formant_app: Interactive formant tracker

Description

Starts a shiny app for manually correcting formant measurements. For more tips, see pitch_app and http://cogsci.se/soundgen.html.

Usage

formant_app(...)

Value

A list of the last used settings ($settings) plus a data.frame with the formant measurements. Every time a new annotation is added, the app creates a backup csv file and creates or updates a global object called "my_formants", which contains all the annotations.

Arguments

...: presets like windowLength = 25. Full list: samplingRate_mult, nFormants, minformant, maxbw, dynamicRange_lpc, zp_lpc, spec_ylim, dynamicRange, specContrast, specBrightness, blur_freq, blur_time, reass_cex, zp, spec_maxPoints, osc_maxPoints, spectrum_smooth, spectrum_xlim, spectrum_len, silence, windowLength_lpc, step_lpc, windowLength, step, spectrum_xlim, spec_ylim, spec_colorTheme, osc, wn, wn_lpc, vtl_method, speedSound, coeffs, interceptZero, tube

Details

Suggested workflow: load one or several audio files (wav/mp3), preferably not longer than a minute or so. Select a region of interest in the spectrogram - for example, a sustained vowel with clear and relatively steady formants. Double-click within the selection to create a new annotation (you may add a text label if needed). If you are satisfied with the automatically calculated formant frequencies, proceed to the next region of interest. If not, there are 4 ways to adjust them: (1) type in the correct number in one of the formant boxes in the top right corner; (2) click a spectrogram within selection (pick the formant number to adjust by clicking the formant boxes); (3) single-click the spectrum to use the cursor's position, or (4) double-click the spectrum to use the nearest spectral peak. When done with a file, move on to the next one in the queue. Use the orange button to download the results. To continue work, upload the output file from the previous session together with the audio files (you can rename it, but keep the .csv extension). Use hotkeys (eg spacebar to play/stop) and avoid working with very large files.

Examples

Run this code

if (FALSE) {
f = formant_app()  # runs in default browser such as Firefox or Chrome

f1 = formant_app(specType = 'reassigned', windowLength = 5, step = 1)
# full list of parameters that can be passed to formant_app():
# paste0(c(names(input)[which(names(input) %in% rownames(def_form))],
# 'spectrum_xlim', 'spec_ylim', 'spec_colorTheme', 'osc', 'wn', 'wn_lpc',
# 'vtl_method', 'speedSound', 'coeffs', 'interceptZero', 'tube'), collapse = ', ')

# run the app with previously used settings
f2 = do.call(formant_app, f1$settings)

# save the complete output, including the settings used
saveRDS(f2, 'my_formant_analysis.rds')

# To change system default browser, run something like:
options('browser' = '/usr/bin/firefox')  # path to the executable on Linux
}