Voice quality research and statistical best practice (L)

Voice, or phonation quality, is a central concept across multiple domains of phonetic theory. However, the acoustic measurements used to quantify voice quality are far from straightforward. Recently, Chai and Garellek [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 152(3), 1856-1870 (2022)] proposed residual H1* as an improvement over the oft-used H1*-H2* measure. Here, this Letter raises concerns about the robustness of their conclusion due to incomplete random-effect structures in their models. The Letter suggests that reducing descriptions of voice quality to a single measure might not be adequate and multiple measures are needed to capture the inherent multidimensionality of voice quality.