Dynamic range for speech materials in korean, english, and mandarin: a cross-language comparison

The purpose of this study was to identify whether differences in dynamic range (DR) are evident across the spoken languages of Korean, English, and Mandarin.

Recorded sentence-level speech materials were used as stimuli. DR was quantified using different definitions of DR (defined as the range in decibels from the highest to the lowest signal intensities), for several integration times (from 1 to 512 ms) and in different frequency bands (center frequencies [CFs] ranging from 150 to 8600 Hz).

Across the 3 languages, DR was affected in similar ways with regard to changes in DR definition and integration time. In contrast, across-language differences in DR were evident when considering frequency-band effects. Specifically, the DR for Korean was smaller than the English DR and the Mandarin DR in low-frequency bands (less than the CF of 455 Hz). Compared with Korean and Mandarin, the DR for English was smallest in mid-frequency bands (between the CF of 455 Hz and 4050 Hz) and was greatest in high-frequency bands (above the CF of 4050 Hz).

The observed differences in DR across languages suggest that the best-fit DR for Korean and Mandarin may be different than the best fit for English.