Acoustic Parameters in the Evaluation of Voice Quality of Choral Singers. Prototype of Mobile Application for Voice Quality Evaluation

Choral singers are among intensive voice users whose excessive vocal effort puts them at risk of developing voice disorders. The aim of the work was to assess voice quality for choral singers in the choir at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. This evaluation was carried out using the acoustic parameters from the COVAREP (A Collaborative Voice Analysis Repository For Speech Technologies) repository. A prototype of a mobile application was also prepared to allow the calculation of these parameters. The study group comprised 6 male and 19 female choir singers. The control group consisted of healthy non-singing individuals, 50 men and 39 women. Auditory perceptual assessment (using the RBH scale) as well as acoustic analysis were used to test the voice quality of all the participants. The voice quality of the female choir singers proved to be normal in comparison with the control group. The male choir singers were found to have tense voice in comparison with the controls. The parameters which proved most effective for voice evaluation were Peak Slope and Normalized Amplitude Quotient.