Broadband Voice Spectrogram Display

In the broadband spectrogam, the frequencies are smoothed over so that instead of the individual harmonics of the voice you see the pattern of resonances or formants in the voice. This can be useful for showing the differences between vowels.

For instance, the following broadband spectrogram shows the formant resonances of a male baritone singer going through a series of Italian vowels on the same note - from the left they are /u/, /o/ (closed), /o/ (open), /a/, /e/ (open), /e/ (closed), and /i/. You can see how the first two formants (below the 2kHz horizontal line) gradually spread out as the mouth opens and the tongue moves forward through the sequence of vowels. Also note the singer's formant resonance consistently present at about 3kHz (just below the top line which indicates 4kHz).

The broadband spectrogram can be selected in the Options menu.