2-3Q-10
Introducing a Japanese multi-talker database oflaryngeal voice qualities*○ Parham MOKHTARI，Daisuke MORIKAWA（Toyama Prefectural University）
1

Introduction

Voice quality is an integral part of both verbal
and nonverbal human interaction. As a baseline, atalker’s habitual voice quality (i.e., modal voice)carries idiosyncratic information such as identityand age. Beyond this, long-term changes in voice
quality can signal changes in health, mood orattitude; short-term changes, consciously or not,convey paralinguistic information, e.g. emotion.
Laver [1] presented a framework for describing
and categorizing voice quality, based on auditory
impressions and physiological considerations. In
this broad view, voice quality is determined bylaryngeal settings (e.g., whisper, falsetto, etc.),supralaryngeal settings (e.g., spread lips, nasal
voice, etc.), and overall tension. The laryngeal
component was reviewed and 7 typical examples
shown of the glottal flow estimated by inverse
filtering of the speech signal [2]. Examples of
estimated glottal flow were also shown in thecontext of relating voice quality with vocal effort
and emotions [3]. However, there does not appear
to be any widely available multi-talker recording.
While emotion-related and speech synthesis
technologies have advanced remarkably in thelast two decades, the use of voice quality formore natural human-machine interfaces is stillchallenging. We believe that a carefully recorded
database may help bridge the gap between
theoretical descriptions and technical progress.
For example, even considering only laryngeal
voice quality, it is not yet clear: (i) how vocal
effort modulates different voice qualities; (ii) towhat extent the typical voice quality descriptions
are modified by individuality (talker differences);and in the first place, (iii) to what extent naive(not expert nor professional) talkers are able toproduce the theoretical range of voice qualities.
*To help answer these and related questions,
here we introduce a new Japanese database oflaryngeal voice quality recordings.

2Speech Database

2.1 Participants & Recording Tools
For version 1 of the database, 16 participants(10 male, 6 female; ages 19 – 22) were recruitedamong our University’s students. Each participant
read an explanation of the experiment (which wasapproved by the University’s ethics committee),signed a consent form, and was remunerated at
the end of the session, which took about 1 hr.
Recordings took place in a soundproof room
(3.24 × 3.58 × 2.30 m) with a background noiselevel of 16 dB. The talker stood, with their lips
about 30 cm from a microphone (B&K 4190)
secured on a single-pole tripod stand placed near
the room’s center. The microphone cable was fed
to a conditioning amplifier (B&K Nexus) set tounity gain. The conditioned signal was fed to ananalog-to-digital converter (RME ADI-2 Pro) set
to 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 24 bits/sample,
which in turn was connected via USB to a
notebook PC (Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310) with asolid-state hard-disk. The digitized signal wasrecorded and saved in mono WAV format.
The first author was also standing in the room,at least 1 m diagonally behind the microphone, toinstruct each participant as described next.
2.2 Recording Protocol & Speech Materials
Each talker was encouraged to relax and readas naturally as possible, text presented on a large
card held up at eye level by the instructor.
Starting with their normal, habitual voice (modalvoice), the talker read the Japanese word /hai/,sustained vowels /a:/, /i:/, /ɯ:/, /e:/, /o:/, andvowel sequence /aiɯeo/ with normal vocal effort,

喉頭声質の日本語マルチトーカーデータベースの紹介
モクタリ パーハム, 森川 大輔 （富山県立大学）

日本音響学会講演論文集- 1165 -

2022年3月

Table 1 Voice qualities that participants wereasked to produce, and their laryngeal settings.
AT: adductive tension, MC: medial compression,
LT: longitudinal tension, p: passive.
AT MC LT
Modal Voice (地声)↓ ↑Whisper (ささやき声)
Whispery Voice (ささやくような声) ↓ ↑↑ ↑ ↑p
Falsetto (裏声)↑ ↑ ↓Creak (きしる声)↑ ↑ ↓Creaky Voice (きしるような声)↓ ↓ ↓Breathy Voice (気息性の声)↑ ↑Tense Voice (緊張した声)
Harsh Voice (ざらざらした声)⇈ ⇈2.3 Segmentation & Post-Processing
For each recording session, the 22 segments (7isolated utterances × 3 vocal efforts + the fable)
in each of the 9 voice qualities, were demarcatedand saved as separate WAV files. Segmentation
was done manually with the aid of the speech
waveform, its spectrogram, and by audition.
Finally, the waveform of every segment wasnegated to correct for the negative polarity of themicrophone, then high-pass filtered at cut-off
40 Hz with a linear-phase FIR filter (2482 taps =56 ms) to suppress low-frequency ambient noise.

3
as if reading to the instructor. Next, the samematerial was read with lower vocal effort (softly)as if reading to someone standing close. Next, thesame material was read with higher vocal effort(loudly) as if reading to someone far away.
Next, at a normal vocal effort, the talker read aparagraph of Japanese text (taking about 1 min.):a version of the fable “The North Wind and theSun” (北風と太陽) that had been modified [4] toinclude all the Japanese consonant phonemes andtheir major allophones.
The entire protocol described above was thenrepeated for each of the remaining 8 laryngeal
voice qualities listed in Table 1, including an
overall tense voice. These were chosen fromLaver’s [1] framework to cover a wide range ofphysiological possibilities while keeping torelatively simple types, i.e., avoiding many
compound types. Prior to each one, the instructor
briefly trained the talker with simple explanations
and live demonstrations, encouraging the talker
to practice imitating the instructor’s voice quality
as far as they were able, in their own way.
Regarding phonetic realization and prosody
including vocal effort, no specific instructions
were given other than those described above;
each participant thus rendered the speech material
with idiosyncratic timing, intonation, emphasis,and pronunciation. If a major mistake was madeor a non-speech event such as coughing occurred
during the reading, the paragraph would berestarted; otherwise, the fable recordings do
occasionally contain some minor disfluencies.

日本音響学会講演論文集

Voice Qualities Intended vs Produced

Despite having chosen a subset of 9 basic
voice qualities, as expected of naive participants,
not every talker was able to successfully produce
every voice quality. Some talkers had particulardifficulty with creak which was sometimes
produced as modal voice with low fundamental
frequency, and harsh voice which was sometimes
produced as tense laryngo-pharyngalized
whispery voice. Nevertheless, every talker’s best
attempts are included in the database. To clarify
the difference between intention and production,
each recorded segment was listened to carefully
and labelled in terms of the voice quality actuallyproduced. This auditory evaluation will be madeavailable as part of the database.

4Conclusions

Our motivations and methods for recording a
new Japanese database of laryngeal voice quality
were described. The database version 1 will soon
be made available online. Future versions may
include more talkers and new materials. We hopeit may be useful for the research community.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by a grantfrom the Casio Science Promotion Foundation.
References[1] Laver, The phonetic description of voice
quality, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
[2] Kasuya & Yang, JASJ 51(11), 869-875, 1995.
[3] Klasmeyer & Sendlmeier, in Voice Quality
Meas. (Kent & Ball, eds.), 339-357, 2000.
[4] Hiki et al., Proc. ICPhS, 871-873, 2011.

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