April 2024

A fruitful collaboration with Prof. Marcelo Saldías (Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Chile) and VoiceLab-DSON members, Prof. Víctor Espinoza (VoiceLab-DSON director), and Prof. Christian Castro (VoiceLab-DSON clinical researcher), resulted in a new paper publication in the Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology Journal (Elsevier). You can access the paper through this link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14015439.2024.2345373

January 2024

VoiceLab Director Prof. Víctor Espinoza was awarded by the NATIONAL RESEARCH FUNDING COMPETITION FONDECYT Regular (2024-2027) with the project: "Advancing ambulatory voice monitoring using acoustics and neck skin acceleration signals to objectively assess vocal hyperfunction for clinical applications." See an interview on the Universidad de Chile website here (only Spanish).

August 2023

Mr. Ricardo Saldías has joined VoiceLab after completing a Master's in Artificial Intelligence from Universidad Internacional de Valencia, Spain. His responsibilities in our laboratory will involve continuing the work of our former engineer, Ms. Rocio Ortega, who left in April to pursue a Master's degree in Electronic Engineering at UTFSM, under the guidance of Prof. Matías Zañartu, a long-time collaborator of VoiceLab.

May 2023

VoiceLab-DSON graduate student Ricardo Saldías has completed all the requirements for a Master's in Artificial Intelligence from Universidad Internacional de Valencia, Spain. Ricardo's thesis topic was classifying clinical voice ratings using speech features and Deep Neural Networks under our VoiceLab-DSON Director advising Prof. Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.). Congratulations to Ricardo for the excellent work done!

April 2023

VoiceLab member Rocío Ortega and former student Nicolás Quinteros were both awarded scholarship grants for graduate studies in Electronic Engineering at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María. Rocío was awarded an Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID) scholarship for M.Eng. studies, and Nicolás with a Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María scholarship for Ph.D. studies.

Congratulations to both on this new and exciting journey!

January 2023

Our VoiceLab Director, Prof. Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.), in close collaboration with Mr. Nicolás F. Quinteros (M.Sc.), published a novel procedure for simulating dynamical audio transducers (including its thermal behavior) using the freely available LTspice software from the company Analog Devices Inc.

The article is open-access and can be downloaded without charge here.

December 2022

During the first weeks of December, Dr. Gabriel Alzamendi, a leading Argentine researcher in voice production and processing models, visited our VoiceLab-DSON laboratory. Dr. Alzamendi is a Professor at Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos (UNER) and a researcher at CONICET in Argentina. Among several activities, Dr. Alzamendi and our Director, Prof. Víctor Espinoza, joined efforts to estimate autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models for inverse filtering neck skin acceleration to estimate glottal airflow. Dr. Alzamendi also presented his research in a talk held at Departamento de Sonido (DSON), with good participation from academics and students. Our research coordinator at DSON, Prof. Carolina Espinoza, highlighted the scientific level of the talk and the possible collaborations between the DSON and UNER. This visit was part of the collaboration of visiting researchers, sponsored by Prof. Víctor Espinoza's FONDECYT Project 11200665.

November 2022

On November 12, Prof. Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.), VoiceLab-DSON Director, and Prof. Christian Castro, VoiceLab member, were two of the keynote speakers at the educational event Ingeniería Aplicada a la Voz Humana (Applied Engineering to the Human Voice) at Vocology Center, Colombia. The video presentation is here (V. Espinoza, C. Castro). See the event link here: https://vocologycenter.com/vk22-2/

October 2022

On November 23-25, Prof. Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.), VoiceLab-DSON Director, will participate as a Keynote Speaker in the Workshop on Advanced Signal Processing (WASP) to be held at Universidad Nacional Entre Rios, Argentina, with researchers from France, India, USA, and Chile. The event will be streamed on YouTube. See this link for more information: https://eventos.ingenieria.uner.edu.ar/wasp/

Update!. Talk is now available here.

October 2022

In October 2022, two students joined VoiceLab-DSON under Prof. Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.) advising. Mr. Angelo Morales is an undergraduate in the sound engineering program working on machine learning applications for inverse filtering of the oral airflow voice signal. Mr. Ricardo Saldías (AI master's degree candidate) is seeking to classify clinical voice ratings using speech features and Deep Neural Networks. Welcome to both!

October 2022

We recently published a preprint article entitled Acoustic and Neurophysiological Aspects of Lombard Effect with Christian Castro, Lucia Z Rivera, Pavel Prado, Jhosmary Cuadros, Juan Pablo Cortés, Alejandro Weinstein, Victor Espinoza, and Matías Zañartu. The results of this work are related to the Acoustic properties of voice and the cortical regions of the Lombard effect and voice production. Link to the article here.

October 2022

We recently published a research work entitled Ambulatory Monitoring of Subglottal Pressure Estimated from Neck-Surface Vibration in Individuals with and without Voice in Applied Science Journal. The results of this work point to the feasibility and potential of real-time monitoring of subglottal pressure during an individual's daily life to prevent, assess, and treat voice disorders. Link to the paper here.

September 2022.

VoiceLab-DSON's 1st Colloquium on Electroencephalographic (EGG) signals was held on September 22 at Centro Tecnológico (CENTEC-DSON). Our first invite was Lucía Zepeda Rivera (M.Eng.), a researcher at Brain Dynamics Laboratory, and specialist in EGG signal recordings and processing. During the activity, Lucia teach us fundamental practices and processing using the EGGLab Toolbox for being used in further studies about auditory neural processing and voice production in our lab.

August 2022.

VoiceLab member, Christian Castro (SLP), and its Director, Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.), recently published the paper Lombard Effect in Individuals With Nonphonotraumatic Vocal Hyperfunction: Impact on Acoustic, Aerodynamic, and Vocal Fold Vibratory Parameters in the Journal of Speech-Language and Hearing Research,  in close collaboration with VPLab-USM, MGH Voice Center, STEPP Lab, and our VoiceLab-DSON. See text in the link: https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00508.

June 2, 2022.

A successful presentation was made by our VoiceLab-DSON Director, Dr. Víctor M. Espinoza, with the work entitled "Modeling and Estimation of Neck-Surface Skin and Subglottal Systems with an ARMA-based model" at the 51st Symposium of the Voice Foundation, Philadelphia, USA, during June 1-5, 2022.

The research aim was to propose a new subglottal inverse filtering model to more accurately estimate the aerodynamic measurements of vocal function, in order to detect the early stages of vocal hyperfunction (vocal behavior precursor of many chronic voice pathologies such as nodules, polyps, muscular tension dysphonia, among others), which mainly affect women and people with intense voice use occupations (eg., singers, actors, among others).

May 2022.

An extensive interview to VoiceLab-DSON Director, Dr. Víctor M. Espinoza, was written at Universidad de Chile website. In the article, Dr. Espinoza describes the installation, scope, and current activities of VoiceLab. See the news at this link: https://uchile.cl/u186719.

March 2022.

VoiceLab members, Rocio Ortega (Eng.) and Christian Castro (SLP) have begun the voice recording process to complete the database of healthy voices, along with and without phonotrauma, as a fundamental task for our study of hyperfunctional voices.

February 2022.

Our VoiceLab Director, Prof. Víctor M. Espinoza (Ph.D.), was accepted to present his research at the  51st The Voice Foundation Symposium (Philadelphia, USA), with the work "Modeling and Estimation of Neck-Surface Acceleration and Subglottal System with an ARMA-based Inverse Filter." 

January 2022.

VoiceLab member, Christian Castro (SLP), at right in the picture, was visiting Universidad Católica de Temuco sharing his clinical experience on fundamentals and applications of electroglottographic measures for clinical voice assessment. 

December 2021.

VoiceLab staff is finishing the setup of vocal instrumentation for the voice recordings for the FONDECYT Project about glottal aerodynamic measures. The laboratory equipment is based on:

• Glottal Enterprise CV Mask, including Oral airflow and pressure sensors + accessories

• Neck skin acceleration sensors and electronics

• Calibrated and matched microphones for acoustic voice recordings

• Acoustic and Vibration Data Acquisition Modules from National Instruments (DAQ)

• High-Resolution Audio Interface AD/DA

• Audio monitoring (near-field & headphones)

• High-Performance Computing cluster

November, 2021.

After complying with all the bio-safety requirements, due to the COVID-19 situation, we have started the installation of equipment and furniture at VoiceLab.