• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2016

Background and Objectives: Quality of voice may be deteriorated after thyroidectomy without any injury to recurrent laryngeal nerve. While there have been several studies showing the change of acoustic parameters after thyroidectomy, factors related to deteriorated voice quality have been rarely studies. In this study, we sought to analyze the factors associated to deteriorated voice quality after thyroidectomy. Materials and Methods: We made a retrospective review of 35 patients who underwent thyroidectomy for papillary thyroid carcinoma. Voice analysis including acoustic analysis, voice handicap index 10 (VHI-10), and GRBAS score was conducted before and 3 months after surgery. Patients were grouped according to the amount of increase in VHI-10 after surgery ; group A (${\Delta}VHI<7$) and group B (${\Delta}VHI{\geq}7$). Clinicopathologic factors associated to patients of group B were analyzed and changes of parameters from acoustic analysis in each group were evaluated. Results : Patients of group B were associated with age ${\geq}45$ years (p=0.025) and showed borderline association to total thyroidectomy (p=0.075) and tumor size ${\geq}1cm$ (p=0.086). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that those with age ${\geq}45$ years were independently associated to deteriorated quality of voice (p=0.014, HR=18.38). Patients of group B were also associated to significant deterioration of high pitch (p<0.001) and Grade score with borderline significance (p=0.054). Conclusion: Patients older than 45 years may have higher risk of deterioration of quality of voice after thyroidectomy based on increase of VHI-10 score (${\Delta}VHI{\geq}7$). Association with deterioration of high pitch should also be considered in these patients.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.115-119
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• 2003

This study compared pitch range, speech rate, pause, intonation type and boundary tones of four sentences produced by five transgenders (male to female) to those of twenty normal adults. Voice analysis was done by Praat (version 4.049). Results indicated that there was a difference in pitch range, speech rate, pause, intonation type and boundary tones among the 3 groups(transgenders, normal males and normal females). Especially, transgenders indicated boundary tones more frequently than normal adults.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.49-55
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• 2019

This study sought to investigate whether mean speaking fundamental frequency (SFF) can be predicted by parameters of voice and speech range profile (VRP and SRP) in Korean normal adults. Moreover, it explored whether gender differences exist in the absolute differences between the SFF and estimated SFF (ESFF) predicted by the VRP and SRP. A total of 85 native Korean speakers with normal voice participated in the study. Each participant was asked to perform the VRP task using the vowel /a/ and the SRP task using the first sentence of a Korean standard passage "Ga-eul". In addition, the SFF was measured with electroglottography during a passage reading task. Predictive factors of the SFF were explored and the absolute difference between the SFF and the ESFF (DSFF) was compared between gender groups. Results indicated that predictive factors were age, gender, minimum pitch and pitch range for the VRP (adjusted $R^2=.931$), and pitch range (in semi-tones) and maximum pitch for the SRP (adjusted $R^2=.963$), respectively. The SFF and ESFF predicted by the VRP and SRP showed a strong positive correlation. The DSFF of the VRP and SRP, as well as their sum did not differ by gender. In conclusion, the SFF during a passage reading task could be successfully predicted by the parameters of the VRP and SRP tasks. In further studies, clinical implications need to be explored in patients who may exhibit deviations in SFF.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.102-105
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• 2002

A noise reduction technique to reduce background noise in corrupted voice is proposed. The proposed method is based on linear prediction and takes advantages of periodicity of voiced speech. A voiced sound is regarded as a periodic stationary signal in short time interval. Therefore, the current voice signal is correlated with the voice signal delayed by a pitch period. A linear predictor can estimate only the current signal correlated with the delayed signal. Therefore, the enhanced voice can be obtained as output of the linear predictor. Simulation results show that the proposed method is able to reduce the background noise.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.122-126
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• 2002

In this study, we find features of 3 emotions (Happiness, Angry, Surprise) as the fundamental research of emotion recognition. Speech signal with emotion has several elements. That is, voice quality, pitch, formant, speech speed, etc. Until now, most researchers have used the change of pitch or Short-time average power envelope or Mel based speech power coefficients. Of course, pitch is very efficient and informative feature. Thus we used it in this study. As pitch is very sensitive to a delicate emotion, it changes easily whenever a man is at different emotional state. Therefore, we can find the pitch is changed steeply or changed with gentle slope or not changed. And, this paper extracts formant features from speech signal with emotion. Each vowels show that each formant has similar position without big difference. Based on this fact, in the pleasure case, we extract features of laughter. And, with that, we separate laughing for easy work. Also, we find those far the angry and surprise.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.740-749
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• 1994

This paper presents method for improving the performance of the VSELP speech coder. The hybrid method is employed for pitch period searching. Pitch searching time is reduced and pitch detection error, caused by quantization error of excitation signal of encoder in VSELP coder, is reduced by this method. This paper also adopts a pitch period enhancement filter and an adaptive first order filter. In this result, pitch period searching time is reduced to 26%, and MOS of reconstructed speech signal is increased by 3.19 to 4.04.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.69-79
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• 2005

This study was purported to examine the definition of tone deafness, various factors for the cause based on literature review of research findings, and to examine therapeutic application of music for treatment of tone deafness. With research, it was found that there can be three different kinds of tone deafness; amusia, agnosia, and asonia. Literature review showed that tone deafness has been frequently dealt in many research in order to verify the causal factors, such as gender, age, and environments. With time, the research trend on tone deafness has shifted towards neurological approach closely examining brain activity, presenting the statement that the brain's capacity to perceive modest pitch changes may be congenitally impaired. Also physiological factors contribute to tone deafness called diplacusis, which is a phenomenon wherein a given tone is heard as different pitches by the two ears, resulting in conflicting bilateral perception of pitch. Music can be used for treatment of various factors causing tone deafness. The most efficient intervention was singing program. Pitch-matching training can be effective training using operant conditioning procedure. Successive approximation or reinforcement of correct response alone was more efficient procedure in helping uncertain singers to sing on pitch. Also progressive breathing exercises helped the training the pitch-matching where one had to coordinate hearing and voice.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.89-95
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• 2016

The purpose of this work is to analyze and synthesize the pseudo-periodicity of voice using a source model. A speech signal has periodic characteristics; however, it is not completely periodic. While periodicity contributes significantly to the production of prosody, emotional status, etc., pseudo-periodicity contributes to the distinctions between normal and abnormal status, the naturalness of normal speech, etc. Measurement of pseudo-periodicity is typically performed through parameters such as jitter and shimmer. For studying the pseudo-periodic nature of voice in a controlled environment, through collected natural voice, we can only observe the distributions of the parameters, which are limited by the size of collected data. If we can generate voice samples in a controlled manner, experiments that are more diverse can be conducted. In this study, the probability distributions of vowel pitch variation are obtained from the speech signal. Based on the probability distribution of vocal folds, pulses with a designated jitter value are synthesized. Then, the target and re-analyzed jitter values are compared to check the validity of the method. It was found that the jitter synthesis method is useful for normal voice synthesis.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.99-107
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• 2009

In view of the hypothesis that the effects of Parkinson disease on voice production can be detected before pharmacological intervention, the voice differences of patients with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease and a healthy aging group were diagnostically analyzed with the long term object of establishing, for clinical purposes, early disease-progression biomarkers. Fifteen patients with Idopathic Parkinson's disease (prior to pharmacological intervention) and a healthy control group of 15 were selected and every voice was recorded three times using praat (ver. 5022) with a headset mic. Relevant parameters - acoustic measure of /a/ phonation, F0 related parameters, MPT related parameters, articulatory ratio, VOT - were then analyzed by MANOVA. Significant differences were found in the F0 related (low F0, high F0, F0 range) and MPT related parameters. There were also significant differences in acoustic measurements (intensity, shimmer, HNR, jitter), AMR (/$t{\Lambda}$/,/$k{\Lambda}$/) and VOT (/ta/), The findings indicated that the voice production of patients with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease have normal pitch but bad quality. In particular, with slow articulatory ratios and VOT values, the tongue tip functioning of patients was lower than for the healthy group.