Basic Equipment

Abstract

By now you should be fairly comfortable with many of the fundamental relationships among (1) speech production and encoding, (2) acoustic transmission, and (3) speech perception and decoding. Thus, at this juncture, it appears appropriate to provide information about some of the more basic equipment which will permit you to carry out the various processes and procedures outlined in the chapters that follow (i.e., electronic surveillance, speech decoding, speaker identification, voice analysis, and so on). A knowledge of the relevant equipment is especially important, since without it we could carry out but very few of the tasks relevant to forensic phonetics. Moreover, the apparatus we use sometimes is in and of itself the source of the problems we face (speech distortion, malfunctions). While it must be conceded that only elementary concepts will be reviewed in this chapter (and only certain types of equipment discussed), the material which is presented should be extensive enough to permit you to develop a reasonable understanding of the processes/procedures found in the succeeding chapters. Please note that specialized equipment used in support of a specific process ordinarily is discussed in the appropriate chapter. Therein lies the secondary purpose of this section, as understanding of the nature and operation of basic equipment should, in turn, permit a better comprehension of the characteristics and uses of the more specialized apparatus.