Abstract
Imagine you are a police officer investigating a crime in which somebody has made a threatening phone call. There may not be any physical evidence like DNA or fingerprints, but the person’s voice is captured on a recording. Experts can analyze the voice recording and compare it with the voice of a known suspect to find out how likely it is that they are the same person. This method is called forensic voice comparison. It works because people’s voices contain lots of information about them. Your voice tells a story about where you grew up and learned to speak, and your voice also depends on your individual biological make-up. In this article, we explain how this information is used to compare recordings of voices in criminal cases.
Highlights
Imagine you are a police o cer investigating a crime in which somebody has made a threatening phone call
Your mouth is closed—your articulators are in the position used to produce the sound “m.” while still humming at the same pitch, open your mouth. It will sound like “ma” as your articulators move from the position for “m” to the position for “ah.” You did not change the pitch of your voice, but by changing the shape of the vocal tract, you changed the other frequencies that were present, resulting in di erent speech sounds
A form of forensic speech analysis performed by experts, involving careful listening to di erent parts of voice recordings
Summary
There may not be any physical evidence like DNA or fingerprints, but the person’s voice is captured on a recording. Experts can analyze the voice recording and compare it with the voice of a known suspect to find out how likely it is that they are the same person. This method is called forensic voice comparison. It works because people’s voices contain lots of information about them. We explain how this information is used to compare recordings of voices in criminal cases
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