1. An end-pointer that determines a beginning and an end of a speech segment comprising: a voice triggering module that identifies a portion of an audio stream comprising an audio speech segment; a rule module in communication with the voice triggering module, the rule module comprising a plurality of rules used by a processor to analyze a part of the audio stream to detect a beginning and an end of the audio speech segment; and a consonant detector that calculates a difference between a signal-to-noise ratio in a high frequency band and a signal-to-noise ratio in a low frequency band, where the consonant detector converts the difference between the signal-to-noise ratio in the high frequency band and the signal-to-noise ratio in the low frequency band into a probability value that predicts a likelihood of a high frequency consonant in the portion of the audio stream; where the beginning of the audio speech segment and the end of the audio speech segment represent boundaries between speech and non-speech portions of the audio stream, and where the rule module identifies the beginning of the audio speech segment or the end of the audio speech segment based on an output of the consonant detector.
1. An end-pointer that determines a beginning and an end of a speech segment comprising: a voice triggering module that identifies a portion of an audio stream comprising an audio speech segment; a rule module in communication with the voice triggering module, the rule module comprising a plurality of rules used by a processor to analyze a part of the audio stream to detect a beginning and an end of the audio speech segment; and a consonant detector that calculates a difference between a signal-to-noise ratio in a high frequency band and a signal-to-noise ratio in a low frequency band, where the consonant detector converts the difference between the signal-to-noise ratio in the high frequency band and the signal-to-noise ratio in the low frequency band into a probability value that predicts a likelihood of a high frequency consonant in the portion of the audio stream; where the beginning of the audio speech segment and the end of the audio speech segment represent boundaries between speech and non-speech portions of the audio stream, and where the rule module identifies the beginning of the audio speech segment or the end of the audio speech segment based on an output of the consonant detector. 8. The end-pointer of claim 1 , where the rule module identifies the beginning of the audio speech segment or the end of the audio speech segment based on the probability value that predicts the likelihood of the high frequency consonant in the portion of the audio stream.