Hostname: page-component-8678677fb7-dgq2d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-10-10T13:35:21.267Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

(Don't) Try this at Home! The Effects of Recording Devices and Software on Phonetic Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Chelsea Sanker ,
Sarah Babinski ,
Roslyn Burns ,
Marisha Evans ,
Jeremy Johns ,
Juhyae Kim ,
Slater Smith ,
Natalie Weber  and
Claire Bowern
Chelsea Sanker*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Sarah Babinski*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Roslyn Burns*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Marisha Evans*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Jeremy Johns*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Juhyae Kim*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Slater Smith*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Natalie Weber*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Claire Bowern*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Linguistics, Yale University, Dow Hall, P.O. Box 208366, New Haven, CT 06520, [chelsea.sanker@yale.edu]
[sarah.babinski@yale.edu]
[roslyn.burns@yale.edu]
[marisha.evans@yale.edu]
[jeremy.johns@yale.edu]
[jk2354@cornell.edu]
[slater.smith@yale.edu]
[natalie.weber@yale.edu]
[claire.bowern@yale.edu]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Because of restrictions on in-person research due to COVID-19, researchers are now relying on remotely recorded data to a much greater extent than in the past. Given the change in methodology, it is important to know how remote recording might affect acoustic measurements, either because of different recording devices used by participants and consultants or because of the software used to make recordings. This study investigates audio signal fidelity across different inperson recording equipment and remote recording software when compared to solid-state digital audio. We show that equipment choice and software can have a large effect on acoustic measurements, including those of frequency, duration, and noise. The issues do not just reflect decreased reliability; some measurements are systematically shifted in particular recording conditions. These results show the importance of carefully considering and documenting equipment choices, particularly for crosslinguistic or cross-speaker comparisons. We close with a framework for researchers to use in deciding what types of recording may be most appropriate.

Keywords

acoustic measurementsfieldworkremote recordingsrecording softwarerecording devices

Information

Type
Research Report
Information
Language , Volume 97 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. e360 - e382
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Division of work: CS, CB, RB, and NW planned the project, with input from all authors. CS, CB, JK, and NW made the recordings. CS and CB analyzed the data. CS, CB, NW, and RB led the paper writing, with extensive input from all authors. Apart from the first and last authors, all names are ordered alphabetically. The corresponding author is CB.

References

Barwick, Linda. 2005. A musicologist's wishlist: Some issues, practices and practicalities in musical aspects of language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 3. 53–62. Online: http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/035.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Mächler, Martin, Bolker, Ben; and Walker, Steve. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48. DOI: 10.18637/jss.v067.i01.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, Steven, Hanke, Florian R., Adams, Oliver; and Lee, Haejoong. 2014. Aikuma: A mobile app for collaborative language documentation. Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages, 1–5. DOI: 10.3115/v1/W14-2201.10.3115/v1/W14-2201CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, Steven, and Simons, Gary. 2003. Seven dimensions of portability for language documentation and description. Language 79(3). 557–82. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2003.0149.10.1353/lan.2003.0149CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, and Weenink, David. 2017. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Version 6.0.30. Online: http://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Bowern, Claire. 2015. Linguistic fieldwork: A practical guide. 2nd edn. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Busso, Carlos, Lee, Sungbok; and Narayanan, Shrikanth S.. 2007. Using neutral speech models for emotional speech analysis. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Antwerp, Belgium, August 27–31, 2007, 2304–7.Google Scholar
de Decker, Paul, and Nycz, Jennifer. 2015. For the record: Which digital media can be used for sociophonetic analysis? University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17(2):7. Online: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol17/iss2/7.Google Scholar
Drude, Sebastian, Trilsbeek, Paul; and Broeder, Daan. 2011. The ‘Language Archiving Technology’ solutions for sustainable data from digital research. Sustainable data from digital research: Humanities perspectives on digital scholarship. Proceedings of the conference held at the University of Melbourne, 12–14th December 2011. Online: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7935.Google Scholar
Evanini, Keelan, Isard, Stephen; and Liberman, Mark. 2009. Automatic formant extraction for sociolinguistic analysis of large corpora. Proceedings of Interspeech 2009, 1655–55. Online: https://www.isca-speech.org/archive_v0/interspeech_2009/i09_1655.html.10.21437/Interspeech.2009-502CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, Erica. 2009. The effects of video and voice recorders in cellular phones on vowel formants and fundamental frequency. York: University of York master's thesis.Google Scholar
Goldman, Jean-Philippe, Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José, Kolly, Hove, Ingrid, Almajai, Ibrahim, Dellwo, Volker; and Moran, Steven. 2014. A crowdsourcing smartphone application for Swiss German: Putting language documentation in the hands of the users. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2014), 3444–44. Online: http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2014/pdf/214_Paper.pdf.Google Scholar
Gordon, Matthew, Barthmaier, Paul; and Sands, Kathy. 2002. A cross-linguistic acoustic study of voiceless fricatives. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 32(2). 141–74. DOI: 10.1017/S0025100302001020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall-Lew, Lauren, and Boyd, Zac. 2017. Phonetic variation and self-recorded data. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 23(2):11. Online: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol23/iss2/11.Google Scholar
Hosom, John-Paul. 2009. Speaker-independent phoneme alignment using transition-dependent states. Speech Communication 51. 352–68. DOI: 10.1016/j.specom.2008.11.003.10.1016/j.specom.2008.11.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hua, Guang, Liao, Han, Wang, Qingyi, Zhang, Haijian; and Ye, Dengpan. 2021. Detection of electric network frequency in audio recordings—From theory to practical detectors. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 16. 236–48. DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2020.3009579.10.1109/TIFS.2020.3009579CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Vincent, Harrison, Phillip, Foulkes, Paul, French, Peter; and Gully, Amelia J.. 2019. Effects of formant analysis settings and channel mismatch on semi-automatic forensic voice comparison. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Melbourne, 3080–08. Online: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2019/papers/ICPhS_3129.pdf.Google Scholar
Johnson, Keith. 2012. Acoustic and auditory phonetics. 3rd edn. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Künzel, Hermann J. 2001. Beware of the ‘telephone effect’: The influence of telephone transmission on the measurement of formant frequencies. Forensic Linguistics 8. 80–99.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockhoff, Per Bruun; and Haubo, Rune Christensen, Bojesen. 2015. lmerTest: Tests in linear mixed effects models. R package version 2. 0–29. Online: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lmerTest/index.html.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon; and Boberg, Charles. 2006. The atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology and sound change. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110167467CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leemann, Adrian, Jeszenszky, Péter, Steiner, Carina, Studerus, Melanie; and Messerli, Jan. 2020. Linguistic fieldwork in a pandemic: Supervised data collection combining smartphone recordings and videoconferencing. Linguistics Vanguard 6(s3): 20200061. DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2020-0061.10.1515/lingvan-2020-0061CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, Hong, and Zue, V.. 1984. A procedure for automatic alignment of phonetic transcriptions with continuous speech. ICASSP '84: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 73–76. DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.1984.1172426.10.1109/ICASSP.1984.1172426CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Chi-Min, Hsu, Han-Wen; and Lee, Wen-Chieh. 2008. Compression artifacts in perceptual audio coding. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing 16(4). 681–95. DOI: 10.1109/TASL.2008.918979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Richard. 2011. Understanding digital signal processing. 3rd edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Lyons, Richard, and Fugal, D. Lee. 2014. The essential guide to digital signal processing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, Laurel, and Turton, Danielle. 2020. Assessing the accuracy of existing forced alignment software on varieties of British English. Linguistics Vanguard 6(s1):20180061. DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2018-0061.10.1515/lingvan-2018-0061CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddieson, Ian. 2001. Phonetic fieldwork. Linguistic fieldwork, ed. by Newman, Paul and Ratliff, Martha, 211–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511810206.011.Google Scholar
Nash, Carlos Marcelo. 2001. Evaluating the use of adaptive transform acoustic coding (ATRAC) data compression in acoustic phonetics. Houston, TX: Rice University master's thesis. Online: https://hdl.handle.net/1911/17453.Google Scholar
Peirce, Jonathan W. 2007. PsychoPy—Psychophysics software in Python. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 162(1–2). 8–13. DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2006.11.017.10.1016/j.jneumeth.2006.11.017CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Podesva, Robert, and Zsiga, Elizabeth. 2013. Sound recordings: Acoustic and articulatory data. Research methods in linguistics, ed. by Podesva, Robert and Sharma, Devyani, 169–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rathcke, Tamara, Stuart-Smith, Jane, Torsney, Bernard; and Harrington, Jonathan. 2017. The beauty in a beast: Minimising the effects of diverse recording quality on vowel formant measurements in sociophonetic real-time studies. Speech Communication 86. 24–41. DOI: 10.1016/j.specom.2016.11.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reddy, Chandan K., Dubey, Harishchandra, Gopal, Vishak, Cutler, Ross, Braun, Sebastian, Gamper, Hannes, Aichner, Robert; and Srinivasan, Sriram. 2021. ICASSP 2021 Deep Noise Suppression challenge. ICASSP 2021: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 6623–32. DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9415105.10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9415105.10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9415105.10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9415105.10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9415105CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenfelder, Ingrid, Fruehwald, Josef, Evanini, Keelan, Seyfarth, Scott, Gorman, Kyle, Prichard, Hilary; and Yuan, Jiahong. 2014. FAVE (Forced Alignment and Vowel Extraction) program suite v1.2.2. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22281.10.5281/zenodo.22281.10.5281/zenodo.22281.10.5281/zenodo.22281CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salesky, Elizabeth, Chodroff, Eleanor, Pimentel, Tiago, Wiesner, Matthew, Cotterell, Ryan, Black, Alan W.; and Eisner, Jason. 2020. A corpus for large-scale phonetic typology. arXiv:2005.13962 [cs]. Online: http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.13962, accessed January 21, 2021.Google Scholar
Seyfeddinipur, Mandana, and Rau, Felix. 2020. Keeping it real: Video data in language documentation and language archiving. Language Documentation & Conservation 14. 503–19. Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24965.Google Scholar
Sneller, Betsy. 2021. Sociolinguistic research in the time of COVID: Methods, ethics, theory. Workshop at the virtual annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Sonderegger, Morgan, Macdonald, Rachel, Mielke, Jeff, McAuliffe;, Michael and Thomas, Erik. 2019. Large-scale acoustic analysis of dialectal and social factors in English /s/-retraction. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Melbourne, 1273–37. Online: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2019/papers/ICPhS_1322.pdf.Google Scholar
Sun, Lingfen, Mkwawa, Is-Haka, Emmanuel, Jammeh; and Emmanuel, Ifeachor. 2013. Speech compression. Guide to voice and video over IP: For fixed and mobile networks, Ch. 2, 17–51. London: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4471-4905-7_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Son, R. J. J. H. 2005. A study of pitch, formant, and spectral estimation errors introduced by three lossy speech compression algorithms. Acta Acustica united with Acustica 91. 771–78. Online: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/dav/aaua/2005/00000091/00000004/art00018.Google Scholar
Wesenick, Maria-Barbara, and Kipp, Andreas. 1996. Estimating the quality of phonetic transcriptions and segmentations of speech signals. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP '96), 129–32. DOI: 10.1109/ICSLP.1996.607054.10.1109/ICSLP.1996.607054.10.1109/ICSLP.1996.607054.10.1109/ICSLP.1996.607054CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whalen, Douglas H., DiCanio;, Christian and Dockum, Rikker. 2020. Phonetic documentation in three collections: Topics and evolution. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, First View. DOI: 10.1017/S0025100320000079.10.1017/S0025100320000079.10.1017/S0025100320000079.10.1017/S0025100320000079.10.1017/S0025100320000079CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zölzer, Udo. 2008. Digital audio signal processing. 2nd edn. London: Wiley.10.1002/9780470680018CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Sanker et al. supplementary material

Sanker et al. supplementary material
Download Sanker et al. supplementary material(File)
File 2 MB