There is currently one RFAGUI application, rfaguiam.py, illustrating low frequency spectral analysis of the amplitude modulation of speech as a correlate of perceived speech rhythms. A companion application for Low Frequency Frequency Modulation of speech, rfaguiamfm.py, will be added later. The applications provide graphical user interfaces (GUI) for rhythm formant analysis (RFA). A rhythm formant is a higher magnitude frequency band in the low frequency spectrum (usually below 10Hz) which corresponds to a perceived speech rhythm.
The application rfaguiam.py takes a mono WAV audio file input, often several minutes in length, preferably with 16kHz or less sampling frequency for speed in procedding. Relevant processing parameters can be adjusted on-screen in upper and left-hand bars. The output is a four panel on-screen figure (also saved as PNG and PDF files):
- Waveform and AM envelope
- LF spectrogram (heatmap format)
- LF spectrogram (waterfall format)
- LF spectrum with entire recording as FFT window
The basic principles are described in detail in the following article: @article{gibbon_2023, title={The rhythms of rhythm}, volume={53}, DOI={10.1017/S0025100321000086}, number={1}, journal={Journal of the International Phonetic Association}, publisher={Cambridge University Press}, author={Gibbon, Dafydd}, year={2023}, pages={233–265}}
Note: in addition to the RFAGUI project, the main RFA implementation with a more complete CLI application suite is in the RFA project repository.