Acoustic analysis of voice using WPCVox: a comparative study with Multi Dimensional Voice Program

In this study, two different tools developed for the parametric extraction and acoustic analysis of voice samples are compared. The main goal of the paper is to contrast the results obtained using the classical Multi Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP), with the results obtained with the novel WPCVox. The aim of this comparison was to find differences and similarities in the parameters extracted with both systems in order to make comparison of measurements and data transfer among both equipments. The study was carried out in two stages: in the first, a wide sample of healthy voices belonging to Spanish-speaking adults from both genders were used to carry out a direct comparison between the results given by MDVP and those obtained with WPCVox. In the second stage, a sample of 200 speakers (53 normal and 173 pathological) taken from a commercially available database of voice disorders were used to demonstrate the usefulness of WPCVox for the acoustic analysis and the characterization of normal and pathological voices. The results conclude that WPCVox provides very reliable measurements which are very similar to those obtained using MDVP, and very similar capabilities to discriminate among normal and pathological voices.