There are separate versions of each analysis object: one for real time, and one for NRT reading straight out of tables. You'll see separate help files for [barkSpec~] and [barkSpec], for instance. So an [until] loop scanning your pre-recorded audio will be the fastest way for you to work on this. That's what's used in the 06/order.pd example. Just look in the [pd analysis] sub patch and you can change the feature from barkSpec to whatever you like (or whatever combination of features, weighted however).
I'd recommend putting your audio into the timbre-space patch and plotting by different features there. That way, you can see how the vowels/consonants fall on different axes when using certain features. That'll give you some intuition on picking the best feature or combo of features.
Last - ordering by timbre is always going to be fuzzy unless you can find a one-dimensional feature that reflects the timbre aspect you're after. Ordering by multi-dimensional features, you might make a big jump along one dimension for one step in your ordering, and then a big jump along a different dimension for the next step. You never know how much one particular feature is contributing the choice of the next step in the ordering. In terms of keeping it relatively intuitive to work with, fewer dimensions is better. For speech, I'd recommend trying [specBrightness] only, with a boundary frequency of about 2.5kHz. That'll separate the high-frequency consonants from the more formanty low-mid vowels. You should get a decent continuum with just that one feature.