Abstract
The characterization of voice quality is important for the diagnosis of a voice disorder. Vocal fry is a voice quality which is traditionally characterized by a low frequency and a long closed phase of the glottis. However, we also observed amplitude modulated vocal fry glottal area waveforms (GAWs) without long closed phases (positive group) which we modelled using an analysis-by-synthesis approach. Natural and synthetic GAWs are modelled. The negative group consists of euphonic, i.e., normophonic GAWs. The analysis-by-synthesis approach fits two modelled GAWs for each of the input GAW. One modelled GAW is modulated to replicate the amplitude and frequency modulations of the input GAW and the other modelled GAW is unmodulated. The modelling errors of the two modelled GAWs are determined to classify the GAWs into the positive and the negative groups using a simple support vector machine (SVM) classifier with a linear kernel. The modelling errors of all vocal fry GAWs obtained using the modulating model are smaller than the modelling errors obtained using the unmodulated model. Using the two modelling errors as predictors for classification, no false positives or false negatives are obtained. To further distinguish the subtypes of amplitude modulated vocal fry GAWs, the entropy of the modulator’s power spectral density and the modulator-to-carrier frequency ratio are obtained.
Highlights
We identify vocal fry based on the impulsivity of voice samples, i.e., the auditory attribute associated with the separate perception of the glottal cycles
This paper investigated different types of amplitude modulated vocal fry Glottal area waveforms (GAWs)
They were modelled using an analysis-by-synthesis approach and distinguished automatically from euphonic GAWs based on their modelling errors
Summary
Vocal fry is a voice quality which is synonymously referred to as creaky voice, pulse register, glottal fry or creak [1,2,3]. The term vocal fry is used to designate a subtype of creaky voice [4]. The remaining subtypes are multipulsed voice, aperiodic voice, nonconstricted creak and tense/pressed voice. Vocal fry is mainly characterized by a low fundamental frequency which gives an auditory impression of “a stick being run along a railing”, “popping of corn” or “cooking of food on a pan” [1,2,5]. Subglottal air pressure and air flow were found to be smaller in vocal fry than in modal registers [2]
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