Formant

One of the types of objects in Praat. A Formant object represents spectral structure as a function of time: a formant contour. Unlike the time-stamped FormantGrid object, it is sampled into a number of frames centred around equally spaced times, Each frame contains frequency and bandwidth information about several formants.

Inside a Formant object

With Inspect, you will see the following attributes:

xmin
start time, in seconds.
xmax
end time, in seconds.
nx
the number of frames (≥ 1).
dx
time step = frame length = frame duration, in seconds.
x1
the time associated with the first frame, in seconds. This will usually be in the range [xmin, xmax]. The time associated with the last frame (i.e., x1 + (nx – 1) dx)) will also usually be in that range.
framei, i = 1 ... nx
the frames (see below).

Attributes of a formant frame

Each framei contains the following attributes:

intensity
an indication of the maximum intensity (a squared sound amplitude) in this frame.
nFormants
the number of formants in this frame (usually between 2 and 6).
formantj, j = 1 ... nFormants
the information about each formant (see below).

Attributes of each formant

Each formantj contains the following attributes:

frequency
the formant's centre frequency (in Hz).
bandwidth
the formant's bandwidth (in Hz).

See also

Linear Prediction

Links to this page


© ppgb 20050427