8. Speech recognition method of claim 1 , wherein each speech recognition engine is configured with acoustic models for different types or levels of background noise.
1. A method for speaker independent and/or language independent speech recognition comprising the steps: operating a plurality of speech recognition engines in parallel, wherein: each speech recognition engine is configured with different acoustic models; and only one acoustic model for silence or noise is used in all speech recognition engines; for a speech input block comprising at least one speech input frame, determining the best scoring speech recognition hypothesis for each speech recognition engine and the best overall score; and pruning of speech recognition hypotheses of the plurality of speech recognition engines based on the best overall score.