Patent ID: 7292974

Claim:
A method for recognizing speech, comprising: receiving an input speech signal, preprocessing said input speech signal in order to thereby generate a preprocessed speech signal, performing speech recognition with respect to said preprocessed speech signal in order to generate a recognition result, and outputting said recognition result, wherein in said preprocessing, a step of performing a variance normalization is applicable to the received speech signal, said preprocessing includes: performing a statistical analysis of said speech signal, thereby generating and providing statistical evaluation data, generating a normalization degree data from said statistical evaluation data, and performing said variance normalization on said speech signal in accordance with said normalization degree data—in particular with a normalization strength corresponding to said normalization degree data, with normalization strength corresponding to said normalization degree data with normalization degree data having a value or values being 0 with respect to a given threshold value indicating that no variance normalization has to be performed, wherein in each case, a normalization degree value (Dj) being 0 indicates to skip any variance normalization for the respective assigned frequency interval (fj, Δfj).