On the Spectrum of Spoken English

Abstract

The spectrum of spoken English was measured in 13-octave bands for men, women, and children. The speech produced by reading aloud newspaper text was recorded in an anechoic chamber for each member of groups of ten men, ten women, and six children. The combined output of each of the three groups was obtained by electronically mixing the member outputs with a 16-track tape recorder. After mixing, the resulting recordings were analyzed in 13-octave bands and converted to spectrum levels. The spectra exhibit peaks and valleys not revealed with wider-band analysis, but when the results of the 13-octave analysis are combined to simulate octave bands there is agreement with the previously published literature. Next these free-field spectra were converted to give the spectra at the eardrum of a typical listener, thus allowing for head diffraction and the resonance of the ear canal. The spectra so obtained have peaks appropriate to typical values of Fo, F1, and F3 for each of the groups. The region usually associated with F2 spans a dip between the F1 and F3 regions. At the eardrum, the frequency region from about 1.7–4 kHz, which is usually associated with F3 and many of the friction generated components in speech, lies only 5–10 dB below the maximum levels in the low-frequency region.

Long-Term Average Spectrum in Screening of Voice Quality in Speech: Untrained Male University Students

“…[9][10][11][12][13] Among normal-voiced subjects LTAS has been used to study individual and gender, age and language related differences. 4,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Characteristics of vocal expression of emotions 21,22 and acoustic differences between specific voice qualities [23][24][25] have also been studied with this method. Moreover, LTAS has been used to investigate singing voice, for example, differences between voice categories and various singing styles.…”

Clinical Implications of Nonverbal Methods of Hearing Aid Selection and Fitting

“…In spite of all the uncertainties, speech sounds have been analyzed and carefully described (Dunn and White, 1940;Niemoeller et al, 1974;Pearsons et al, 1976). Although it is true that we cannot predict the pattern of an individual speech occurrence, we can assume a long-term average spectrum, the levels of various speech effort renditions, percentile distribution in time, levels in various environments, and distances.…”

El promedio del espectro del habla. Fundamentos y aplicaciones clínicas

“…En el ámbito de la audiología, el LTASS, es utilizado como referencia en la determinación de la prescripción y evaluación de la ganancia de los audífonos. Varios autores han establecido los valores del LTASS en función de distintos procedimientos y muestras de sujetos (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10). En la figura 1 podemos observar la representación gráfica del promedio del espectro del habla obtenido a partir de los estudios de pioneros de Cornelisse (1), Byrne y Dillon (2) y Cox y Moore (3).…”