Voice
Research on voice work, including gender-affirming voice training, vocal projection, and performance preparation.
Voice research in VR is a newer area that is growing. The central question mirrors stuttering research: do people use their voice in virtual environments the way they would in real life? If so, VR could provide the kind of safe, controllable practice environments that are particularly valuable for voice work - where finding appropriate real-world situations to practice can be difficult or unsafe.
Published studies have explored VR for gender-affirming voice training, examining whether virtual speaking situations help individuals generalize vocal changes into everyday conversation. Other work has investigated how visual-spatial properties of virtual environments - room size, listener distance - influence vocal intensity and pitch, with implications for vocal projection work and performance preparation.
The evidence so far suggests that virtual environments do influence vocal behavior in measurable, predictable ways, and that VR can serve as a meaningful bridge between clinical voice work and real-world speaking confidence.
9 Studies
Pilot of Immersive VoiceSpace VR (N=17, vocally healthy plus people with dysphonia) - participants scaled loudness and pitch across graded virtual restaurant conditions
A within-subjects pilot of Immersive VoiceSpace (IVS), a custom VR voice-training platform developed by the sole author. Seventeen adults (10 vocally healthy speakers and 7 people with dysphonia) completed a menu-ordering task in a virtual restaurant under four conditions - a baseline plus three graded IVS levels manipulating avatar distance, voice-activation thresholds, and walkaway timeouts. Sound pressure level and mean speaking f0 increased significantly across IVS levels in both groups; pitch flexibility was more constrained in the dysphonia group. Feasibility ratings were good overall (4.0/5), with comfort and safety excellent (4.5/5) and no cybersickness reported.
VR-based meditation reduced anxiety before voice therapy in a small exploratory RCT, with lower attrition in the VR arm
Twenty-six dysphonia patients with elevated state anxiety were randomized to a brief 10-12 minute meditation either with immersive VR (TRIPP app on Quest 2) or audio-only, delivered before each of four voice therapy sessions; 21 were analyzed. Both groups significantly reduced state anxiety with no Group x Time interaction (p=.207) - the modalities were comparable on the primary outcome.
Brief VR voice therapy with clinician feedback elicited teaching-style prosody in pre-professional teachers - but also significantly increased reported vocal discomfort
A single-session within-subjects pilot with 10 pre-professional teachers (9 analyzed). Both a teaching-style mock lesson and a clinician-controlled VR teaching intervention elicited teaching-style prosody vs a conversation control. CTT-style clinician feedback inside VR produced short-term modulations in SPL, fo, and Dt%. Critically, the VR condition also significantly increased self-reported vocal discomfort vs control (+20.5 VAS, p=.023) - a caveat that should travel with any clinical citation.
Virtual room size and listener distance influence how people use their voice
Using the Rooms module of Therapy withVR, this study found that speaker-to-listener distance in virtual environments significantly influenced vocal intensity and mean fundamental frequency, with trained singers showing more systematic vocal adjustments across distance conditions than untrained speakers.
VR-based speaking practice increases willingness to communicate in gender-affirming voice training
The first RCT using Therapy withVR for gender-affirming voice training found that practicing in virtual speaking situations led to broader gains in willingness to communicate with strangers compared to traditional in-person role-play.
Voice SLPs and their patients evaluate a fully immersive VR prototype for the transfer phase of voice therapy
A user-centered qualitative evaluation of ProVoiceVR - a fully immersive head-mounted VR prototype - found that both voice speech-language pathologists and patients with voice disorders saw clear potential for using VR to help patients practice and consolidate voice techniques in realistic everyday speaking situations.
Engineering + user-reception study (Computers & Graphics 2025) of a speech-controlled VR system for voice and public-speaking training: extracts pitch / timbre / speech rate from 529 utterances by 15 students for real-time virtual character response
An engineering and user-reception study published in Computers & Graphics special section on XRIOS 2024. Polish-British collaboration (AGH Krakow, SWPS Warsaw, Polish Academy of Science, Kielce University of Technology, University of Cambridge). The system is built on a speech recordings corpus of 529 utterances during presentations by 15 students. Voice parameters extracted: pitch, timbre, speech rate. Six expert annotators evaluated stress levels per presentation. The multi-parameter analysis selects features for real-time animation of virtual characters responding dynamically to speech changes. The contribution is design and user-reception evaluation rather than clinical efficacy.
Within-subjects study in 31 vocally healthy adults: auditory, visual, and audiovisual room cues in immersive VR all measurably change self-perceived vocal loudness, effort, comfort, and acoustic output
Thirty-one vocally healthy men and women were tested under 18 sensory-input conditions in immersive virtual reality - two auditory rooms with different reverberation times, two visual rooms with different volumes, and audiovisual combinations - each with and without background noise. Speakers performed counting, sustained vowels, an all-voiced CAPE-V sentence, and a Rainbow Passage sentence. Self-perceived vocal loudness and effort INCREASED, and self-perceived vocal comfort DECREASED, as room volume, speaker-to-listener distance, audiovisual richness, and background noise increased. Sound pressure level (SPL) and spectral moments (mean, SD, skewness, kurtosis) showed concomitant changes. Visual and audiovisual input - not just auditory - measurably shaped voice production.
A VR classroom successfully brings out how teachers really use their voice when teaching
A THREE-condition experiment: teachers delivered lessons in a real classroom (in vivo), in a virtual classroom (in virtuo), and in a free speech control situation. Voice parameters (intensity, pitch, intonation) and temporal measures (pause duration) were compared across all three. The virtual classroom successfully elicited teaching-voice characteristics matching in-vivo teaching, providing validation that VR can substitute for real classrooms in voice research and support.
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