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Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices

Many post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users report that they no longer enjoy listening to music, which could possibly contribute to a perceived reduction in quality of life. One aspect of music perception, vocal timbre perception, may be difficult for CI users because they may not be ab...

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Autores principales: Erickson, Molly L., Faulkner, Katie, Johnstone, Patti M., Hedrick, Mark S., Stone, Taylor
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7179674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32372904
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00307
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author Erickson, Molly L.
Faulkner, Katie
Johnstone, Patti M.
Hedrick, Mark S.
Stone, Taylor
author_facet Erickson, Molly L.
Faulkner, Katie
Johnstone, Patti M.
Hedrick, Mark S.
Stone, Taylor
author_sort Erickson, Molly L.
collection PubMed
description Many post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users report that they no longer enjoy listening to music, which could possibly contribute to a perceived reduction in quality of life. One aspect of music perception, vocal timbre perception, may be difficult for CI users because they may not be able to use the same timbral cues available to normal hearing listeners. Vocal tract resonance frequencies have been shown to provide perceptual cues to voice categories such as baritone, tenor, mezzo-soprano, and soprano, while changes in glottal source spectral slope are believed to be related to perception of vocal quality dimensions such as fluty vs. brassy. As a first step toward understanding vocal timbre perception in CI users, we employed an 8-channel noise-band vocoder to test how vocoding can alter the timbral perception of female synthetic sung vowels across pitches. Non-vocoded and vocoded stimuli were synthesized with vibrato using 3 excitation source spectral slopes and 3 vocal tract transfer functions (mezzo-soprano, intermediate, soprano) at the pitches C4, B4, and F5. Six multi-dimensional scaling experiments were conducted: C4 not vocoded, C4 vocoded, B4 not vocoded, B4 vocoded, F5 not vocoded, and F5 vocoded. At the pitch C4, for both non-vocoded and vocoded conditions, dimension 1 grouped stimuli according to voice category and was most strongly predicted by spectral centroid from 0 to 2 kHz. While dimension 2 grouped stimuli according to excitation source spectral slope, it was organized slightly differently and predicted by different acoustic parameters in the non-vocoded and vocoded conditions. For pitches B4 and F5 spectral centroid from 0 to 2 kHz most strongly predicted dimension 1. However, while dimension 1 separated all 3 voice categories in the vocoded condition, dimension 1 only separated the soprano stimuli from the intermediate and mezzo-soprano stimuli in the non-vocoded condition. While it is unclear how these results predict timbre perception in CI listeners, in general, these results suggest that perhaps some aspects of vocal timbre may remain.
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spelling pubmed-71796742020-05-05 Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices Erickson, Molly L. Faulkner, Katie Johnstone, Patti M. Hedrick, Mark S. Stone, Taylor Front Neurosci Neuroscience Many post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users report that they no longer enjoy listening to music, which could possibly contribute to a perceived reduction in quality of life. One aspect of music perception, vocal timbre perception, may be difficult for CI users because they may not be able to use the same timbral cues available to normal hearing listeners. Vocal tract resonance frequencies have been shown to provide perceptual cues to voice categories such as baritone, tenor, mezzo-soprano, and soprano, while changes in glottal source spectral slope are believed to be related to perception of vocal quality dimensions such as fluty vs. brassy. As a first step toward understanding vocal timbre perception in CI users, we employed an 8-channel noise-band vocoder to test how vocoding can alter the timbral perception of female synthetic sung vowels across pitches. Non-vocoded and vocoded stimuli were synthesized with vibrato using 3 excitation source spectral slopes and 3 vocal tract transfer functions (mezzo-soprano, intermediate, soprano) at the pitches C4, B4, and F5. Six multi-dimensional scaling experiments were conducted: C4 not vocoded, C4 vocoded, B4 not vocoded, B4 vocoded, F5 not vocoded, and F5 vocoded. At the pitch C4, for both non-vocoded and vocoded conditions, dimension 1 grouped stimuli according to voice category and was most strongly predicted by spectral centroid from 0 to 2 kHz. While dimension 2 grouped stimuli according to excitation source spectral slope, it was organized slightly differently and predicted by different acoustic parameters in the non-vocoded and vocoded conditions. For pitches B4 and F5 spectral centroid from 0 to 2 kHz most strongly predicted dimension 1. However, while dimension 1 separated all 3 voice categories in the vocoded condition, dimension 1 only separated the soprano stimuli from the intermediate and mezzo-soprano stimuli in the non-vocoded condition. While it is unclear how these results predict timbre perception in CI listeners, in general, these results suggest that perhaps some aspects of vocal timbre may remain. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-04-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7179674/ /pubmed/32372904 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00307 Text en Copyright © 2020 Erickson, Faulkner, Johnstone, Hedrick and Stone. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Erickson, Molly L.
Faulkner, Katie
Johnstone, Patti M.
Hedrick, Mark S.
Stone, Taylor
Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices
title Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices
title_full Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices
title_fullStr Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices
title_full_unstemmed Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices
title_short Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices
title_sort multidimensional timbre spaces of cochlear implant vocoded and non-vocoded synthetic female singing voices
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7179674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32372904
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00307
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