My friend and I were talking about power requirements in loudspeaker design and the fact that almost all of the power is required to drive the woofers and move lots of air.
Then he asked “do basses exert more energy talking or singing than sopranos?”
Or put another way, does a lower frequency voice need more power (energy) to achieve the same volume as a high voice?
Actually, higher frequency sounds require MORE energy than lower ones at the same volume (amplitude) - so sopranos technically use more energy than basses when singing at the same perceived loudness, but our vocal anatomy is optimzed for different frequency ranges so the practical energy expenditure depends more on individual vocal efficiency than pitch alone.