Acoustic phonetics involves the study of speech production and perception in regard to higher grammatical levels, especially phonology. The acoustic model of speech production computes the resonances of the vocal tract during different articulatory configurations. Formant frequencies, fundamental frequency, amplitude spectra and duration are used to describe language varieties phonetically. The results are interpreted within a phonological framework. The focus lies on insufficiently described languages and language varieties. Speaker specific variants play an important role in speaker recognition. The comparison of the performance of automatic speaker recognition systems with the results of phonetic-phonological analysis methods is currently under investigation in forensic audio. Projects