Sound radiation of trained vocalizers

Current research at NYU has focused on the maximum crowd size that could hear a single unamplified voice, including the impact of vocal directivity. Most literature on the radiation of the spoken voice has focused on the context of conversation in workspaces and thus has not investigated oratorical speech at high levels. Trained actors and singers, however, employ more methods of projection than are used in conversational speech and can achieve higher loudness as well. The radiation patterns from these types of communication have not been quantifiably studied yet. This paper investigates the horizontal plane radiation patterns of different methods of projection in trained vocalizers using relative intensity levels at 60 cm from the front of the speaker. In general, the method of production is not found to have a strong effect on the horizontal plane directivity.