was tended to be higher in pitch and jitter values of the deaf subjects. The three age groups of the deaf subjects did not show any difference in loudness and shimmer, excepted to minimum loudness. The pitch mean of males was significantly lower than that for females.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.522-533
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• 1999

This paper proposes speaker recognition algorithm which includes both the pitch parameter and the fuzzy inference. This study proposes a pitch detection method PVPF(peak and valley pitch detection fuction) by means of comparing spectra which utilizes the transform characteristics between time and frequency. In this paper, makes reference pattern using membership function and performs vocal tract recognition of common character using fuzzy pattern matching in order to include time variation width for non-linear utterance time.