This paper presents a new method for estimating formant frequencies, T
he formant model is based on a digital resonator. Each resonator repre
sents a segment of the short-time power spectrum, The complete spectru
m is modeled by a set of digital resonators connected in parallel, An
algorithm based on dynamic programming produces both the model paramet
ers and the segment boundaries that optimally match the spectrum. We u
sed this method in experimental tests that were carried out on the TI
digit string data base, The main results of the experimental tests are
: 1) the presented approach produces reliable estimates of formant fre
quencies across a wide range of sounds and speakers; and 2) the estima
ted formant frequencies were used in a number of variants for recognit
ion, The best set-up resulted in a string error rate of 4.2% on the ad
ult corpus of the TI digit string data base.