
                   TVSA3: Voice Stress Analysis Freeware.

This text is complete with links to referenced documents and web sites on
the internet. Because it is intended for dissemination off of the internet
as well as on, the convention of surrounding links with [ square brackets ]
to denote them is used, with web addresses listed at the end. For
convienience, both text and internet style "htm" copies of this document
are included in TVSA3.zip. Load the htm into your browser for best viewing.

     1. About Voice Stress Analysis
     2. The Final Revolution
     3. Download TVSA3.zip
     4. TVSA3 Operating Instructions.
     5. About The Bug in Version One.
     6. Version Differences.

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                        About Voice Stress Analysis

Voice Stress Analysis is a type of lie detector which measures stress in a
person's voice. That makes it recordable, and means it can be used on tape
recordings older than VSA technology itself is.

The use of Voice Stress Analysis (VSA) as a lie detector became popular in
the
late 1970s and 80s. Today, American employees are protected from VSA in the
[ Employee Polygraph Protection Act ], and police recruits must submit to
VSA verification of statements made on the employment application according
to the [ California Highway Patrol ] and [ Palm Beach Police Department ]
web sites.

On the web site of the [ Missouri State Fire Marshal ] this quote is found:

     Several Division investigators are also trained in the operation of
     Computerized Voice Stress Analysis equipment. This equipment has
     proven to be invaluable during follow-up investigations.

These official web sites, and many more not listed here, argue that
important people in law enforcement believe VSA works well. On the other
side of the argument is the [ Department of Defense's Official 1996
Position Statement on VSA ], which states that it doesn't work at all,
according to their studies. Hmmm...

The California Penal Code 637.3 includes this:

     (a) No person or entity in this State shall use any system which
     examines or records in any manner voice prints or voice stress
     patterns of another person to determine the truth or falsity of
     statements made by such person without his or her express written
     consent given in advance of the examination or recordation.

There two other smaller sections, one giving police the right to do this
without anyones permission, and the other is the fine of $1,000 or actual
damages.

This law makes it illegal for anyone in California, except for law
enforcement officials and foriegn diplomats (immunity), to use VSA devices
on radio or TV programs. Try getting President Clinton's written consent!

                           Really! Try to get it!

Phone his telephone staff and ask for a blanket VSA waiver for all his past
and future "public" statements. Ask why you can't have one. Ask for one
from your local reps too.

In both principle and execution VSA is a simple technology. Researchers
found that frequencies in the human voice in the 8 to 12 Hz range are
sensitive to honesty. When a person is being honest the average sound in
that range is generally below 10 Hz, but is usually above 10 Hz in
dishonest situations.

All muscles in the body, including the vocal chords, vibrate in the 8 to 12
Hz range. This is considered a feedback loop, similar to a
thermostat/heater that will maintain an average temperature by raising the
temperature a little above the setting, switch off, and not come back on
until the temp is a little below it. Just as the temperature swings up and
down over time, so too do the muscles tighten and loosen as they seek to
maintain a constant tension. This is known to be caused by the production
and release of a chemical, as explained in the Scientific American Article
"Psychological Tremor" Vol. 224, No. 3, 1971. In moments of stress, like
when you tell a lie that you dare not get caught at, the body prepares for
fight or flight by increasing the readyness of its muscles to spring into
action. Their vibration increases from the relaxed 8 to 9 Hz, to the
stressful 11 to 12 Hz range.

Such vibrations are a measure of stress, levels of which change from moment
to moment. Everybody knows that stress, also known as anxiety or being
up-tight, can be brought on by a simple thought or memory; of a loved one's
passing on, for example, or suddenly remembering some dangerous obsticle in
the future. Some people have high average stress levels, and some have low,
and averages changes from day to day along with mood. What all people have
in common is that their stress levels are constantly changing within their
current range, changes which indicate the "percieved jeopardy" or "danger"
of statements being made. A lie is often dangerous, humiliating, or
injurous to get caught at, so lies tend to stand out on stress measurments.

TVSA3 is a simple program which takes digital audio files as input, and
outputs new ones with a changing tone in the backgrounds indicating the
changing stress levels. Higher tones mean higher stress. It has one
control: a threshold setting which determines how high the voice stress
frequency must be to trigger the background tone. The threshold setting is
treated as a percentage of the stress range found in a given recording. If
set to 90%, for example, the device will only make sounds when the stress
level is in the top 10% of the recording overall. This automaticly
calibrates the device to a person's present stress range.

The software treats all people and recordings as equal, because of its
auto-calibration feature. This creates a problem when two people are
talking together. The person with the highest average stress level might
appear to be making a lot of lies, while the low stress person is the only
one really lying. Such recordings will need to be edited into seperate
recordings for each person, and then recombined after VSA processing. I'm
planning a utility for this, because it is in interviews that most
revelations will come about.

Knowing that a freeware VSA lie detector is being used by large numbers of
voters will increase the average stress levels of politicians and officials
who routinely lie through their teeth, but the tell-tale fluctuations will
still be there. Likewise, even though a sociopath might have a low and
narrow stress range (I'm guessing; It might not be narrow), the
fluctuations themselves will indicate fear, and will read as clearly as
anyone elses.

Potentially, knowing that a freeware VSA lie detector is being used by
large numbers of voters will stop the bad guys from wanting the limelight,
and encourage the good ones to come forward to fill the void. It may be the
total, non-violent, libertarian revolution that much of the world is hoping
for. It depends on how many people agree with it and spread the word that
an alternative exists to perpetual tyranny.

Programmers interested in developing more complex VSA applications will
find complete [ source code ] included in the zip file.

TVSA3 is based on the VSA device published in the April 1980 issue of
Popular Electronics. The circuit was provided by a company in the business
of selling them complete, and also selling parts kits to the PE readers.
The parts list runs about $20 today.

If the "Vocal Truth Analyser" works, then TVSA3 works better. It has, in
effect, a higher order filter that reduces frequency leakage from outside
the 8 to 12 Hz range. In the PE circuit, a high resolution signal
proportional the the average target frequency is developed, and then is
spoiled with an inadequate three flickering lights for output: True,
Neutral, and False. It also has no threshold adjustment for sensitivity.

The TVSA3 system comes with a simple method that anyone can use to prove
that the software does what is advertised.

The Popular Electronics and Scientific American articles both confirm the 8
to 12 Hz target range, and can be found at the library.

Because of the jeopardy requirement, lie detectors can only be tested in
two possible ways: By threat of physical discomfort for failing the test,
electric shocks for example, or by offering a significant cash jackpot for
fooling the detector. I don't have a willing subject (like a prison inmate)
for the first option, or cash resources for the second. I'm told there is a
third way, but I haven't researched it yet.

I did find more circumstantial evidence though. Compare the stress levels
in Nixon's famous "I'm not a crook" speech to your own stress levels.
You'll see a dramatic difference. Several recordings of different lengths
exist on the web and can be found by searching for "I'm not a crook" and
".wav" in AltaVista. You'd better get his permission first though...

Another interesting resource turned up in my surfing. [ This detective
claims ] that the best selling VSA software [ (according to the DoD) ]
cannot be purchased by private citizens, but only by "Law Enforcement." A
few weeks ago I had the web address of that company but don't recall seeing
such a prohibition. Shortly after that I lost my bookmarks and email
archive in a catastrophic computer crash. Now I can't find the site again.
It's the company which produces the software that the DoD tested: CVSA. I'd
like to post that link here because it has links to many police force web
sites that list C-omputerized-VSA as equipment. If you run into it let me
know.

This [ commercial VSA website ] has a lengthly reading list about VSA and
lie detection, including this intreguing title:

     Detecting Deception: The Promise and the Reality of Voice Stress
     Analysis.
     Frank Horvath, PhD. Journal of Forensic Sciences,
     JFSCA, Vol 27, No. 2, 1982. pp. 340-351.

It's only at our largest university and hospital, and I haven't been out to
see it yet.

Obviously, VSA can be a valuable tool to aid in forming "opinions" about
public speakers and the things they say. When do they feel stress? Used
properly, it has the potential to clean-up politics overnight. Contrary to
the cynical modern views of many, there are still a few honest politicians
to choose from, -it's just hard to know which ones they are. Organizations
which exist to oppose government and institutional corruption can use it to
root out agent provocateurs, stool pidgins, and dishonest "leaders." For
these purposes, and as a general attack on serious crime, I created TVSA3
as freeware, and encourage software developers to create more powerful
shareware versions.

TVSA3 does the basic job well, and may be improved more by this author if
any more bugs show up. I don't want to spend my time as a programmer,
though. Since I don't want to spend a thousand or more hours putting the
desirable bells and wistles into it, I'd rather leave the free version
crude, and thereby allow dedicated programmers to compete for a more viable
market. It can be speeded up several or many times over because I designed
a solid amount of overkill into the number crunching, and because no
machine language optimization was included. A shareware version is made all
the more attractive to software developers by offering this program in its
most basic form: It's a simple DOS program.

If you have a web site in favor of promoting a political solution based on
verifiable honesty, please offer a copy of TVSA3 for download there. If you
do, you should visit [ my web site ] to get linked on a prestegious list of
honesty promoting web sites. You can use this page if you want. Anybody
interested in creating web literature on the uses of VSA can make their
documents easily locatable to seekers by using the term "TVSA" or
"TruthVSA" in them, and indexing them in AltaVista.

Sadly, I have strong reasons to believe that most of the organizations in
the world that claim to be helping us find the truth, are not at all what
they seem to be. Most will firmly refuse to get on the bandwagon until they
see they have no choice. Therefor, do not believe that the software is
worthless if told so by "wiser" heads. Check it out yourself.

The public had this same chance in the 1970s, when VSA made front page
news. That chance was taken away by establishment science a few days later
when they proved that VSA was just a hoax, again on the front page. This
time they can't take away the chance, because VSA has since proved itself
beyond doubt. It's now up to the people to choose, and to do so by helping
other people become aware, and especially by making the program available
on their web sites.

In historical parrallel, Cold Fusion recieved the same treatment. In
historical parrallel, Cold Fusion is now commercially available, and it
puts out not just tiny amounts of energy, but huge amounts. If you check
out these two links, you will find that it's very true, patented,
distributed, and researched at universities. This link will take you
to the [ Clean Energy Tecnologies Inc. ] web site, and [ this one ]
will take you to over 30 CETI resources including reviews, diagrams,
micrographs and pictures. Other hard-science energy stuff too.

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                         VSA: The Final Revolution

A "final" revolution can be defined as one which establishes a commonly
acceptable government, and unbreakable safeguards to keep it that way. The
American Constitution was an attempt at a final revolution, but those
safeguards are now being broken with ever increasing frequency. Tyranny is
entrenched and on the rise.

Today, governments that are commonly acceptable are rare. Instead of acting
in the public's interest, they routinely act in their own interest. As time
goes on, we see our governments sinking ever deeper into buracracy and
corruption, and feel helpless to correct the trend.

Voice Stress Analysis is the core of THE Final Revolution. The priciple is
simple, and the method is simpler.

If the first place, we must recognize that use of lie detector devices is
illegal without permission from the persons to be tested. Those laws are
good ones, because they provide serious punishment for abuse of such
devices. Such abuse could be to publicly humiliate a love-struck and shy
teenager, for example, and could result in tragic suicides in some cases.

Forget about illegal use of lie detection, and focus on what's legal and
justifiable. It's legal to use them with permission, and we can ask for
permission from public officials. Most will refuse, and provide us with
many reasons why. These reasons will inevitably boil down to "I don't think
politics should be a competition of stress levels." Others, knowing that
they can win a stress contest, because they are uncorrupted, will grant us
permission, and will advance their political careers by doing so.

You can see that we have just divided the rightous from the wolves with
this simple test. It is not even who has the most acceptable stress
patterns at that point, but simply who has, and who hasn't, the confidence
for competition in that game. The rightous will be proud to state their
loyalty to the people, knowing that many will be testing those statements,
but the corrupt will flinch at the mere suggestion that they follow suit.

Pride, honesty, and loyalty are the most powerful political platform items.
The first candidate who gives blanket permission to test his or her public
statements as part of an election platform will immediately shame the
opposition into following suit, or will probably win office if they refuse.
That's a simple political reality, and quite a gimmick to make people
remember the candidates who use it. They can offer the free VSA software on
their websites, or even give it away door to door on disks.

This is all legal. It's simply a matter of our own choice to prefer honest
leaders. The Final Revolution is already underway, but it needs help to
happen quickly. All the mainstream news, and most of the "alternative" news
services, will completely ignore the VSA revolution. They are almost all in
league with organized corruption. The revolution will grow only slowly
without the aid of supporters to help bypass the enemy owned mass media.

The Final Revolution is a do-it-yourself project: There is no revolutionary
organization. The only job that needs to be done is to distribute the
software and ideology widely on the internet, and word of mouth will then
spread it to the uncomputerized part of the public. The best way to aid the
revolution is to add a catchy tag line about it to your email signature
file, and then participate in online discussions about any subject that
strikes your interest. Hundreds or thousands of people will notice the
little ad.

I use this as my sig file:

  Download a free Voice Stress Analysis lie detector. The enemy hates it
  when you do that!  >>>>>>  http://mypage.direct.ca/p/pbdennis/  <<<<<<

Of high importance is that private webmasters become aware, so that some
fraction will help distribute the software. Email to those millions of
people would be very helpful. Also, a single email to an underdog political
candidate has the potential to inform a whole communty or district about
the revolution.

That's the whole revolution. In theory, the corrupt political leaders will
be dethroned as soon as the public sees a political division over the
subject of VSA waivers, and the newly elected leaders will be more loyal to
the people. What's more, it has the chance to happen quickly if even 1% of
the people recognize its importance enough to notify 100 more people, and
so on.

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                      [ Download TVSA3.ZIP now: 70K ]

              Created in August of 1997 by [ Paul B. Dennis. ]

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                        TVSA3 Operating Instructions

TVSA3 can be run from the DOS command line, from a batch file, or from a
windows icon. It takes three command lines parameters: input files, output
path, and a stress threshold value. It does not take any runtime input.
It's like pkzip: you load it and wait till it's done. Later you load the
output sound file into a sound player to "judge" the new recording.

Here's an example of a command line:

     TVSA3 c:\tvsa\input\*.wav c:\tvsa\output\ 75%

This will only trigger a tone when the stress reading is in the top 25% of
the recording's range. Valid values are from 1% to 100%.

If your computer is less than a 486 and has no FPU math chip, you can use
an optional exe file, tvsa2fpu.exe, that will operate a few times faster
than TVSA3.exe in that case:

     TVSA3fpu c:\tvsa\input\*.wav c:\tvsa\output\ 75%

You may also ommit the % sign and use an absolute value between 8 and 12 Hz
for the threshold. Absolute values are accepted in 1/10ths of a Hz, but the
decimal point is ommitted: 8.5 Hz would be entered as 85, for example.
Valid values therefor range from 80 to 120. This absolute style of input
would be used by tinkerers, perhaps, who would like to do absolute
comparisons between speakers.

     TVSA3 c:\tvsa\input\*.wav c:\tvsa\output\ 85

Besides a significant increase in accuracy and inclusion of a general VSA
testing system, the major change from version 1 and 2 to version 3 is that
the arbitrary scale of 1 to 1000 has been replaced with the direct Hz
scale.

A log file, tvsa-log.txt, is created and updated in the same directory as
the executable file. It contains a basic breakdown of the VSA data (now in
Hz) in files processed, and will give you a good idea about what absolute
values would be useful in tinkering. This info also appears on the screen
after each input file is processed.

You can find Nixon's famous quote on the web in several places to compare
to other recordings. Frankly, though, I can add and subtract frequencies
from audio files quite easily, and so can anybody else. In July of 1997,
nobody expected the public to suddenly aquire VSA technology, so there's no
chance that any files on the web were manipulated at that time. What for?
But this will not be certain in the future. Someday, altered sound files
may become common.

Is a highly stressed public statement a lie? You won't know for sure, but
with experience you will begin to trust that the device is telling you
something important, and to partially base your "opinions" on it. You may
notice it making the noise at unexpected places, and use that as a starting
point for research into the indicated subject. Instead of a lie detector,
the device is better thought of as an opinion generating aid and research
tool when used in this fashion. It can also be used as a standard lie
detector, but you'll have to read a book or two about that first: Such
tests are not as simple as they look.

To use TVSA3 you need a sound card to make input files, and to listen to
output files. Although a 16 bit card is preferred, 8 bit cards can be used
with less accuracy. Actually, I see no obvious difference between the
results of 8 bit and 16 bit, but haven't checked it out enough to be sure.
You'll want a fast computer with a math coprocessor (FPU) also, everything
from 486s up have them standard, but if you have more time than money for
an FPU upgrade you can run the TVSA2FPU.EXE version on any IBM computer.
Actually, TVSA3 will run on any IBM computer too. The difference is that,
although both programs are identical, TVSA3.EXE uses a very slow FPU
emulator if a real FPU isn't found, whereas TVSA2FPU.EXE uses regular
software math routines at all times, which are at least 3 times faster than
the emulator.

Input files must be mono 16 bit and sampled at 11025 Hz, the most standard
available rate. 8 bit files must first be converted to 16 bits before they
can be analysed. That can be accomplished with a windows shareware copy of
[ Cool Edit ], which can record as well, or with [ Convert2.zip ] which
contains a powerful DOS freeware audio translation program that will
convert almost any format to any other. There's another convert2.zip on the
web that is about archiving bbs files or something, so don't get the wrong
one.

Although TVSA3 is designed to expect signed, raw, intel mode audio files,
it will produce identical results with single block windows ".wav" files;
mono only. Few users even know how to record multiblock wav files so that
probably isn't a problem. All the wave files I tested worked, but there is
no guarantee that every one will if you didn't make it yourself. If results
come out strange, use the raw method.

The output files have the same name and type as the input files, but with
the extender ".vsa" instead. Depending on your sound player, you may need
to change the name to *.wav if wave files are used. If you use raw data
files, then you'll have to tell your sound software what kind of file it is
before you can load it: 16 bit, mono, 11025 Hz, signed, intel mode, pcm or
raw. If you use wav files you don't have that bother.

Using the software mentioned above, 16 bit output files can be reduced to 8
bit for storage or trading. The extra resolution will no longer be
important.

Don't alter sampling rates on files. If it's not 11025, or that number
multiplied by a whole factor (like 11025*2 = 22050), it probably won't work
even though it sounds ok.

Sound files are huge: a 16 bit 11025 Hz sound file grows at about 1.3
megabytes per minute. A large, fast hard drive is recommended. Input files
are not deleted, so be sure there is as much free space on the disk as the
files you process.

Telephones may or may not carry the VSA frequencies, depending on the
telephone equipment in your area, but radio and TV always does unless it's
filtered out at the source. Same goes for Public Address systems.

Newscasters usually believe all the news regardless of reality, so they are
not worthy candidates for analysis. Witnesses and opinion givers, on the
other hand, are prime targets.

This document is under slow improvement. It doesn't get much priority
because time is always pressing, but it's as complete as it needs to be, if
not very concise or prosaic. If you have any problems, questions, or
suggestions: pbdennis@direct.ca

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                       About The Bug in Version One

Users who attempted to use version one, TruthVSA.zip, may have been stumped
by the bug. It seems that it refused to run when no files existed in the
output directory. I found that out when I cleared the directory to test
version two. A couple of people reported the problem but others reported
running it ok too. I was surprised that there turned out to be a real
problem, since it worked 100% for myself and others. Many people would have
pointed it at an existing junk directory and have had no problems, but
others would have created a new empty directory, failed to run it a few
times, and concluded it was a hoax. Oops. As it turns out, there's no
simple way to test for a directory in Turbo Pascal. I had to copy a
subroutine from the swag files to fix it.

There was also a math bug that caused a crash on some files. It was a low
probability event and slipped by the version 1 test files.

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                            Version Differences

TruthVSA changed a bit as better ideas for input and accuracy were worked
out. Each version uses a different command line format making them
incompatable, and therefor requiring of new version numbers even though the
changes were slight.

Version 1 used an arbitrary scale of 1 to 1000 for threshold input and log
data output, and only allowed an absolute threshold setting. The scale was
not very linear but worked ok.

Version 2 used the same scale but added a more powerful percentage option
to the threshold setting. Some technical buffing improved its output a bit.

Version 3 uses a linear scale in Hz (cycles per second) for input and log
file output, rather than the earlier arbitrary one. It's a bit more
accurate now, as near perfect as it's likely to get, but about 15% slower
than the first two versions. Version 3 added testvsa.exe as technical proof
of TruthVSA's real and dependable operation.

Version 4: As far as I know, there won't be a version 4. Version 3 does
everything I want a VSA lie detector to do, and has passed a much more
rigourous series of tests than version 1. Hopefully, a professional
programmer will produce a windows VSA device with lots of colorful buttons
to push and graphs to look at. I'll link to it from the [ front page ] of
this web site if or when that happens.

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Employee Polygraph Protection Act.

     http://www.c2corp.com/0051g.htm"

California Highway Patrol web site.

     http://www.chp.ca.gov/recruiting/selection.html

Palm Beach Police Department.

     http://legal.firn.edu/muni/palmbch/employme.html

The Missouri State Fire Marshal's web site.

     http://www.dps.state.mo.us/dps/msfs/dfsinvst.htm

The DoD's Official 1996 Position Statement on VSA.

     http://www.polygraph.org:83/voice.htm

TVSA3 Source Code.

     http://mypage.direct.ca/p/pbdennis/truthvsasource.txt

This detective claims...

     http://users.ctinet.net/reside/

A commercial VSA web site's reading list about VSA and lie detection.

     http://www.diogenesgroup.com/

Download TVSA3.zip

     http://mypage.direct.ca/p/pbdennis/truthvsa.html

Cool Edit

     http://www2.nitco.com/shareware/audio/win3x.html

Convert2.zip

     This is on a military web site. I wonder how long they'll keep the
     file available... http://www.chips.navy.mil/oasys/graphics/files.html

Paul B. Dennis

     My Home Page : http://mypage.direct.ca/p/pbdennis/
     My email address : pbdennis@direct.ca

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