A method for generating a test-speaker-specific adaptive system for recognising sounds in speech spoken by a test speaker; the method employing: (i) training data comprising speech items spoken by the test speaker; and (ii) an input network component and a speaker adaptive output network, the input network component and speaker adaptive output network having been trained using training data from training speakers; the method comprising: (a) using the training data to train a test-speaker-specific adaptive model component of an adaptive model comprising the input network component, and the test-speaker-specific adaptive model component, and (b) providing the test-speaker-specific adaptive system comprising the input network component, the trained test-speaker-specific adaptive model component, and the speaker-adaptive output network.