The influence of different room acoustics and microphone distances on charismatic prosodic parameters (vor Ort)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
The present study investigates how the properties of room acoustics affect the production and, in particular, the acoustic analysis of charismatic prosodic parameters. A re-recorded version of emoDB was used. The room acoustics was varied in two ways: the environment in that the recordings took place (studio conditions, hallway, lecture hall) and the microphone distance (ideal distance to the speaker vs. as far away as possible in the respective environment).The total of 2,470 samples were acoustically analyzed in terms of standard parameters (f0, duration and intensity). Based on a three-way MANOVA, the results of the analysis show, firstly, the expectable prosodic patterns for the six basic emotions and their relative differences to a neutral reference condition in German. Furthermore, we found clear effects of room acoustics. The speaking rate drops while both intensity and intensity variability increase significantly outside the studio and with increasing room size from hallway to lecture hall. Microphones positioned further away from the speaker cause the measured tempo and all intensity measures to drop significantly, while making the measured f0 variation increase in terms of both standard deviation and range. Estimated speaker-charisma levels are highest for joy and higher for distant microphones and the hallway.