ABSTRACT
This chapter represents an assessment of our cooperative work in the Voice Identification Unit of the Criminal Identification Division of the Israel Police. The particular problem of voice identification is the greater number of necessary and sufficient criteria needed in order to reach a reasonable and reliable decision. Spectrograms are much more complex and indirect graphical representations of both physical and acoustical properties which are relatively unstable compared with the more direct and limited fingerprints on an objective basis. While fingerprints represent a direct 1:1 representation of unchanging physiological features which reoccur, voice spectrograms represent an indirect graph of the entire vocal tract and the auditory perceptual processes. On the practical level, the dichotomy existing between the abstract asounds or targets that only exist in our minds and the actual sounds we produce is most relevant for our work in voice analysis.
