• 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.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.665-670
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• 2002

The most common form of pre-emphasis is y(n)=s(n)-As(n-1), where A typically lies between 0.9 and 1.0 in voiced signal. Also, this value reflects the degree of pre-emphasis and equals R(1)/R(0) in conventional method. This paper proposes a new flattening method to compensate the weaked high frequency components that occur by vocal cord characteristic. We used interval information of LSP to estimate formant frequency, After obtaining the value of slope and inverse slope using linear interpolation among formant frequency, flattening process is followed. Experimental results show that the proposed method flattened the weaked high frequency components effectively. That is, we could improve the flattening characteristics by using interval information of LSP as flattening factor at the process that compensates weaked high frequency components.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.125-132
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• 2010

Since the ancient times, animals that can imitate the voices of human beings have been considered extremely special. There are very few such animals, and the parrot is an example of them. For a long time, there had been no reported case of a rooster being able to mimic the voice of a human being, but talking roosters were recently found in Korea and the Kyrgyz Republic, generating much talk. In this study, the vocal characteristics of such roosters were examined, and their pronunciation-related statistics and actual sound sources were analyzed. The analysis results showed that even though the roostets cannot converse with people, they can imitate the human voice, uttering the words "An-dwae," and "A-ni-ya" in Korean, which mean "No" in English, when someone tries to catch their wings. A similar situation 'occurred in the Kyrgyzstan. The results of the listening survey on these sounds made by the roosters showed that most people recognized the words uttered by the roosters and that nobody thought that the words sounded like "cock-a-doodle-doo." It can be said that such roosters can make the sounds of the human voice because of their innate vocal organ and characteristics, which are significantly different from those of the general roosters. Their vocal organ and characteristics cause the sounds that they make to change in their vocal cords due to their high tension when humans try to catch them.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.145-156
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• 2008

The goal of this study was to investigate acoustic and physiologic characteristics of two phonation types of 'Khoomei' which is a traditional singing style of people who live around the Altai mountains or Mongolia region. It can be produced two pitches simultaneously - high melody pitch can be perceived along with a low drone pitch. Sygyt and kargyraa styles are the most popular and identifiable styles and they can be recognized as the different sounds depending on the method of voice production. Two trained Mongolians participated and have used at least 5 - 6 years. The characteristics of this voice production were measured by using flexible fiberscope, Stroboscopy, Lx Speech studio, Spead, and Doctor Speech. In Sygyt style, very high vocal fold closure (71.50%) with both true and false vocal folds contact and strong breathing support was observed. They also showed that tongue height and harmonics were increased (around 10dB) with resonance cavity movement. In contrast, it was found that Kargyraa sound had very low pitch with relaxed stomach, less laryngeal tension and lower vocal fold contact (69.50%) than hard Sygyt style sound without raising the tongue during phonation. 'Khoomei' phonation can be made by strong contact of both true and false vocal folds and by increasing the harmonics as well.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.41-47
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• 2017

The main advantage of the statistical parametric speech synthesis is its flexibility in changing voice characteristics. A personalized text-to-speech(TTS) system can be implemented by combining a speech synthesis system and a voice transformation system, and it is widely used in many application areas. It is known that the fundamental frequency and the spectral envelope of speech signal can be independently modified to convert the voice characteristics. Also it is important to maintain naturalness of the transformed speech. In this paper, a speech synthesis system based on Hidden Markov Model(HMM-based speech synthesis, HTS) using the STRAIGHT vocoder is constructed and voice transformation is conducted by modifying the fundamental frequency and spectral envelope. The fundamental frequency is transformed in a scaling method, and the spectral envelope is transformed through frequency warping method to control the speaker's vocal tract length. In particular, this study proposes a voice transformation method using the correlation between fundamental frequency and vocal tract length. Subjective evaluations were conducted to assess preference and mean opinion scores(MOS) for naturalness of synthetic speech. Experimental results showed that the proposed voice transformation method achieved higher preference than baseline systems while maintaining the naturalness of the speech quality.

• 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 the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.60-62
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• 2011

Primary laryngeal aspergillosis is rare, It is most often found in immunocompromised patient, such as leukemia, malignant disease, diabetes or immunosuppressive drugs. These days the occurrences of laryngeal aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients are increasing. The cause of laryngeal aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients is not clear, but a few factors are considered such as iatrogenic factors, vocal abuse, vocal fold cyst and occupational factors. The histopathologic characteristics are somewhat different between that of immunocompromised patients and immunocompetent patients. We report a case of primary vocal cord aspergillosis in immunocompetent patient who had treated with only surgery and brief review of the pertinent literature.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.06e
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• pp.219-222
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• 2001

The human speech sounds are use to diagnosis in oriental medicine with ‘0-sung’theory. In general, human voice are sound waves which generated by phonation. Two major parts of phonation are vocal cords and vocal tract. The uniqueness of individual vocal sound depend on structure and usage of their vocal cords and tract. In the oriental medicine, “0-sung (5-tones)” has been used to classify constitution of human body In order to characterize the “0-sung”, their frequency characteristics are investigated, and a principal frequency component is extracted. Then, the principal component is applied to classify sounds into “0-sung.”

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.64-68
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• 2000

Background and Objectives : To assess the role of altered vocal function in transient voice change after short-term endotracheal intubation, we evaluated acoustic parameters, aerodynamic parameters, and laryngoscopic characteristics preoperatively and postoperatively. Materials and Methods : Vocal function of 10 patients undergoing tympanoplasty and mastoidectomy using general anesthesia and endotracheal intubation were studied preoperatively, at 1day and 7 days after extubation. Acoustic analysis, aerodynamic study, and telescopic examination were used to assess vocal function. Results : In acoustic parameters, there was no significant difference between preoperative and postoperative measures. However, in subglottic pressure, ere was a significant decrease at 1 day after extubation and this change was return to preoperative value at 7 days after extubation. MPT(Maximal Phonation Time), MER(Mean flow Ratio), and VC(Vital Capacity) were decreased 1 day after extubation but did not show statistically significant change. Three of 10 patients manifested a vocal fold edema and injection 1 day after extubation. Conclusions : Subglottic pressure revealed a significant decrease at 1 day after extubation. And this change was correlated with laryngeal morphologic change and decrement in pulmonary function.

• 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.