Comparing acoustic analyses of speech data collected remotely

TL;DR

This study compares remote speech data collection methods using different devices and software, finding that lossless mobile phone recordings can be a viable alternative to traditional face-to-face data collection for phonetic analysis.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of remote recording devices and software, highlighting the viability of lossless mobile phone recordings for phonetic research.

Findings

F0 was accurately tracked by all devices.

Phone recordings performed better than Zoom for formant analysis.

Zoom recordings showed unexpected intensity drops.

Abstract

Face-to-face speech data collection has been next to impossible globally due to COVID-19 restrictions. To address this problem, simultaneous recordings of three repetitions of the cardinal vowels were made using a Zoom H6 Handy Recorder with external microphone (henceforth H6) and compared with two alternatives accessible to potential participants at home: the Zoom meeting application (henceforth Zoom) and two lossless mobile phone applications (Awesome Voice Recorder, and Recorder; henceforth Phone). F0 was tracked accurately by all devices; however, for formant analysis (F1, F2, F3) Phone performed better than Zoom, i.e. more similarly to H6, though data extraction method (VoiceSauce, Praat) also resulted in differences. In addition, Zoom recordings exhibited unexpected drops in intensity. The results suggest that lossless format phone recordings present a viable option for at least some phonetic studies.