I had been using a headset for speech recognition software and to make telephone calls via Skype. This worked pretty well, except that since I was wearing a wired headset, I was tethered to my computer. I did not have an easy way to make a short trip to say hello to someone in another room, etc. another problem that I had: if I visited a website which any audio, the microphone in my headset would take up the audio and Dragon naturally speaking would try to interpret all this as text or commands. Often this would lock up my computer.
After a bit of research, I decided to try a directional microphone. The idea was that I might be able to get a microphone which would focus on my voice, but would ignore other sound sources such as the television, other conversations, or my computer speakers. According to my research, the most highly directional microphone is a "shotgun ". I decided to try an ATR6550 shotgun microphone from audio-technica. This microphone sells for about 70 dollars, and you need to buy a microphone stand. So far I have been extremely happy with the microphone. Dragon runs much more quickly and accurately with this microphone (rather than creating a new profile, tell Dragon that you would like to set up a new source, and retrain Dragon...). I am still testing this of course... but I am able to play YouTube videos without the need to put Dragon to sleep, and I am very much enjoying the freedom I have two move about, no longer tethered to my computer. Good luck, and take care, Dave Krehbiel -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 10:36 PM To: quad-list Subject: [QUAD-L] Microphone for speech recognition software? Hi everyone, I have a friend who is using a Mac Computer and he is having trouble finding a good microphone to work with the speech recognition software. His voice does tend to change some while he's talking so the cheaper microphones don't work very good. He can't use a regular headset but something like a Bluetooth for a cell phone might work or something on the desk. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Todd Canaday
