Voice Loudness and Gender Effects on Jitter and Shimmer in Healthy Adults

Brockmann, Meike; Storck, Claudio; Carding, Paul; Drinnan, Michael

doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2008/06-0208)

Cited by 117 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Normative data for pathological speakers are not reliable due to the technical difficulties of measuring jitter and shimmer in irregular phonation (e.g., Titze, 1995;Gerratt and Kreiman, 1995). As this table shows, on average, perceptual sensitivity to the NHR and to H2-Hn are high, similar to values for H1-H2, and greatly exceed that for jitter and shimmer [for which the average JND exceeds range (Brockmann et al, 2008;Kreiman and Gerratt, 2005)]. These results are also plotted in Fig.…”

Section: B Resultssupporting

confidence: 66%

“…Results are given in Table V, along with comparison values for H1-H2, jitter, and shimmer . Values for jitter and shimmer are based on ranges for normal speakers (Brockmann et al, 2008). Normative data for pathological speakers are not reliable due to the technical difficulties of measuring jitter and shimmer in irregular phonation (e.g., Titze, 1995;Gerratt and Kreiman, 1995).…”

Section: B Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceptual interaction of the harmonic source and noise in voice

Kreiman

Gerratt

2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Although the amount of inharmonic energy (noise) present in a human voice is an important determinant of vocal quality, little is known about the perceptual interaction between harmonic and inharmonic aspects of the voice source. This paper reports three experiments investigating this issue. Results indicate that perception of the harmonic slope and of noise levels are both influenced by complex interactions between the spectral shape and relative levels of harmonic and noise energy in the voice source. Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) for the noise-to-harmonics ratio (NHR) varied significantly with the NHR and harmonic spectral slope, but NHR had no effect on JNDs for NHR when harmonic slopes were steepest, and harmonic slope had no effect when NHRs were highest. Perception of changes in the harmonic source slope depended on NHR and on the harmonic source slope: JNDs increased when spectra rolled off steeply, with this effect in turn depending on NHR. Finally, all effects were modulated by the shape of the noise spectrum. It thus appears that, beyond masking, understanding perception of individual parameters requires knowledge of the acoustic context in which they function, consistent with the view that voices are integral patterns that resist decomposition.

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Section: B Resultssupporting

confidence: 66%

Section: B Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual interaction of the harmonic source and noise in voice

Kreiman

Gerratt

2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…To date, it is not clear if these effects also apply to other indices of vocal perturbation or irregularity such as HNR. Also, this relation has been only investigated in vocally healthy adults and children 4,7,22,23,35 . Therefore, the main aims of the present work were to study SPL-related effects on jitter, shimmer, and HNR in individuals with and without diagnosed voice disorders, while also considering the influence of age and occupation-related voice use level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic Perturbation Measures Improve with Increasing Vocal Intensity in Individuals With and Without Voice Disorders

2018

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OBJECTIVE: In vocally healthy children and adults, speaking voice loudness differences can significantly confound acoustic perturbation measurements. This study examines the effects of voice sound pressure level (SPL) on jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) in adults with voice disorders and a control group with normal vocal status. STUDY DESIGN: This is a matched case-control study. METHODS: We assessed 58 adult female voice patients matched according to approximate age and occupation with 58 vocally healthy women. Diagnoses included vocal fold nodules (n = 39, 67.2%), polyps (n = 5, 8.6%), and muscle tension dysphonia (n = 14, 24.1%). All participants sustained the vowel /a/ at soft, comfortable, and loud phonation levels. Acoustic voice SPL, jitter, shimmer, and HNR were computed using Praat. The effects of loudness condition, voice SPL, pathology, differential diagnosis, age, and professional voice use level on acoustic perturbation measures were assessed using linear mixed models and Wilcoxon signed rank tests. RESULTS: In both patient and normative control groups, increasing voice SPL correlated significantly (P < 0.001) with decreased jitter and shimmer, and increased HNR. Voice pathology and differential diagnosis were not linked to systematically higher jitter and shimmer. HNR levels, however, were statistically higher in the patient group than in the control group at comfortable phonation levels. Professional voice use level had a significant effect (P < 0.05) on jitter, shimmer, and HNR. CONCLUSIONS: The clinical value of acoustic jitter, shimmer, and HNR may be limited if speaking voice SPL and professional voice use level effects are not controlled for. Future studies are warranted to investigate whether perturbation measures are useful clinical outcome metrics when controlling for these effects. Study Design: Matched case-control study Methods: 58 adult female voice patients, matched according to approximate age and occupation with 58 vocally healthy women, were assessed. Diagnoses included vocal fold nodules (n:39, 67.2%), polyps (n:5, 8.6%), and muscle tension dysphonia (MTD; n:14, 24.1%). All participants sustained the vowel /a/ at soft, comfortable, and loud phonation levels. Acoustic voice SPL, jitter, shimmer, and HNR were computed using Praat. The effects of loudness condition, voice SPL, pathology, differential diagnosis, age, and professional voice use level on acoustic perturbation measures were assessed using linear mixed models and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.Results: In both patient and normative control groups, increasing voice SPL correlated significantly (p<0.001) with decreased jitter and shimmer, and increased HNR. Voice pathology and differential diagnosis were not linked to systematically higher jitter and shimmer. HNR levels, however, were statistically higher in the patient versus control group at comfortable phonation levels. Professional voice use level had a significant effect (p<0.05) on jitter, shimmer, and HNR.Conclusions: The clinical value of ac...

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“…While focusing on the effect of varying one particular variable, the respective other variables were fixed to the following default values: f 0 " 108 Hz, SNR g " 80 dB, SNR e " 80 dB and jitter " 0.3% of the fundamental period T 0 " 1{f 0 . This jitter value was reported to be commonly found in normal phonation [42]. As test material, six samples of 2 s in duration were generated.…”

Section: A Methodology Validation Using Synthetic Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

Joint Source-Filter Optimization for Accurate Vocal Tract Estimation Using Differential Evolution

Schleusing

Kinnunen

Story

et al. 2013

IEEE Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process.

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Abstract-In this work, we present a joint source-filter optimization approach for separating voiced speech into vocal tract (VT) and voice source components. The presented method is pitch-synchronous and thereby exhibits a high robustness against vocal jitter, shimmer and other glottal variations while covering various voice qualities. The voice source is modeled using the Liljencrants-Fant (LF) model, which is integrated into a time-varying auto-regressive speech production model with exogenous input (ARX). The non-convex optimization problem of finding the optimal model parameters is addressed by a heuristic, evolutionary optimization method called differential evolution. The optimization method is first validated in a series of experiments with synthetic speech. Estimated glottal source and VT parameters are the criteria used for comparison with the iterative adaptive inverse filter (IAIF) method and the linear prediction (LP) method under varying conditions such as jitter, fundamental frequency (f0) as well as environmental and glottal noise. The results show that the proposed method largely reduces the bias and standard deviation of estimated VT coefficients and glottal source parameters. Furthermore, the performance of the source-filter separation is evaluated in experiments using speech generated with a physical model of speech production. The proposed method reliably estimates glottal flow waveforms and lower formant frequencies. Results obtained for higher formant frequencies indicate that research on more accurate voice source models and their interaction with the VT is necessary to improve the source-filter separation. The proposed optimization approach promises to be a useful tool for future research addressing this topic.

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Voice Loudness and Gender Effects on Jitter and Shimmer in Healthy Adults

Cited by 117 publications

References 28 publications

Perceptual interaction of the harmonic source and noise in voice

Perceptual interaction of the harmonic source and noise in voice

Acoustic Perturbation Measures Improve with Increasing Vocal Intensity in Individuals With and Without Voice Disorders

Joint Source-Filter Optimization for Accurate Vocal Tract Estimation Using Differential Evolution

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