Spectrum of phonetic resonance in speech production, or its peak
Spectrogram of American English vowels [i,u,ɑ] showing the formants F1 and F2
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In speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract.[1][2] In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum.[3][4] For harmonic sounds, with this definition, the formant frequency is sometimes taken as that of the harmonic that is most augmented by a resonance. The difference between these two definitions resides in whether "formants" characterise the production mechanisms of a sound or the produced sound itself. In practice, the frequency of a spectral peak differs slightly from the associated resonance frequency, except when, by luck, harmonics are aligned with the resonance frequency, or when the sound source is mostly non-harmonic, as in whispering and vocal fry.
A room can be said to have formants characteristic of that particular room, due to its resonances, i.e., to the way sound reflects from its walls and objects. Room formants of this nature reinforce themselves by emphasizing specific frequencies and absorbing others, as exploited, for example, by Alvin Lucier in his piece I Am Sitting in a Room. In acoustic digital signal processing, the way a collection of formants (such as a room) affects a signal can be represented by an impulse response.
In both speech and rooms, formants are characteristic features of the resonances of the space. They are said to be excited by acoustic sources such as the voice, and they shape (filter) the sources' sounds, but they are not sources themselves.
^Titze, I.R. (1994). Principles of Voice Production, Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0-13-717893-3.
^Titze, I.R., Baken, R.J. Bozeman, K.W., Granqvist, S. Henrich, N., Herbst, C.T., Howard, D.M., Hunter, E.J., Kaelin, D., Kent, R.D., Löfqvist, A., McCoy, S., Miller, D.G., Noé, H., Scherer, R.C., Smith, J.R., Story, B.H., Švec, J.G., Ternström, S. and Wolfe, J. (2015) "Toward a consensus on symbolic notation of harmonics, resonances, and formants in vocalization." J. Acoust. Soc. America. 137, 3005–3007.
^Jeans, J.H. (1938) Science & Music, reprinted by Dover, 1968.
^Standards Secretariat, Acoustical Society of America, (1994). ANSI S1.1-1994 (R2004) American National Standard Acoustical Terminology, (12.41) Acoustical Society of America, Melville, NY.
phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually...
spectrogram: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant. The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels...
goal of a speech synthesis system, and formant synthesis systems have advantages over concatenative systems. Formant-synthesized speech can be reliably intelligible...
sound in the voices of opera singers. It is also commonly called "singer's formant", "ring", "ping", "core", and other terms. Squillo enables an essentially...
"attack, decay, sustain, release") Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation) Prefix, or onset of...
frequency and its formants. Each vowel in the vowel diagram has a unique first and second formant, or F1 and F2. The frequency of the first formant refers to...
2007. Retrieved 18 June 2007. C'est une région officiellement bilingue formant au centre du pays une enclave dans la province du Brabant flamand (Vlaams...
FS1R audio demonstration A sequence showing the combined FM synthesis and formant parameters in a single patch, along with the FS1R's onboard delay and reverb...
The FS1R also contained an additional wave form called the Formant wave form. Formants can be used to model resonating body instrument sounds like the...
and of the syllable nucleus. Their third formants are generally non-predictable based on the first two formants. Another important feature is their complex...
and /ɛ/ are distinctive). Actual phonological studies done by studying formant data show that current speakers of Standard Korean do not differentiate...
open-source, cross-platform, compact, software speech synthesizer. It uses a formant synthesis method, providing many languages in a relatively small file size...
hand, the "sh" sound /ʃ/ in "ash" is a colored noise because it has a formant structure. In music and acoustics, the term "white noise" may be used for...
are characterized by different formant structures, that are visible in a spectrogram of the recorded sound wave. Formants are the amplitude peaks in the...
Typical male voices range from 2.2 metres (7 ft) to 4 metres (13 ft). Formant Hearing (sense) Voice call Cox, R. V.; Neto, S. F. De Campos; Lamblin,...
[such as Hebrew and Arabic] which show a more definite displacement of the formant frequencies for h, suggesting it has a [glottal] constriction associated...
is as follows: /i, u, æ/ are close to cardinal [i, u, a]. The F1 and F2 formant frequencies overlap for /œ/ and /ɯ/. Their acoustic quality is more or...
speaker discriminating power of sounds undergoing historical change: A formant-based study", the Proceedings of ICPhS Saarbrücken, pp. 1813–1816 Ladefoged...
as [e] or [o] and the open-mid vowels such as [ɛ] or [ɔ] equidistant in formant space between open [a] or [ɒ] and close [i] or [u]. Thus a true mid front...
which is characterized by its resonances; these resonances give rise to formants, or enhanced frequency bands in the sound produced. Hisses and pops are...
dialect) сулугун (sulugun) adding Georgian nominative formant i, where sulu means Whey, and formant -gun means "made of". However, this version does not...
Theremin's original design included audio frequency series/parallel LC formant filters as well as a 3-winding variable-saturation transformer to control...
Problems playing these files? See media help. Aristoxenus Electronic tuner Formant Fourier series Guitar harmonic Harmonic analysis Harmonics (electrical...
tract. These resonant properties amplify specific harmonic frequencies (formants) that are different for each vowel, while attenuating other harmonics....
Bands of frequencies that are not thus inhibited produce formants in the output sound. These formants, and especially their variation during the inhalation...
ISBN 978-0-226-14531-0. Chabot, Jean-Baptiste (1896). "Éttat religieux des diocèses formant le patriarcat chaldéen de Babylone". Revue de l'Orient chrétien. 1: 433–453...
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