Advances in non-invasive measures of vocal acoustics

Objective assessment of vocal pitch, loudness, and quality is a crucial adjunct to endoscopy in the diagnosis and treatment of vocal pathology. Historically, this assessment was made through subjective, perceptual measures that were questionable in terms of validity and reliability. Recent advances in electronic technology now permit objective analysis of the acoustic characteristics of voice. Kay Elemetric's Visi-Pitch, DSP 5500 Digital Spectrograph, and Nasometer are representative of these new instruments and are used as illustrations in the discussion of the assessment of speech acoustics.