In this paper the upper performance limits of automatic syllable segmentation algorithms using single or multiple frequency band envelopes as their primary segmentation feature are explored. Each algorithm is tested against the TIMIT corpus of continuous read speech. The results show that candidate matching rates as high as 99% can be achieved by segmentation based on a simple envelope, but only at the expense of as many as 13 non-matching candidates per syllable. We conclude that a low total

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... ror rate requires an algorithm which can reject many candidates or which uses features other than those based on envelope alone to generate fewer, more accurate candidates.