• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.141-144
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• 2003

In this paper, we compared formant frequency extraction algorithms with various conditions, and show their performances. The formant frequency is the resonance frequency which is decided by the vocal tract characteristics. It is related with phonemes, or characteristics of the physical condition of the vocal track. Since the speech signal is influenced by both the sound source and the vocal tract, it is difficult to calculate the exact formant frequencies. Many studies on the formant frequency extraction had been executed already Besides, any new formant frequency extraction algorithm is hardly found recently.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.23-27
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• 2002

This study was performed to compare the individual characteristics of the vocalization and behavior in the adult female German Shepherd in military service. In this study, a stranger and an other strange dog approached their kennel. Their body postures included ears forward and up, slowly wagged tails, lips raised, mouth open and teeth exposed. It was Interesting that their vocalizations were only the bark without any combination of other vocalizations. There were significant differences between duration of call(DC), pitch(P), Fl formant, F2 formant, F3 formant and F4 formant(p<0.05) except interval between call(IBC) and intensity(I) among their barks. It was suggested that the differences between same breed dogs'barks could be recognized and the data of spectrogram, especially formant contour, could be used to discriminate the sender characteristics. The body postures could also be used to understand their mind.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2003.07e
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• pp.2415-2418
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• 2003

In this paper, we present a new filter to adjust formant information. Spectral envelope in speech analysis shows information about characteristics of speech and formant information determines speech timbre. So, if formant position is adjusted, we can verify adjusted speech timbre. A presented filter is to adjust this formant. This filter is composed of triangular filters. Using this filter we could locate the formant frequency at target position.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.59-64
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• 2017

There are three sorts of voices of female vocalists: soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto according to the transliteration. Among them, the soprano has the highest vocal range. Since the voice is generated through the human vocal tract based on the voice generation model, it is greatly influenced by the vocal tract. The structure of vocal organs differs from person to person, and the formants characteristic of vocalization differ accordingly. The formant characteristic refers to a characteristic in which a specific frequency band appears distinctly due to resonance occurring in each vocal tract in the vocal process. Formant characteristics include personality that occurs in the throat, jaw, lips, and teeth, as well as phonological properties of phonemes. The first formant is the throat, the second formant is the jaw, the third formant and the fourth formant are caused by the resonance phenomenon in the lips and the teeth. Among them, pronunciation is influenced not only by phonological information but also by jaws, lips and teeth. When the mouth is small or the jaw is stiff when pronouncing, pronunciation becomes unclear. Therefore, the higher the accuracy of the pronunciation characteristics, the more clearly the formant characteristics appear in the grammar spectrum. However, many soprano singers can not open their mouths because their jaws, lips, teeth, and facial muscles are rigid to maintain high tones when singing, which makes the pronunciation unclear and thus the formant characteristics become unclear. In this paper, in order to confirm the accuracy of the pronunciation characteristics of soprano singers, the experimental group was selected as the soprano singers A, B, C, D, E of Korea and analyzed the grammar spectrum and conducted the MOS test for pronunciation recognition. As a result, soprano singer B showed a clear recognition from F1 to F5 and MOS test result showed the highest recognition rate with 4.6 points. Soprano singers A, C, and D appear from F1 to F3, but it was difficult to find formants above 2kHz. Finally, the soprano singer E had difficulty in finding the formant as a whole, and MOS test showed the lowest recognition rate at 2.1 points. Therefore, we confirmed that the soprano singer B, which exhibits the most distinct formant characteristics in the grammar spectrum, has the best pronunciation accuracy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.49-53
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• 2017

Formant frequencies depend on the position of tongue, the shape of lips, and larynx. In the auditory system, the external ear canal is an open-end resonator, which can modify the voice characteristics. This study investigates the effect of the real ear on formant frequencies. Fifteen subjects ranging from 22 to 30 years of age participated in the study. This study employed three corner vowels: the low central vowel /a/, the high front vowel /i/, and the high back vowel /u/. For this study, the voice of a well-educated undergraduate who majored in speech-language pathology, was recorded with a high performance condenser microphone placed in the upper pinna and in the ear canal. Paired t-test showed that there were significant difference in the formant frequencies of F1, F2, F3, and F4 between the free field and the real ear. For /a/, all formant frequencies decreased significantly in the real ear. For /i/, F2 increased and F3 and F4 decreased. For /u/, F1 and F2 increased, but F3 and F4 decreased. It seems that these voice modifications in the real ear contribute to interpreting voice quality and understanding speech, timbre, and individual characteristics, which are influenced by the shape of the outer ear and external ear canal in such a way that formant frequencies become centralized in the vowel space.

• MALSORI
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• no.31_32
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• pp.9-22
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• 1996

This study aims to describe the acoustic characteristics of Korean nasal sounds making use of the notion of pole and zero. In case of [m], the 1st and 4th formant almost remains as the original shape respectively, on the contrary, the 2nd and 3rd formant were observed as a variable cluster together. Alveolar [n] shows that the 3rd and 4th formant make a variable cluster with their antiformant(zero), however, the 1st and 2nd formant keep the static shape of their on. Velar [$\eta$] has 4 formants below 2900 Hz and the 3rd and 4th formant constitute a variable cluster together as does the case [n]. With respect to the energy distribution in case of [n] and [$\eta$], the energy value diminishes from Fl up to F3 continuously but augments in F4. The [m] shows that in the region of Fl-F2 does the energy fall down and rise from F3 to above.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.91-99
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• 2014

Speaking styles tend to have an influence on spectral characteristics of produced speech. There are not many studies on the spectral characteristics of speech because of complicated processing of too much spectral data. The purpose of this study was to examine spectral characteristics and formant bandwidths of English vowels produced by nine American males with different speaking styles: clear or conversational styles; high- or low-pitched voices. Praat was used to collect pitch-corrected long-term averaged spectra and bandwidths of the first two formants of eleven vowels in the speaking styles. Results showed that the spectral characteristics of the vowels varied systematically according to the speaking styles. The clear speech showed higher spectral energy of the vowels than that of the conversational speech while the high-pitched voice did the same over the low-pitched voice. In addition, front and back vowel groups showed different spectral characteristics. Secondly, there was no statistically significant difference between B1 and B2 in the speaking styles. B1 was generally lower than B2 when reflecting the source spectrum and radiation effect. However, there was a statistically significant difference in B2 between the front and back vowel groups. The author concluded that spectral characteristics reflect speaking styles systematically while bandwidths measured at a few formant frequency points do not reveal style differences properly. Further studies would be desirable to examine how people would evaluate different sets of synthetic vowels with spectral characteristics or with bandwidths modified.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.65-72
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• 2009

Formant values are the most important acoustic correlates of English vowels. Classical studies on English vowels reported the first three formant values measured at a single timepoint on a sustained vowel segment. However, many recent studies revealed that partial onset or offset segments with information of dynamic spectral changes may contribute to the exact identification of English vowels with an accuracy almost comparable to that by the whole vowel segment or word. The purpose of this study was to examine formant trajectories of nine English vowels collected by Hillenbrand et al.(1995). Acoustic analysis was systematically made by a Praat script at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment. Results showed that the first formant trajectories played an important role in distinguishing each vowel within the front- or back-vowel groups. The second formant trajectories of the back vowels varied more drastically than those of the front vowels. The third formant value was similar except the high vowel /i/. From the vowel space on F1 by F2 axes, the formant trajectories of each vowel clearly showed a transition toward the locus of the following consonant /d/. Other acoustic data revealed that there were some vowel inherent duration or pitch values. From this study we can conclude that the dynamic spectral changes are very important in specifying acoustic characteristics of the English vowels. Further studies on vowels and diphthongs in different contexts are desirable.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.133-140
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• 2005

The aim of this study was to divide vocalizations of sows into general(GVs) and estrus-related vocalizations( EVs) and to find out their phonetic characteristics. Ten sows(Landrace) were recorded using digital video recorders twice daily(06: 00 - 08 : 00h and 17: 00 - 19 : 00h) during the anestrus and estrus periods. The GVs and EVs were divided based on the shapes of spectrum and spectrogram. The GVs and EVs were identified as 5 and 3 types, respectively. Pitch, formant I, formant 2, and formant 3 between GVs and EVs were not significantly different(P> 0.05), whereas intensity(P < 0.001), duration(P < 0.05), and formant 4(P < 0.01) were significantly different. Three parameter groups(Group I : Formant vector alone, Group II: Formant veetor+ parameters from time signal, Group III: Formant vector+parameters from time signal-parameters eliminated by stepwise discriminant analysis backward) were compared by discriminant function analysis. The classification system adopted in the Group II represented the higher discrimination rate than those in other groups(Group I : 76.1 0/0, Group II : 88.1 0/0, Group Ill: 87.3 %). These results suggest that EVs are present and intensity, formant 2, and formant 4 are available parameters for discrimination of EVs in sows.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2005

Background and Objectives : Vowels are characterized on the basis of formant patterns. The first formant(F1) is determined by high-low placement of the tongue, and the second formant (F2) by front-back placement of the tongue. The fundamental frequency(F0) of a soprano often exceed the normal frequency of the first formant. And the vocal intensity is boosted when F0 is high and a harmonic coincides with a formant. This is called a formant tuning. Experienced singers thus learned how to tune their formants over a resonable range by lowering the tongue to maximize their vocal intensity. So, the current study aimed to identify the formant tuning in one experienced soprano by comparing the first formants of vowel [i] in three different voice production : speech, ascending scale, and vocalize. Materials and Method : All voices recordings of vowel [i] in speech, ascending scale (from F4 note to A4 note), and vocalize(:Ridente la calam") were made with digital audio tape-corder in a sound treated room. And the captured data were analyzed by the long term average(LTA) power spectrum using the FFT algorithm of the Computerized Speech Lab(CSL, Kay elementrics, Model, 4300B). Results : Although the first formant of vowel [i] in speech was 238Hz, those of ascending scale [i] were 377Hz, 405Hz, 453Hz respectively in F4(349z), G4(392Hz), A4(440Hz) note, and 722Hz, 820Hz, 918Hz respectively in F5 (698Hz), G5(784Hz), A5(880Hz) note. In vocalize, first formants of [i] were 380Hz, 398Hz, 453Hz respectively in F4, G4, A4 note, and 720Hz, 821Hz, 890Hz respectively in F5, G5, A5 note. Conclusion : These results showed that the first formant of ascending scale and vocalize sustained higher frequency than fundamental frequency in high pitch. This finding implicates that the formant tuning of vowel [i] in ascending scale was also noted in vocalize.