The Sound Board

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

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

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.

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).

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.