Multimodal modeling and validation of simplified vocal tract acoustics for sibilant /s/

To investigate the acoustic characteristics of sibilant /s/, multimodal theory is applied to a simplified vocal tract geometry derived from a CT scan of a single speaker for whom the sound spectrum was gathered. The vocal tract was represented by a concatenation of waveguides with rectangular cross-sections and constant width, and a sound source was placed either at the inlet of the vocal tract or downstream from the constriction representing the sibilant groove. The modeled pressure amplitude was validated experimentally using an acoustic driver or airflow supply at the vocal tract inlet. Results showed that the spectrum predicted with the source at the inlet and including higher-order modes matched the spectrum measured with the acoustic driver at the inlet. Spectra modeled with the source downstream from the constriction captured the first characteristic peak observed for the speaker at 4 kHz. By positioning the source near the upper teeth wall, the higher frequency peak observed for the speaker at 8 kHz was predicted with the inclusion of higher-order modes. At the frequencies of the characteristic peaks, nodes and antinodes of the pressure amplitude were observed in the simplified vocal tract when the source was placed downstream from the constriction. These results indicate that the multimodal approach enables to capture the amplitude and frequency of the peaks in the spectrum as well as the nodes and antinodes of the pressure distribution due to /s/ inside the vocal tract.