HIGH-FREQUENCY COMPONENTS OF NORMAL AND DYSPHONIC VOICES

The analysis of high-frequency energy levels can presently be consider ed as being more influenced by the characteristics of the speaker than by the phonetic material, serving as an indicator of the quality of t he voice. In this study the energy levels in the frequency intervals o f 6-10 and 10-16 kHz were evaluated, both in dysphonic voices and in s ubjects with no voice problems. The material consisted of consonant-vo wel syllables formed by stop phonemes and the basic Spanish vowels, an alyzing the vocal segment. The results indicate that the energy, found from the power spectrum average, in both frequency areas, is signific antly bigger in the group with dysphonic voices. The analysis in the 1 0-16 kHz region shows additional significant differences of energy bet ween the vowels, progressively decreasing from front to back vowels.