Science recently confirmed something that Queen fans have known for years: Freddie Mercury was an amazing singer. The late singer’s inimitable voice was the subject of a study by a team of Austrian, Czech and Swedish researchers who set out to analyze Mercury’s voice from archived recordings in an attempt to find out exactly what made it so memorable. Their results were published in April in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology (via AlphaGalileo). Consequence of Sound reports: While they couldn’t confirm the long-held belief that Mercury’s range spanned four full octaves, they did discover some interesting tidbits about the expanse of his voice. For one, despite being known largely as a tenor, he was more likely a baritone. They based this assumption off analysis of six interviews that revealed a median speaking fundamental frequency of 117.3 Hz. That, coupled with anecdotal evidence that Mercury once turned down an opera duet because he was afraid fans wouldn’t recognize his baritone voice, led the conclusion that the singer was talented enough to jump out of his base range. It’s true that without a living test subject, the researchers’ conclusions are largely unconformable. To get closer to the truth, however, the team brought in professional rock singer Daniel Zangger-Borch to imitate Mercury’s voice. [...]