Sound Spectrography

Various tools have been developed by scientists and engineers during the past 70–80 years to analyze many types of sounds that occur around us every day. Perhaps the most notable of these devices is the sound spectrograph. The sound spectrograph is an instrument used to analyze acoustic properties of human speech, as well as animal vocalizations (e.g., sounds produced by marine mammals, birds, primates, and so forth), output from musical instruments, environmental and atmospheric noises, and other sounds.

This entry focuses on the use of the spectrograph to analyze human speech. The spectrograph [Page 1753]is utilized by speech and voice scientists, Speech–Language pathologists, linguists, and foreign language instructors to study many aspects of speech sound production. These include, for instance, (a) infants’ cries and pre-meaningful babbling; ...