Abstract
In natural speech, there is a moderate correlation between fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies (FF) associated with differences in larynx and vocal tract size across talkers. This study asks whether listeners prefer combinations of mean F0 and mean FF that mirror the covariation of these properties. The stimuli were vowel triplets (/i/-/a/-/u/) spoken by two men and two women and subsequently processed by Kawahara’s STRAIGHT vocoder. Experiment 1 included two continua, each containing 25 vowel triplets: one with the spectrum envelope (FF) scale factor fixed at 1.0 (i.e., unmodified) and F0 varied over ±2 oct, the other with F0 scale factor fixed at 1.0 and FF scale factors between 0.63 and 1.58. Listeners used a method of adjustment procedure to find the ‘‘best voice’’ in each set. For each continuum, best matches followed a unimodal distribution centered on the mean F0 or mean FF (F1, F2, F3) observed in measurements of vowels spoken by adult males and females. Experiment 2 showed comparable results when male vowels were scaled to the female range and vice versa. Overall the results suggest that listeners have an implicit awareness of the natural covariation of F0 and FF in human voices.
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