R & D Speech Technology have come up with the first speech recognition system for the BBC micro, and a very good effort it is indeed.

Housed in an attractive black box, the unit plugs into the micro via the 1MHz bus, and power is taken from the Beeb's own power supply. Any other device requiring power from the computer can then be plugged into the extension power socket at the back of the speech box.

The unit is supplied with a rather sparse booklet, a microphone, a demo disc or cassette, and software on ROM. There are no ROM fitting instructions, although R & D will fit the ROM for a small charge (if you send your machine to them).

The unit basically compares words or phrases spoken into the microphone with 'templates' already stored in memory. These are created with the *TRAIN command, up to a maximum of ten, and all ten must be recorded before recognition can start. To filter out ambient noise, you are allowed to average the data by recording any phrase more than once.

Recognition is achieved by way of a *LISTEN command which will return the number of the template nearest to the input, and the degree of recognition. These are provided in two zero page locations (&70 and &71). The degree of recognition is measured by a number in the range 0 to 255. This information is intended to be used by your own programs.

The unit is also capable of sound synthesis, needing just a lead to connect it to your hi-fi or amplifier. The only drawback with the unit as it stands (and this must be a severe disadvantage) is that any phrase needing to be pronounced, must first be sent to R & D on audio cassette, to be transferred by them into a suitable data format.

This is an expensive way of doing things, and surprising considering you have already purchased equipment to convert sound into data. The resultant data can then be loaded back into memory (or blown as a PHrase ROM), and speech produced using *TALK.

There is a small demonstration supplied with the unit, and the quality of this was very clear. The unit can hold around 200 words in 16K, which is reasonable considering the quality of speech achieved.

The manual supplied barely covers operation of the unit, but does have a few small example programs for you to type in sand try. The demonstration disc is nothing to get excited about either.

As present, this unit is little more than an expensive toy, even more so if the speech synthesis capability is to be used. The recognition and speech output are of excellent quality, but most home users, I suspect, would be more inclined to spend £170 on something a little more useful.

Product: Micro Voice
Supplier: R & D Speech, Waterside House, Ponsharden, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 8AR. Tel: (0326) 75290
Price: £171.35 inc. VAT