Acoustic Feature Analysis Focusing on Gender Difference in Likability Evaluation of Female Speech

Abstract

In this paper, we carried out a subjective evaluation on the perceptual difference in female speech to show the gender difference in its likability and analyzed a relationship between the acoustic features and subjective scores. This subjective evaluation used female speech uttered by 21 speakers as the stimuli, and 127 subjects (47 males and 80 females) attended it. The results suggested that there was the speech preferred without the gender difference and preferred by one gender. We then analyzed the correlation between subjective scores and five acoustic features: fundamental frequency, formant frequency, amplitude difference, spectral centroid and spectral tilt. In female subjects, statistically significant correlations were observed in all features. In male subjects, significant correlation was observed only in spectral tilt. In particular, correlation in spectral tilt showed the inverse trend between male and female subjects. These results suggest that the spectral tilt is effective in the gender difference.