Voice disorders due to strenuous usage of unhealthy voice qualities are a common problem in professional singing. In order to minimize the risk of these voice disorders, vital feedback can be given by making aware of one’s sung voice quality. This work presents the design task of a vowel and voice quality indication tool which can enable such a feedback. The tool is implemented in form of a VST plug-in. The plugin’s interface provides a graphical representation of voice quality and vowel intelligibility by means of two 2D voice maps. The voice maps allow a graphical distinction of three voice qualities (modal, breathy or creaky), and the representation of a sung vowel within the formant space spanned by the first and second formant frequency. The design process includes (i) building a ground truth dataset by using a modified speech synthesizer, (ii) linear prediction analysis, and (iii) the visualisation of the estimated vowel and voice quality by means of the 2D voice maps. The plugin’s code is available as open source to enable further development.

Authors: Bereuter, Paul A.; Kraxberger, Florian; Brandner, Manuel; Sontacchi, Alois
Affiliations: University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria; Graz University of Technology, Austria; Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, Graz, Austria(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 150 (May 2021) eBrief:642
Publication Date: May 24, 2021 Import into BibTeX
Subject: Education
Permalink: https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=21103

Click to purchase paper as a non-member or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!

This paper costs $33 for non-members and is free for AES members and E-Library subscribers.

Learn more about the AES E-Library

The Engineering Briefs at this Convention were selected on the basis of a submitted synopsis, ensuring that they are of interest to AES members, and are not overly commercial. These briefs have been reproduced from the authors' advance manuscripts, without editing, corrections, or consideration by the Review Board. The AES takes no responsibility for their contents. Paper copies are not available, but any member can freely access these briefs. Members are encouraged to provide comments that enhance their usefulness.

Start a discussion about this paper!