Harmonic Amplitude Measures to Note Gender Difference

Abstract

The present study was taken up with an objective to find whether harmonic amplitude measures can be used to note gender differences. A total of sixty subjects were divided into two groups. Group I consisted of 30 male subjects and group II consisted of 30 female subjects. They were instructed to produce three trials of sustained vowels (/a/, /i/ and /u/). The harmonic amplitude difference measures (H1-H2; H1-A1; H1-A2 and H1-A3) were extracted from Praat software. Results revealed significant difference between male and female subjects for all the harmonic amplitude difference measures. On measuring the difference between male and female subjects, the values ranged from 3.09 to 24.04. The results are discussed with respect to the underlying physiological differences and glottal chink during phonation across gender.

Keywords: Spectrum, FFT, Speech synthesis, Gender, Praat