In general, the evaluation of the degree of abnormal voice quality has a crucial role in the clinical assessment of voice-disordered patients. As the gold standard for the assessment of voice quality, auditory-perceptual methods have been utilized worldwide. However, the subjective nature of these methods can strongly influence the reliability and accuracy of the evaluation. Due to such limitations, acoustic measurements have been developed to increase the objectivity in the evaluation of voices.
In this article, we first review the traditional acoustic measures to improve our understanding of the principles of acoustic analyses. Subsequently, for clinical practice, we introduce several available instruments, such as analysis software programs and microphones, that are suitable for acoustic analyses. Lastly, we describe the differences between two software programs and two microphones, and discuss their respective utility.
