Tube Model

[Yuxiao Y]

When studying the tube model, why don’t we consider the radius of the tube? And what if the travelling direction of the wave is not parallel to the central axis of the tube? Will any of these factors affect the wavelength of the lowest resonance? Or are they just ignored for convenience?

[Simon]

Good question! Think about the relative width and length of of the vocal tract, and what resonant frequencies each would give rise to.

We’ll answer this question properly in main lecture 2.

[Siyu D]

I think the width of the vocal tract is too short compared with its length and thus the resonant frequencies may be quite high and meaningless for humans’ audition.

[Simon]

Yes, that’s correct.

In detailed, sophisticated vocal tract models (e.g., finite element simulations of the aeroacoustics), then the area of the vocal tract becomes important.

But for our purposes, we just need to understand why speech has formants, and what determines their values.

[Author]

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