Statistical Measurements on Conversational Speech

Abstract

Several types of measurement are reported. R.m.s. pressures in one-eighth-second intervals, from the speech of a single voice, are compared with similar measurements in one-fourth-second intervals. The values obtained in the first case are only slightly more widely distributed than in the second, and the difference is least when attention is confined to high frequencies. To earlier r.m.s. measurements, on the voices of six men and five women, is applied the relation found more recently between pressure at a point and total voice power. The resulting curves represent average spectra of voice power for the men and women. Measurements of the distribution of instantaneous pressures in speech are also given.