Multidimensional representation of personal quality of vowels and its acoustical correlates

The personal quality of sustained vowels uttered by eight male talkers was represented multidimensionally in a psychological auditory space (PAS) by means of Kruskal´s multidimensional scaling procedure based on the perceptual confusion in talker discrimination tests. Physical properties of the vowels were analyzed in terms of elementary acoustical parameters, such as formant frequencies, slope of glottal source spectrum, mean fundamental pitch frequency, and rapid fluctuation of fundamental pitch period. Then the relationship between the configuration on the PAS and the acoustical parameters was examined through multiple correlation and regression analysis. The contribution of those acoustical parameters to the personal quality of the five Japanese vowels and the relative contributions of the vocal tract and the glottal source characteristics are demonstrated quantitatively. These results were obtained partially, by utilizing hybrid voices in which the source wave or the formant frequency pattern was interchanged among different talkers.