COMPARISON OF VOICE ANALYSIS SYSTEMS FOR PERTURBATION MEASUREMENT

Dysphonic voices are often analyzed using automated voice analysis sof tware. However, the reliability of acoustic measures obtained from the se programs remains unknown, particularly when they are applied to pat hological voices. This study compared perturbation measures from CSpee ch, Computerized Speech Laboratory, SoundScope, and a hand marking voi ce analysis system. Sustained vowels from 29 male and 21 female speake rs with mild to severe dysphonia were digitized, and fundamental frequ ency (F-0), jitter, shimmer, and harmonics- or signal-to-noise ratios were computed. Commercially available acoustical analysis programs agr eed well, but not perfectly, in their measures of F-0. Measures of per turbation in the various analysis packages use different algorithms, p rovide results in different units, and often yield values for voices t hat violate the assumption of quasi-periodicity. As a result, poor ran k order correlations between programs using similar measures of pertur bation were noted. Because measures of aperiodicity apparently cannot be reliably applied to voices that are even mildly aperiodic, we quest ion their utility in quantifying vocal quality, especially in patholog ical voices.