Posted by warren brown on December 16, 1998 at 21:26:19:
In Reply to: Microphones posted by Laurie on November 30, 1998 at 10:05:53:
: I am going to buy my husband naturally speaking preferred 3.0 for Christmas. Can anyone tell me which microphone I should buy. If it matters, we have a dell xps 450.
: Thanks,
: Laurie
Three things Laurie
One make sure you have plenty of memory
all voice recognition systems are memory hoggs especially with MS Word
128 megs is low average for system preformance- you want as little hard disk access as possible
Two There are some really fancy microphones out there with all sorts of bells and whistles. everything from noise canceling to play back buttons.
My current favorite is the philips speech mike- you can order it at the philips web site for around $85. they have a fancy model, but the additional price may not be worth it to you. the advantage for most people is that they hate wearing boom microphones, but don't mind holding a hand held mic. a firm cavet- any microphone you use is strongly affected by distance and location. talking directly in mike often causes breath and wind disruption -you are not trying to sound like breathy rock and roll singer- if you use boom microphone placement is super critical and same placement everytime you speak is critical. If you have no accent, speak clearly and distinctly all the time, then probably the mic that came with package is acceptable.
Take a look at speech mike anyway- you may get tired of boom mike on head and have a birthday present idea
Three your sound card should be one that is on pci bus i am assuming with a 450 pII it is and you need to look at impedence setting for mike on card versus one that you have some mikes require additional boost to sound card
You seem to have all right ingredients for a good VR system, but like anything else one component that doesn't match the rest can cause loads of problems
Naturally Speaking runs through a test of mike and will tell you if it meets minumum preformance- if it doesn't look first at mike then at sound card
also operating system has a lot to do with it- NT is a very very big memory hog of VR
Then just make sure you talk the same way all the time and have microphone adjusted same way all time readjusting mike everytime before you start new session and keep noise levels the same as when enrollment was done
Good Luck and Merry Christmas
Warren