Measured voice · The stillness

Anthony Hopkins

100s segment · male register · 16 benchmarked readings · measured 2026-07-26

Comparisons are based on Resonate's acoustic analysis of publicly available speeches. No endorsement or affiliation is implied.

The read

March 1991. The Silence of the Lambs has been in cinemas for a few weeks, and audiences are still recovering from a voice that threatened at a murmur. On the radio, the man behind it reads almost eerily composed: average pitch, melodic range, variability, chest resonance and pause length — all optimal, everything mid-band, nothing pushed. That is its own kind of signature. Lecter frightened people at conversational volume because Hopkins can make range and timing do the work loudness usually does — and the measurements show exactly that instrument: ten semitones of usable sweep, deployed without ever raising the voice.

Pitch contour · every voiced frame

1261802341s50s99sHz

Pitch & melody

Average pitch139Hz
in the zoneoptimal 100150 Hz
Pitch variability3.83st
in the zoneoptimal 36.5 st
Pitch range10.0st
in the zoneoptimal 712 st
Pitch dynamism (PDQ)0.24
in the zoneoptimal 0.150.38

Pacing & pauses

Pause ratio11.5%
below the zoneoptimal 1835 %
Average pause length0.55s
in the zoneoptimal 0.41 s
Syllable rate3.98syl/s
below the zoneoptimal 45.5 syl/s

Dynamics

Volume dynamics26.3dB
above the zoneoptimal 818 dB
Loudness variability8.17dB
above the zoneoptimal 3.58 dB

Voice quality

Voice clarity (HNR)11.7dB
below the zoneoptimal 1230 dB
Pitch steadiness (jitter)2.57%
above the zoneoptimal 02.5 %
Volume steadiness (shimmer)9.76%
above the zoneoptimal 09 %
Vocal fry (creak)2.3%
in the zoneoptimal 08 %

Spectral balance

Presence band (2-4 kHz)1.74%
below the zoneoptimal 620 %
Chest band (0-500 Hz)64.4%
in the zoneoptimal 3575 %
Spectral tilt (alpha ratio)-9.74dB
in the zoneoptimal -22-8 dB

Energy by band

Low (0–500 Hz)64.4%Mid (0.5–2 kHz)33.1%Presence (2–4 kHz)1.7%Brilliance (4 kHz+)0.7%

The presence band (2–4 kHz, red) is what carries a voice to the back of a room.

Steal this

sirens

What the measurements endorse is range without volume — pitch that travels real distance while the level never rises. On an “ng” sound, glide slowly from your lowest comfortable note to your highest and back down, smooth as a siren and just as quiet. Then bring that same span into an ordinary sentence at ordinary volume. Menace optional; the control is the point.

From the training library: Sirens

Same instrument · same scale

You’ve just read Hopkins’s voice. Now read your own.

Measure my voice

Free · about twenty seconds · no signup. The same six scores on the same scale — and the recording is deleted the moment it’s analysed.