James Earl Jones Has ‘It’

Vocal lion James Earl Jones has the best voice in America, according to results from a poll conducted by The Center for Voice Disorders at Wake Forest University. Jones is best known as the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars,” Mustafa in “The Lion King” and in Yellow Pages ads. Radio personalities Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh were both on the “worst” list. Fran Drescher of “The Nanny” ranked as worst overall.
Acoustical analysis of the best voices showed that Americans prefer melodious, relatively low-pitched voices with little high-frequency noise. The “worst” voices were high-pitched relative to the norm for the speaker’s gender. Those voices also demonstrated high-frequency noise, a “screechy” voice quality.
The average speaking pitch for the best male voices was 126 Hz . Normal pitch range for males is 110-130 Hz. Sean Connery’s pitch reached 158 Hz, and Mel Gibson’s 108 Hz. For the worst men, the average pitch was 242 Hz. Gilbert Godfried and Bobcat Goldthwait had the highest-pitched voices.
The average pitch for the best voices among females was 201 Hz, while the female norm is 200-230 Hz. Barbra Streisand’s was at 228Hz and Julia Roberts at 171 Hz. The average pitch among the worst of the females was 262 Hz. Roseanne Barr had a pitch of 377 Hz.
The on-line poll was conducted between March-August 2001. Its purpose was to understand how human voice affects listeners and bring attention to voice disorders. According to the center, approximately 3 percent of Americans have voice disorders.