Anyone familiar with Praat - doing phonetics by computer (or something similar)?

[Udo]

The subject says it all - http://www.praat.org - btw, praat is Dutch for talk.

[RobS]

never heard of it, looks like an interesting application, albeit very specialized...

[Mike Greene]

Yeah, it does look very interesting, although since this is an academic project, as opposed to a commercial project, you'd probably have to spend a significant amount of time just to see what it can and can't do.

[Udo]

I've known about Praat for a long time (I'm from NL originally) and "played" with a version a bit, about 20 years ago (may even have been a precursor).

Posted my question to get an idea of its current capabilities from someone with a practical perspective on using it (and/or similar products), before possibly getting into it (again).

[Suganthan]

Though I have no experience, just two days ago, I was looking at Praat after finding it in Harm Visser's website - http://www.hvsynthdesign.com/reaktor.php

It is clearly an analysis and synthesis program for phonectics. I took a look at one of the manuals(http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/manualsByOthers.html) and it seemed to me its more detailed and manipulative.

Harm Visser says - "The resonance and amplitude data can be obtained from the free analysis program PRAAT". It seems like Praat helped him to model those instruments's characteristics.