Tape Recorder Effects on Jitter and Shimmer Extraction

To test for possible contamination of acoustic analyses by record/reproduce systems, five sine waves of fixed frequency and amplitude were sampled directly by a computer and recorded simultaneously on four different tape formats (audio and FM reel-to-reel, audio cassette, and video cassette using pulse code modulation). Recordings were digitized on playback and with the direct samples analyzed for fundamental frequency, amplitude, jitter, and shimmer using a zero crossing interpolation scheme. Distortion introduced by any of the data acquisition systems is negligible when extracting average fundamental frequency or average amplitude. For jitter and shimmer estimation, direct sampling or the use of a video cassette recorder with pulse code modulation are clearly superior. FM recorders, although not quite as accurate, provide a satisfactory alternative to those methods. Audio reel-to-reel recordings are marginally adequate for jitter analysis whereas audio cassette recorders can introduce jitter and shimmer values that are greater than some reported values for normal talkers.

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