Best microphone for Dragon 9 - Event Date: 22 Jun 2007 - 22 Jun 2007

aaron wrote: What is the best microphone (best accuracy) for Dragon 9 Preferred?

Four of our microphones are considered the absolute best for the most important factors for speech recognition accuracy. These are microphones that will consistently get approximately 1% better accuracy than our next level of microphones.

These are expensive, but are geared to professionals who cannot afford the time it takes to make more corrections than is necessary. These microphones, especially when used with the USB sound pods (an external sound card that does not pick up electronic noise from within the computer enclosure), provide the clearest input necessary in the frequency range of the human voice. Although they are not a substitute for sloppy dictation techniques, they are more forgiving when you slightly slur words together as we all do.

The justification for the extra cost is based on two factors:
1. Is your dictation professional, meaning words you must live by legally or professionally as for a physician, lawyer, professional writer, etc.
2. Do you dictate thousands of words a day? If you dictate 5000 words a day one of these microphones can save you 50-100 corrections. As a correction can take 20 seconds, this can save you 20-30 minutes a day which will make your return on investment a very short period of time. Although we do not bill by the hour ourselves, we use these microphones because we like to think we get home earlier every day.

Make sure to look at the short movies on each of the following pages to see how the microphone is worn or used. Also look at our Combo $avers to see complete packages that include everything you need. The 4 microphones to take a look at are:
1. Sennheiser MD431II handheld/desktop microphone. We prefer to use it on our Balanced Spring Microphone Arm so we can dictate hands-free and push the microphone easily out of the way when finished dictating.
2. Sennheiser ME3 Headset modified for Speech Recognition.
3. theBoom earhook over the ear microphone.
4. The Samson Airline 77 wireless microphone.

Having said all of the above, you can have the best equipment but if you neglect the human factor, you will not assure yourself of the best accuracy. The things to look at are:
1. Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy"
2. On the Links/Articles page listen to the three sound files on How to sound and How not to sound. Dragon may be continuous speech but it is not conversational speech.
3. When you receive your new microphone CLICK HERE for directions for creating a new user training profile.

Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.