Measured voice · The commander

Judi Dench

150s segment · female 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

At eighty, asked to tell her life story, Judi Dench barely raises her voice — and the authority score comes back 9.8 out of 10, the strongest quality reading on her page. The instrument decomposes the command: a register genuinely low against the typical female band, held consistently across the whole answer; pitch variability, melodic range and volume dynamics all optimal — control, everywhere, of everything. Even the pauses behave: each one the textbook length, though she rarely needs them. Six decades of stagecraft, compressed into a radio answer: the back row always heard her whisper, and now there’s a number that says why.

Pitch contour · every voiced frame

1572473360s75s150sHz

Pitch & melody

Average pitch154Hz
below the zoneoptimal 180230 Hz
Pitch variability4.41st
in the zoneoptimal 36.5 st
Pitch range10.3st
in the zoneoptimal 712 st
Pitch dynamism (PDQ)0.3
in the zoneoptimal 0.150.38

Pacing & pauses

Pause ratio5.96%
below the zoneoptimal 1835 %
Average pause length0.45s
in the zoneoptimal 0.41 s
Syllable rate3.64syl/s
below the zoneoptimal 45.5 syl/s

Dynamics

Volume dynamics25.1dB
above the zoneoptimal 818 dB
Loudness variability7.69dB
in the zoneoptimal 3.58 dB

Voice quality

Voice clarity (HNR)11.9dB
below the zoneoptimal 1230 dB
Pitch steadiness (jitter)3.02%
above the zoneoptimal 02.5 %
Volume steadiness (shimmer)10.4%
above the zoneoptimal 09 %
Vocal fry (creak)8.1%
above the zoneoptimal 08 %

Spectral balance

Presence band (2-4 kHz)2.07%
below the zoneoptimal 620 %
Chest band (0-500 Hz)85.9%
above the zoneoptimal 3575 %
Spectral tilt (alpha ratio)-11.5dB
in the zoneoptimal -22-8 dB

Energy by band

Low (0–500 Hz)85.9%Mid (0.5–2 kHz)9.4%Presence (2–4 kHz)2.1%Brilliance (4 kHz+)2.7%

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

Steal this

melody mapping

What the measurements endorse is control — pitch and volume both moving deliberately, neither flat nor wild. Read a paragraph twice: flat first, then letting the pitch move only on the words that carry the meaning, leaving everything else level. Command isn’t range; it’s the evidence of choice. A voice that moves exactly when it means to is the one the room obeys.

From the training library: Melody mapping

Same instrument · same scale

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