The Effects of Loudness and Smiling on Timbre Features: Implications for Charismatic Voices in Mandarin, German and Danish

This study investigated the effects of loudness and smiling on timbre of speech in different languages and genders. A group of native speakers of Mandarin, German, and Danish (10 participants per language) were recorded while blocks of 10 sentences in 2x3 block-wise randomized loudness and smiling conditions. Four-way ANOVAs were conducted on 10 timbre parameters, including F1, F2, F3, H1-H2, H1-A3, HNR, CPP, CoG, jitter, and shimmer. Results showed that loudness affected more timbre features than smiling. Mandarin differed from German and Danish in such timbre features such as HNR and CPP, modulated by loudness and smiling. There were no acoustics interactions between loudness and smiling in any of the three languages.