A New Method to Explore the Spectral Impact of the Piriform Fossae on the Singing Voice: Benchmarking Using MRI-Based 3D-Printed Vocal Tracts

Bertrand Delvaux and David Howard

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: The piriform fossae are the 2 pear-shaped cavities lateral to the laryngeal vestibule at the lower end of the vocal tract. They act acoustically as side-branches to the main tract, resulting in a spectral zero in the output of the human voice. This study investigates their spectral role by comparing numerical and experimental results of MRI-based 3D printed Vocal Tracts, for which a new experimental method (based on room acoustics) is introduced. The findings support results in the literature: the piriform fossae create a spectral trough in the region 4–5 kHz and act as formants repellents. Moreover, this study extends those results by demonstrating numerically and perceptually the impact of having large piriform fossae on the sung output.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102680 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 02680&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0102680

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102680

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().