Sex, sx

Male and female voices differ in many ways, including head size, pharynx length, larynx mass, and speaking habits such as degree of breathiness, liveliness of pitch, choice of articulatory target values, and speed of articulation. Some of these differences are under the control of a single option, sx, the sex of the speaker. Speakers Paul, Harry, Frank, and Dennis are male (sx = 1), while speakers Betty, Rita, Ursula, Wendy, and Kit are female (sx = 0). Actually, Kit can be male or female because children of both sexes younger than 10 years old have similar voices.

Changing the Sex (sx) option causes DECtalk Software to access a different (male or female) table of target values for formant frequencies, bandwidths, and source amplitudes. The male and female tables are patterned after two individuals who were judged to have pleasant, intelligible voices. DECtalk Software built-in voices are simply scaled transformations of Paul and Betty, the two basic voices.

You can change the sex of any of DECtalk Software's voices by making the voice current and then modifying the sx option. For example, the following command gives Paul some of the speaking characteristics of a woman. (The sx option does not change the average pitch or breathiness, so a peculiar combination of simultaneous male and female traits results from this sx change.)

[:np][:dv sx 0] Am I a man or woman?

The sx option can also be specified as m or f with the commands [:dv sx m] or [:dv sx f].

Note
If you change the sex of the voice, some phonemes might cause DECtalk Software's filters to overload, producing a squawk. The modification of certain options such as f4, f5, and g1 can help to correct this problem.