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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Not just sound: supplementing the voice range profile with the singer's own perceptions of vocal challenges
Anick Lamarche1, Sten Ternström, Stellan Hertegård
1Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, School of Computer Science and Communication, Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, Stockholm, Sweden. anick@nada.kth.se
Abstract:
A commercial phonetograph was complemented with a response button, such that presses resulted in marked regions in the voice range profile (VRP). This study reports the VRP data of 16 healthy female professionally trained singers (7 mezzo-sopranos and 9 sopranos). Subjects pressed the button to indicate sensations of vocal instability or reduced control during phonation. Each press thereby marked potential areas of difficulty. A method is presented to quantify the consistency of button use for repeated tasks. The pattern of button presses was significantly consistent within subjects. As expected, the singers pressed at the extremes of VRP contours as well as at register transitions. These results and the potential of the method for the assessment of vocal problems of singers are discussed.
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