1. In a speech recognition system, an apparatus for storing speech parameters, said apparatus comprising: transducer means responsive to acoustic energy for transforming said acoustic energy into analog electrical signals, wherein said acoustic energy comprises voiced speech, unvoiced speech and background noise; signal processing means for converting said analog signals to substantially equivalent forms of speech parameters and for sampling said speech parameters at a predetermined sampling rate; first storage means coupled to said signal processing means for temporarily storing a plurality of samples of said speech parameters from said signal processing means; a binary adder coupled to said signal processing means for computing the average signal level of samples of said speech parameters from said signal processing means during predetermined periods of time; a digital magnitude comparator coupled to said binary adder, said comparator generating a control signal when the computed average signal level exceeds a predetermined signal level, said predetermined signal level representative of said background noise; second storage means coupled to said first storage means for storing speech parameters transferred from said first storage means; and means responsive to said control signal for conveying information stored in said first storage means to said second storage means, wherein said conveyed information includes speech parameters stored in said first storage means prior to the generation of said control signal.