Towards the measurement of the Actor’s Formant in female voices

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Contributors

Abstract

The Actor’s Formant in professional male actors has been a subject of research for many years. It is a strong energy peak that lies in the frequency band between 3-4 kHz in the long-term average spectrum (LTAS) of a professional male actor’s voice. Results of perceptual analysis have shown that this concentration of energy has a correlation with the perceived voice quality. While the Actor’s Formant has been extensively studied in male subjects, there is little research pertaining to the Actor’s Formant in female voices. The aim of this study is to show evidence of the formation of an Actor’s Formant in the voices of females as a result of a short vocal warm-up exercise. LTAS results of six female subjects are analyzed and a significant increase in magnitudes of their spectra after the vocal warm up is observed in the region of 4-5 kHz. The study also proposes an experimental method to measure vocal tract transfer functions using transcutaneous excitation of vocal tract. The resulting transfer functions of the subjects are plausible and encourage further studies of formants in female actors and the general population as a whole using the proposed method.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationElektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung 2017
EditorsJürgen Trouvain, Ingmar Steiner, Bernd Möbius
Publisher Dresden : TUDpress
Pages286-293
Number of pages8
ISBN (print)978-3-959080-92-7
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2017
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesStudientexte zur Sprachkommunikation
Volume86
ISSN0940-6832

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-0167-8123/work/168716950

Keywords

Keywords

  • Poster