The influence of reverberant environment on the first formant frequency of Malay speech

Abstract

The first formant frequency (F1) is important to make speeches understandable. In reverberant environments the speech may be affected and hence the value of F1 may change. The purpose of this research was to determine the effect on F1 due to reverberant level in six room samples. Three different words uttered by a female speaker had been recorded in an audiometry room. The recorded speech was then played in six room samples with different reverberant levels. These words were played and then recorded for six times for each room. The results show that the changes in the value of F1 depend on the type of word that was spoken and the reverberant level of the room. The word containing the phoneme /a/ was affected the most when subjected to different reverberant level whilst the word containing the phoneme /i/ was the least affected.