Paul Boersma and David Weenink
Praat
The software for free of Praat include four main features and highlights: Features and highlights. Praat is an excellent piece of software which assists phoneticians study, create, modify, and synthesize speech from scratch. It allows you to produce a speech filter from an old speech signal or from a pre-existing speech signal, but can also make a generic filter from a list of noises or from a single sound. This software is suitable for both spoken and non-spoken forms of media. You can use it for speech analysis, which is the process of identifying the pitch, rhythm, enunciation, timing, and intensity of a speaker's voice, or for formant analysis, which is the detection and recognition of formant patterns in speech. If you have a speech level application program at your workstation and you want to know what the most common combinations of formants are, you can check out the Praat application which is free. Formant detection and recognition of speech patterns are critical in any practice of speech analysis or for articulation and transcription, whether spoken or non-spoken. synthesis | articulatory synthesis | sound files | version 5.3.53} The software features an interface based on Java technology, and is written in C++. It is compatible with the Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms. In version 5.3.53, the user interface has been greatly simplified, and more options have been added such as the ability to adjust the articulation tone for different purposes (soft, medium, hard). The latest version of Praat has over 500 sounds to choose from, including speech sample files for various purposes, and a speech synthesis engine.