>I prefer to think of the "singer's formant" as being a combination of
>things. In fact, I would challenge anyone to state that it is NOT due to
>a combination of things:
Dear Martyn,
Lovely to hear from you. I enjoyed your description
of ages ago on the role of vocal fold mucosa, and this too.
As to the above, I'm sure no one would be so
presumptive, but at the same time I was a little disappointed that
Titze and Story in their "Acoustic Interactions of the voice with the
lower vocal tract", chose to combine the two Piriform sinus tracts
to facilitate resonance calculations, thus dismissing the possibility
of their independent involvement with the epilarynx. For me it is
highly logical that two such sinking filters should find themselves
tuned to opposite sides of the window of formant frequencies.
Why?, I hear you ask:) Duplication in the human body
has basically two reasons; sometimes mixed.
Cooperative function...or....redundancy.
In the first we have legs ,arms, eyes,ears,hands and even brain.
The redundancies are in my opinion few. Testes, ovum and possibly
lungs. So I'd like to suggest that the Piriform sinus pair have a role
that fits neatly at each side of the formant window in a cooperative
function, to minimise what ever products there were, or are, that nature
finds so objectionable.
Martyn..just so I don't get confused, and to make sure we're on the same
wavelength, a poor signal to noise ratio to me, is a _low_ one.
>1) A signal which is not good enough for analysis (signal to noise ratio
>high,
ie A noise level 6dB below the signal is poor, and a low ratio, sometimes
even described as noisy, while a noise component 35dB below the
signal is good, and a high ratio. Noise free.
The first being 2:1 and the second 32: 1?? Do we agree?
Then you wrote....
>3) A relatively low level of "singer's formant" energy (measured as the
>ratio of energy above 2500 to the energy below).
First,...do you mean relative to the level of the nearest harmonic below
the window of the formant frequencies, or relative to the amplitude of
the fundamental, or of the total energy below?
Second, ..what relative pressure levels in dB below the fundamental,
would you expect to find the formant say on a top G for both a ringing
tenor and a counter-tenor? Side question..what magnitude in dBA
would you expect the fundamental to have in each case?
I hope I haven't appeared too forward in putting these questions but one
rarely gets this close to the source. I bow to your first hand knowledge.
Regards Reg.
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