Discrimination between Modal, Breathy and Pressed Voice for Single Vowels Using Neck-Surface Vibration Signals

Lei, Zhengdong; Kennedy, E.; Fasanella, Laura; Li‐Jessen, Nicole Y. K.; Mongeau, Luc

doi:10.3390/app9071505

Cited by 13 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…In contrast to work by Lei, Kennedy, Fasanella, Li-Jessen, and Mongeau (2019), the intent of eliciting the nonmodal phonatory conditions was not to obtain pure examples of breathy, strained, and rough qualities but rather to elicit a variety of voice conditions that might influence the relationship between Ps and ACC signal magnitude. Even so, to validate that the elicited productions represented different modes of phonation and that they were categorized into the expected auditory-perceptual categories, a second voicespecialized speech-language pathologist independently rated randomized trials of each elicited phonatory and pitch condition.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Nonmodal Phonation on Estimates of Subglottal Pressure From Neck-Surface Acceleration in Healthy Speakers

Marks

Lin

Fox

et al. 2019

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of nonmodal phonation on estimates of subglottal pressure (Ps) derived from the magnitude of a neck-surface accelerometer (ACC) signal and to confirm previous findings regarding the impact of vowel contexts and pitch levels in a larger cohort of participants. Method Twenty-six vocally healthy participants (18 women, 8 men) were asked to produce a series of p-vowel syllables with descending loudness in 3 vowel contexts (/a/, /i/, and /u/), 3 pitch levels (comfortable, high, and low), and 4 elicited phonatory conditions (modal, breathy, strained, and rough). Estimates of Ps for each vowel segment were obtained by averaging the intraoral air pressure plateau before and after each segment. The root-mean-square magnitude of the neck-surface ACC signal was computed for each vowel segment. Three linear mixed-effects models were used to statistically assess the effects of vowel, pitch, and phonatory condition on the linear relationship (slope and intercept) between Ps and ACC signal magnitude. Results Results demonstrated statistically significant linear relationships between ACC signal magnitude and Ps within participants but with increased intercepts for the nonmodal phonatory conditions; slopes were affected to a lesser extent. Vowel and pitch contexts did not significantly affect the linear relationship between ACC signal magnitude and Ps. Conclusion The classic linear relationship between ACC signal magnitude and Ps is significantly affected when nonmodal phonation is produced by a speaker. Future work is warranted to further characterize nonmodal phonatory characteristics to improve the ACC-based prediction of Ps during naturalistic speech production.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Nonmodal Phonation on Estimates of Subglottal Pressure From Neck-Surface Acceleration in Healthy Speakers

Marks

Lin

Fox

et al. 2019

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…The participants were seated in front of a microphone, and wore a neck surface accelerometer (NSA) mounted using adhesive (Tensive) [38]. The NSA recorded the neck surface vibration and streamed it on a hard disk [39][40][41].…”

Section: Voice Biofeedback Monitoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation of Vocal Fatigue Using a Dose-Based Vocal Loading Task

et al. 2020

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Vocal loading tasks are often used to investigate the relationship between voice use and vocal fatigue in laboratory settings. The present study investigated the concept of a novel quantitative dose-based vocal loading task for vocal fatigue evaluation. Ten female subjects participated in the study. Voice use was monitored and quantified using an online vocal distance dose calculator during six consecutive 30-min long sessions. Voice quality was evaluated subjectively using the CAPE-V and SAVRa before, between, and after each vocal loading task session. Fatigue-indicative symptoms, such as cough, swallowing, and voice clearance, were recorded. Statistical analysis of the results showed that the overall severity, the roughness, and the strain ratings obtained from CAPE-V obeyed similar trends as the three ratings from the SAVRa. These metrics increased over the first two thirds of the sessions to reach a maximum, and then decreased slightly near the session end. Quantitative metrics obtained from surface neck accelerometer signals were found to obey similar trends. The results consistently showed that an initial adjustment of voice quality was followed by vocal saturation, supporting the effectiveness of the proposed loading task. These tools require specific vocal stimuli. For example, the CAPE-V requires the completion of three defined phonation tasks assessed through perceptual rating. This therefore limits the applicability of these tools in situations where the vocal stimuli are varied or unspecified. Many studies have investigated uncertainties in subjective judgment methodologies for voice quality evaluation. Kreiman and Gerratt investigated the source of listener disagreement in voice quality assessment using unidimensional rating scales, and found that no single metric from natural voice recordings allowed the evaluation of voice quality [6]. Kreiman also found that individual standards of voice quality, scale resolution, and voice attribute magnitude also significantly influenced intra-rater agreement [7]. Objective metrics obtained using various acoustic instruments have been investigated, and attempts have been made to correlate these with perceptual voice quality assessments [8][9][10][11][12].A plethora of temporal, spectral, and cepstral metrics have been proposed to evaluate voice quality [13,14]. Commonly used features or vocal metrics include fundamental frequency ( f 0), loudness, jitter, shimmer, vocal formants, harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR), spectral tilt (H1-H2, harmonic richness factor), maximum flow declination rate (MFDR), duty ratio, cepstral peak prominence (CPP), Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), power spectrum ratio, and others [15][16][17][18][19]. Self-reported feelings of decreased vocal functionality have been used as a criterion for vocal fatigue in many previous studies [1,4,[20][21][22]. Standard self-administered questionnaires, such as the SAVRa and the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI), have been used to identify individuals with vocal fatigue, and to characterize their sy...

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“…A signal-to-noise ratio of 45 dB was achieved using the recorder’s multiple modes for background noise suppression. Further details and verification tests of the NSA system were reported in our previous publications [ 4 , 5 , 11 , 29 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wearable Neck Surface Accelerometers for Occupational Vocal Health Monitoring: Instrument and Analysis Validation Study

Lei¹,

Martignetti²,

Ridgway³

et al. 2022

JMIR Form Res

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Background Neck surface accelerometer (NSA) wearable devices have been developed for voice and upper airway health monitoring. As opposed to acoustic sounds, NSA senses mechanical vibrations propagated from the vocal tract to neck skin, which are indicative of a person’s voice and airway conditions. NSA signals do not carry identifiable speech information and a speaker’s privacy is thus protected, which is important and necessary for continuous wearable monitoring. Our device was already tested for its durable endurance and signal processing algorithms in controlled laboratory conditions. Objective This study aims to further evaluate both instrument and analysis validity in a group of occupational vocal users, namely, voice actors, who use their voices extensively at work in an ecologically valid setting. Methods A total of 16 professional voice actors (age range 21-50 years; 11 females and 5 males) participated in this study. All participants were mounted with an NSA on their sternal notches during the voice acting and voice assessment sessions. The voice acting session was 4-hour long, directed by a voice director in a professional sound studio. Voice assessment sessions were conducted before, during, and 48 hours after the acting session. The assessment included phonation tasks of passage reading, sustained vowels, maximum vowel phonation, and pitch glides. Clinical acoustic metrics (eg, fundamental frequency, cepstral measures) and a vocal dose measure (ie, accumulated distance dose from acting) were computed from NSA signals. A commonly used online questionnaire (Self-Administered Voice Rating questionnaire) was also implemented to track participants’ perception of vocal fatigue. Results The NSA wearables stayed in place for all participants despite active body movements during the acting. The ensued body noise did not interfere with the NSA signal quality. All planned acoustic metrics were successfully derived from NSA signals and their numerical values were comparable with literature data. For a 4-hour long voice acting, the averaged distance dose was about 8354 m with no gender differences. Participants perceived vocal fatigue as early as 2 hours after the start of voice acting, with recovery 24-48 hours after the acting session. Among all acoustic metrics across phonation tasks, cepstral peak prominence and spectral tilt from the passage reading most closely mirrored trends in perceived fatigue. Conclusions The ecological validity of an in-house NSA wearable was vetted in a workplace setting. One key application of this wearable is to prompt occupational voice users when their vocal safety limits are reached for duly protection. Signal processing algorithms can thus be further developed for near real-time estimation of clinically relevant metrics, such as accumulated distance dose, cepstral peak prominence, and spectral tilt. This functionality will enable continuous self-awareness of vocal behavior and protection of vocal safety in occupational voice users.

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Discrimination between Modal, Breathy and Pressed Voice for Single Vowels Using Neck-Surface Vibration Signals

Cited by 13 publications

References 36 publications

Impact of Nonmodal Phonation on Estimates of Subglottal Pressure From Neck-Surface Acceleration in Healthy Speakers

Impact of Nonmodal Phonation on Estimates of Subglottal Pressure From Neck-Surface Acceleration in Healthy Speakers

Investigation of Vocal Fatigue Using a Dose-Based Vocal Loading Task

Wearable Neck Surface Accelerometers for Occupational Vocal Health Monitoring: Instrument and Analysis Validation Study

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