I don't know about the specifics of characterizing beam-pattern, etc. I am pretty sure, Kinect 1.0 can be more directional in spite of having fewer microphones

I don't know about the specifics of characterizing beam-pattern, etc. I am pretty sure, Kinect 1.0 can be more directional in spite of having fewer microphones because the microphones are cardioid, as opposed to the uni/omni-directional ones used in the Echo. Also, some parts of the design of the Kinect speech processing pipeline is public. You can read about in Ivan Tashev's (of MSR) book [1], IEEE Signal Processing Magazine article [2], and some presentation videos he has online [3]. Also, see his publication list, a lot of papers are relevant to the Kinect speech pipeline http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/ivantash/publications.aspx http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/ivantash/publicat... Also obligatory, why the downvotes? [1] http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=102203 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1022... [2] http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=201229 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=2012... [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=tashev+video+lectures&oq=tashev+video+lectures&aqs=chrome..69i57.4252j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8#q=tashev+video+lectures&safe=off&tbm=vid https://www.google.com/search?q=tashev+video+lectures&oq=tas...