CEPSTRUM ANALYSIS OF VOICE DISTURBANCES

Objective data and reproducible procedures are increasingly demanded f or assessment and long-term comparison in voice disturbances. Well-kno wn electroacoustic methods like formant analysis, autocorrelation and inverse filtering have been applied for this purpose, though without l eaving experimental stage. The cepstrum analysis presented here permit s an easy and distinct separation of glottal pitch and filter function of the vocal tract. In this study, 112 normal and hoarse voices were analyzed. The sum of amplitudes of the first cepstral pitch peaks diff ered significantly between the different degrees of hoarseness (0-3). Disturbances producing hoarseness, however, could not be sufficiently differentiated by the method in its present state.