PRAAT is a very flexible tool for speech analysis. It offers a wide range of standard and non-standard procedures including spectrographic analysis, articulatory synthesis, and neural networks. There is simply no better package for linguists to use in analyzing speech.
Features
- Speech analysis
- Speech synthesis
- Speech manipulation
- Listening experiments
- Labeling and segmentation
- Learning algorithms
- Statistics with principal compenent and discriminant analysis
- Produce quality graphics with integrated Mathematical and phonetics symbols
- Programmable with an easy scripting language
- Portable
- Configurable
For best results with phonetic characters in the TextGrid and Picture windows, you should also consider installing the Charis SIL and/or the Doulos SIL fonts.
Much of the "official" documentation is not designed to help linguists (who may not have a strong phonetics background) get the measurements and make the changes that they need for research. Thus, be sure to also look at the regularly-updated guidebook, Using Praat for Linguistic Research by Will Styler.