Measured voice · The wordsmith

Stephen Fry

150s 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

Ask Stephen Fry about his life and you get whole paragraphs, delivered fully formed. The instrument shows how the trick works — and it isn’t pausing: across two and a half minutes he stops just twenty-four times, never for longer than eight-tenths of a second. Barely a breath. The punctuation happens in pitch instead: variability in the top half of the optimal band and liveliness optimal, the melody rising and falling where other speakers would have to stop. That’s why the sentences feel unhurried while the sound almost never halts — the commas are all in the tune.

Pitch contour · every voiced frame

1302173041s75s149sHz

Pitch & melody

Average pitch126Hz
in the zoneoptimal 100–150 Hz
Pitch variability5.9st
in the zoneoptimal 3–6.5 st
Pitch range15.2st
above the zoneoptimal 7–12 st
Pitch dynamism (PDQ)0.37
in the zoneoptimal 0.15–0.38

Pacing & pauses

Pause ratio6.9%
below the zoneoptimal 18–35 %
Average pause length0.43s
in the zoneoptimal 0.4–1 s
Syllable rate3.58syl/s
below the zoneoptimal 4–5.5 syl/s

Dynamics

Volume dynamics25.7dB
above the zoneoptimal 8–18 dB
Loudness variability7.85dB
in the zoneoptimal 3.5–8 dB

Voice quality

Voice clarity (HNR)10.3dB
below the zoneoptimal 12–30 dB
Pitch steadiness (jitter)3.57%
above the zoneoptimal 0–2.5 %
Volume steadiness (shimmer)10.6%
above the zoneoptimal 0–9 %
Vocal fry (creak)2.6%
in the zoneoptimal 0–8 %

Spectral balance

Presence band (2-4 kHz)2.14%
below the zoneoptimal 6–20 %
Chest band (0-500 Hz)88.0%
above the zoneoptimal 35–75 %
Spectral tilt (alpha ratio)-11.9dB
in the zoneoptimal -22–-8 dB

Energy by band

Low (0–500 Hz)88.0%Mid (0.5–2 kHz)7.1%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 constant small movement — pitch that shifts a little on almost every word, so the listener is never left on a flat line. Read the same paragraph aloud twice: once deliberately flat, once letting the pitch genuinely lift and drop on the words that carry the meaning. The difference you hear between those two takes is the entire technique.

From the training library: Melody mapping

Same instrument · same scale

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

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