Analysis and modeling of noise sources in the vocal tract with a new measurement technique for 3D real-time reconstruction of the oral cavity

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Peter Birkholz
• Subject Area: Acoustics
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 221604849

The properties of noise sources in the vocal tract during the production of fricatives and plosives are not yet understood in detail. Noise is a consequence of turbulence, which occurs under certain aerodynamic and geometric conditions in the vocal tract, mostly due to a jet of air through a constriction. The properties of the turbulent noise sources, especially their spatial distribution and spectral shape, depend in complex ways on the time-varying 3D cavity shape and the intraoral pressure. These properties cannot be measured directly, but only indirectly by inverse filtering of the acoustic speech signal based on the vocal tract shape. Therefore, not only inverse filtering, but also the analysis of the relations between source properties, cavity shape and intraoral pressure require precise measurements of the 3D vocal tract shape, especially in the region of the constriction. The goal of this project is to develop a new measurement technique based on electrical and optical palatography that allows for the first time the detailed real-time reconstruction of the 3D cavity shape of the anterior vocal tract. This technique will be applied to the analysis and modeling of noise sources for articulatory speech synthesis.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants