Voicing quantification is more relevant than period perturbation in substitution voices: an advanced acoustical study

Quality of substitution voicing—i.e., phonation with a voice that is not generated by the vibration of two vocal folds—cannot be adequately evaluated with routinely used software for acoustic voice analysis that is aimed at ‘common’ dysphonias and nearly periodic voice signals. The AMPEX analysis program (Van Immerseel and Martens) has been shown previously to be able to detect periodicity in irregular signals with background noise, and to be suited for running speech. The validity of this analysis program is first tested using realistic synthesized voice signals with known levels of cycle-to-cycle perturbations and additive noise. Second, exhaustive acoustic analysis is performed of the voices of 116 patients surgically treated for advanced laryngeal cancer and recorded in seven European academic centers. All of them read out a short phonetically balanced passage. Patients were divided into six groups according to the oscillating structures they used to phonate. Results show that features related to quantification of voicing enable a distinction between the different groups, while the features reporting F0-instability fail to do so. Acoustic evaluation of voice quality in substitution voices thus best relies upon voicing quantification

Automatic Rating of Hoarseness by Text-based Cepstral and Prosodic Evaluation

The standard for the analysis of distorted voices is perceptual rating of read-out texts or spontaneous speech. Automatic voice evaluation, however, is usually done on stable sections of sustained vowels. In this paper, text-based and established vowel-based analysis are compared with respect to their ability to measure hoarseness and its subclasses. 73 hoarse patients (48.3±16.8 years) uttered the vowel /e/ and read the German version of the text “The North Wind and the Sun”. Five speech therapists and physicians rated roughness, breathiness, and hoarseness according to the German RBH evaluation scheme. The best human-machine correlations were obtained for measures based on the Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP; up to |r | = 0.73). Support Vector Regression (SVR) on CPP-based measures and prosodic features improved the results further to r ≈0.8 and confirmed that automatic voice evaluation should be performed on a text recording

What is a smart device? - a conceptualisation within the paradigm of the internet of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an interconnected network of objects which range from simple sensors to smartphones and tablets; it is a relatively novel paradigm that has been rapidly gaining ground in the scenario of modern wireless telecommunications with an expected growth of 25 to 50 billion of connected devices for 2020 Due to the recent rise of this paradigm, authors across the literature use inconsistent terms to address the devices present in the IoT, such as mobile device, smart device, mobile technologies or mobile smart device. Based on the existing literature, this paper chooses the term smart device as a starting point towards the development of an appropriate definition for the devices present in the IoT. This investigation aims at exploring the concept and main features of smart devices as well as their role in the IoT. This paper follows a systematic approach for reviewing compendium of literature to explore the current research in this field. It has been identified smart devices as the primary objects interconnected in the network of IoT, having an essential role in this paradigm. The developed concept for defining smart device is based on three main features, namely context-awareness, autonomy and device connectivity. Other features such as mobility and userinteraction were highly mentioned in the literature, but were not considered because of the nature of the IoT as a network mainly oriented to device-to-device connectivity whether they are mobile or not and whether they interact with people or not. What emerges from this paper is a concept which can be used to homogenise the terminology used on further research in the Field of digitalisation and smart technologies

Objective Dysphonia Measures in the Program Praat: Smoothed Cepstral Peak Prominence and Acoustic Voice Quality Index

Purpose A version of the "smoothed cepstral peak prominence" (ie, CPPS) has recently been implemented in the program Praat. The present study therefore estimated the correspondence between the original CPPS from the program SpeechTool and Praat's version of the CPPS. Because the CPPS is the main factor in the multivariate Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI), this study also investigated the proportional relationship between the AVQI with the original and the second version of the CPPS. Study Design Comparative cohort study. Methods Clinical recordings of sustained vowel phonation and continuous speech from 289 subjects with various voice disorders were analyzed with the two versions of the CPPS and the AVQI. Pearson correlation coefficients and coefficients of determination were calculated between both CPPS-methods and between both AVQI-methods. Results Quasi-perfect correlations and coefficients of determination approaching hundred percent were found. Conclusions The findings of this study demonstrate that the outcomes of the two CPPS-methods and the two AVQI-methods are highly comparable, increasing the clinical feasibility of both methods as measures of dysphonia severity

Der Acoustic Voice Quality Index: ein akustisch-objektives Messverfahren vom H der RBH-Skala

Hintergrund: Neue Maßstäbe in der Stimmdiagnostik setzt der Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI), entwickelt von Maryn et al. (2010). Darstellung, wissenschaftlicher Hintergrund, neueste Entwicklungen und klinische Durchführung sind Teil des Vortrages.AVQI ist einer der ersten akustischen Indizes der gehaltene Phonation und die fortlaufende Sprache für die allgemeine Stimmqualität einer Sprechstimme berücksichtigt und beurteilt.Material und Methoden: AVQI ist ein multiparametrisches Konstrukt auf Basis linearer Regressionsstatistik mit auditiv-perzeptiven Durchschnittswerten vom Grad der Heiserkeit als Beurteilerkriterium. Er setzt sich aus 6 verschiedenen Komponenten zusammen und wird automatisch in der Freeware "Praat" analysiert und interpretiert (Maryn & Weenink, 2015). AVQI ist so konzipiert, dass man auf einem Zahlenstrang von 0 bis 10 den Schweregrad ablesen kann; auch wird die Grenze des physiologischen und pathologischen Umfanges der allgemeinen Stimmqualität visualisiert.Ergebnisse: Es wurden bereits acht Studien zu AVQI veröffentlicht, weitere werden bald folgen. Viele Bereiche zu AVQI sind untersucht worden: wie die diagnostische Genauigkeit, die Übereinstimmungsvalidität zur perzeptiven Messung, interne und externe Validität, cross-linguistische Unterschiede im Niederländischen, Deutschen, Englischen und Französischen, Test-Retest und die interne Konsistenz. AVQI hat sich auch als sensitives Messinstrument bei Stimmqualitätsveränderungen nach Intervention bewährt.Speziell soll in diesem Beitrag mittels einer Meta-Analyse die Übereinstimmungsvalidität zur perzeptiven Beurteilung vertieft werden.Anschließend folgen praktische Hinweise für die klinische Durchführung.Diskussion: AVQI ist ein robustes und sensibles Messinstrument für die akustische Stimmanalyse. Es ist gratis zu erhalten und mit wenigen Mitteln durchzuführen. AVQI kann im klinischen Alltag zuverlässige und valide Aussagen über die Stimmqualität des Patienten treffen und die Durchführung sowie die Interpretation sind in einem zeitlichen Aufwand von weniger als fünf Minuten realistisch.Fazit: Zusammenfassend soll AVQI dem Arzt/Therapeuten mehr Sicherheit in der Beurteilung der Stimmqualität geben, sei es im klinischen Alltag oder im Bereich der Forschung