What is a "flat" voice?

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What exactly is a "flat" voice in Autistics that people often mention?

By "flat" people are usually referring to a voice that is monotonous, like mine.

Monotone, as Descartes said. Same as my voice, too.

Yup, monotone. I have to remind myself to put emphasis on other words so I don't sound like a robot.

I don't think my voice is that monotonous, but it evidently is.

I have been told that mine is, but I think those people didn't understand what it means. I do have inflection and emphasis, but I have a low, soothing voice. Monotonous is more like Peter Griffin's "moon accent".

I start out OK and then if I'm monologuing I gradually get flatter. Sometimes I suddenly "hear" myself and think "Dear God, they must want to shoot you right now."

would beg to differ about your speaking voice, by dint of your youtube postings. you do have some vocal range- granted, not a lot compared to your typical melifluous tv personality, but some range still. i have heard much more monotonous voices - take a listen to some sports figures, for example [not naming any names].

uniform, unvarying pitch, volume, hardness/timbre. like primitive text-to-speech algorithms.

I heard one guy on youtube who I thought was using microsoft sam. It was actually his voice I soon realised.

Same here, people often comment on my monotonous voice.

Me too. My voice is usually, well me accidentally mimicking certain english actors but when I explain things I turn away from people and have this robotic like voice.

If you sound like this, your voice is flat:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EoukRWQ-ec[/youtube]

i think there is plenty of inflection in my voice when i speak, but sometimes i hear it played back to me (phone message or something) and realize there isn't much of any. i sound much different than i do in my own head. i had to leave an outgoing voice mail message, professional sounding, for a job recently and made a point (or thought i had) of sounding "lively." but when i listened to it, the pattern of inflection as well as where i chose to pause after a string of words made so little sense i couldn't even understand what i was saying, and i had just recorded it.

If you know what flat singing sounds like, that should give you somewhat of an idea of what a flat voice is.