Glottal characteristics of male speakers: Acoustic correlates and comparison with female data

Abstract

Acoustic measurements related to glottal characteristics were made on recordings collected from ten male subjects. The waveforms and spectra of three nonhigh vowels /æ, ■, ε/ were analyzed to obtain acoustic parameters related to F1 bandwidth, open quotient, spectral tilt, and aspiration noise. Comparison was made with results for 22 female speakers [H. M. Hanson, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 3422(A) (1995)]. While there is considerable overlap across gender, the male data show lower average values and less interspeaker variation for all measures. In particular, for male speakers the amplitude of the first harmonic relative to that of F3 is 11 dB lower than for female speakers, suggesting that tilt is an important parameter for differentiating male and female voice qualities. These findings are consistent with fiberscopic studies which have shown that males tend to have a more complete glottal closure than females [Södersten and Lindestad, J. Speech Hear. Res. 33, 601–611 (1990)]. A consequence is that acoustic data for male speakers should show evidence of lower acoustic loss and spectral tilt than data for females. Further physiological and perceptual data are needed to verify the acoustic measures for the male speakers. [Work supported by NIH Grants No. DC00075 and No. DC00205-02.]