Voice Quality (Seetharamakrishnan )

Subject: Voice Quality
From:    Seetharamakrishnan  <seethark(at)ETH.NET>
Date:    Wed, 12 Nov 2003 22:31:03 +0530

Dear Friends

I am not an expert in voice analysis, but yet I have to assess voice quality
from conversational speech.
ie Compare an "ideal voice" with spoken voice. ie The ideal voice would be
recorded when the voice quality is good. And whenever the same person
speaks, his/her voice will be compared to this ideal voice parameters and
deviations will be indicated. The content and duration of the ideal voice
and spoken voice will be different. I have some software to measure sound
analysis parameters like Intensity, Pitch, HNR, Mean DB, SD, Jitter,
Shimmer, Silence,  Unvoiced frames etc..

I dont know how to correlate between the measured values and the perceived
quality of voice.
Now my question is, what measurement parameters can be reliably used in
order to compare the "ideal voice" and spoken voice  and how ?

Only criteria is that the spoken voice should have definitely deviated
qualitywise in some manner or other.
I am not able to arrive at what measurements I can reliably and consistently
use to satisfy the above criteria though I know that certain measurements
like mean DB, mean Pitch, silence percentage, number of unvoiced frames,
voice breaks etc can be used.

One more thing is, whether the how much window size (time in seconds) should
be taken to arrive at some reliable comparison.

Any light on this topic would be appreciated.

Regards
srk