Although the perceptive loudness of voices mainly corresponds to the sound pressure, it seems that other acoustic parameters to some extent influence the loudness sensation. For example, some investigators reported that a factor related to loudness was extracted as dominant by factor analytic studies of normal and pathologic voices, even when the reproduction level of the stimulus sounds was regulated to almost the same.
For elucidation, the relation between loudness sensation and various acoustic parameters of voices was studied. Normal and pathology related voices and synthesized vowels were used as stimuli, the method of paired comparisons was used as a psychometric procedure, and the analysis of variance was utilized as an analytic procedure on the obtained data.
The results were as follows:
(1) Sound pressure of voices corresponded to perceptual loudness.
(2) Increase in duration of voices resulted in increase of loudness.
(3) Lower fundamental frequency of voices increased loudness in the low frequency range. Beyond this range, the relation betwen the fundamental frequency and loudness did not have a linear relation. The effort in uttering the voice seemed to influence the loudness sensation.
(4) The relationship of loudness among the five cardinal Japanese vowels was complicated and is at present unexplainable.
(5) Comparing the pathologic voices uttered by patients with laryngeal cancers, vocal polyps, and unilateral recurrent nerve paralyses, voices of patients with laryngeal cancers were heard as the loudest, while such with recurrent nerve paralyses were heard as the softest. It seemed that the difference in degree of irregularity of waveforms as well as amount of noise components in the pathologic voices influenced the loudness sensation.
(6) From the study on the influence of small perturbation of single particular element of waveforms, such as amplitude or pitch perturbation, to the loudness sensation with the use of synthesized vowels, no distinct relation was obtained. Synthesized vowels, therefore, do not seem useful for this kind of study, as far as the present synthesizing technique is concerned.
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