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This study evaluated a simulation model for sound radiation from the vocal tract wall in the context of articulatory speech synthesis. In this model, the vocal tract is represented in terms of incremental contiguous tube sections, where the wall of each section reacts to the local sound pressure like a damped spring-mass systems. The surface-radiated sound from this model was compared with that of six real speakers by means of the voicebars of /b,d,g/ in different vowel contexts. Based on this, the wall parameters of the real speakers were estimated by fitting the simulated to the real voicebars. The parameter optimization allowed a close reproduction of the natural voicebar spectra with root-mean-square errors between 2.26 dB and 3.82 dB in the frequency range from 0-800 Hz. Hence, despite its simplicity, the modeling method is very well suited for articulatory speech synthesis.