The figure above shows what we call, in ASY, a formant track, which includes a "pseudo-spectrogram" at the top, a graph of input fundamental frequency in the middle, and input amplitude on the bottom. The pseudo-spectrogram shows the main bands of energy in the signal (known as the formants). The rapid changes in the formants at the beginning of the syllable are known as formant transitions and are critical for the perception of the onset /d/ consonant. The formant pattern then settles down into a steady-state vowel (/ah/). The amplitude is ramped on at the beginning of the syllable, and off at the end. Fundamental frequency falls near the end of the syllable, to produce a more natural sounding token.

In a spectrogram, the horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis represents frequency. In a real spectrogram, darkness is used to represent energy in the signal. In this pseudo-spectrogram, the spectral peaks are plotted at their appropriate frequency values; the length of the short vertical vectors corresponds to inverse bandwidth of the spectral peaks. The result is similar in kind to a simplified spectrogram and conveys a sense of how the "formants" change over time.