A method for distinguishing burst onsets of voiceless stop consonants in terms of place of articulation is described. Four speakers produced the voiceless stops in word‐initial position in six vowel contexts. A metric was devised to extract the characteristic burst‐friction components at burst onset. The burst‐friction components, derived from the metric as sensory formants, were then transformed into log frequency ratios and plotted as points in an auditory‐perceptual space (APS). In the APS, each place of articulation was seen to be associated with a distinct region, or target zone. The metric was then applied to a test set of words with voiceless stops preceding ten different vowel contexts as produced by eight new speakers. The present method of analyzing voiceless stops in English enabled us to distinguish place of articulation in these new stimuli with 70% accuracy.