What is the physical reason why people, particularly of similar body compositions, don’t all have similar vocal timbres?

Question

I’m not talking about accents or the reason we might have similar voices to our parents — because we learn how to speak from them. Do an X ray of two people’s throats or diaphrams or whatever….I assume they will look largely similar. Why might one have a high pitched voice; the other a deep resonant one? Etc.

In: Biology

Answer 1

I’m an anesthesiologist so I spend a LOT of time looking at people’s airways. Everyone’s voice box area is more or less the same shape, but pretty dramatically different in the sizes and details. There’s just endless variation in the physical structures that produce the sounds, so there’s a lot of variation in the sounds produced.