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From a speech recognition point of view, disabling the stereo microphone would be a necessity; intentional or not. The built-in Olympus stereo microphones are designed for music and conference recording (recording from several meters). Although stereo microphone input is well suited to this task, it is ill-suited for dictation. For speech recognition purposes, you need to record in Dictation Mode from within 2 to 4 fingers width of the microphone. However, the Olympus DS-30, 40, 50 and 71 additionally include a secondary monophonic microphone that is designed specifically for this purpose. All you have to do is remove the stereo microphone (simply pull it out) and the built-in monophonic condenser microphone takes over. However, we have only tested the professional line of Olympus recorders for use as an external USB microphone. We have never tested the consumer models so we do not currently know if the DS-50 and DS-71 models will double as a USB microphone for NaturallySpeaking but we suspect they will. Note that we rarely sell these models because even though they will work for speech recognition, they are simply not as accurate or designed specifically for transcription. Because we specialize in speech recognition, 99% of the digital recorders we sell utilize the new Olympus DS2 algorithms. The only consumer grade digital recorder we recommend for speech recognition is the Olympus DS-2400 digital recorder which doesn't include professional amenities like glitchless punchin, cue review or consumer amenities such as being able to record a conference or music in 16-bit audio but is ideally suited to NaturallySpeaking because it utilizes the DS2 algorithms.

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Can you tell me exactly what do you mean by "not ideally suited to the task', where are issues ?

#1 You are wasting the electronics of the digital recorder by leaving it on so that you can use it for speech recognition.

#2 In order to get reasonably good accuracy from a digital recorder, you have to dictate within a couple inches of the microphone which means holding the recorder in your hands while you dictate text. Can you imagine having to hold the microphone up to your lips for several hours a day and wearing out batteries? If we had to work this way, it would get old fast.

#3 When you attempt to hold the recorder/microphone up to your mouth, your hand will wander which will change the input volume level. Digital recorders are actually pretty good at compensating for this but not perfect. You should be able to achieve higher accuracy even with a proper inexpensive headset microphone (which can even be plugged into the digital recorder), like the KnowBrainer Hands-free. 2 advantages in using a dedicated headset are locking the microphone into one position (typically about an inch from the corner of your mouth) and freeing up one of your hands that would otherwise be occupied by holding your recorder.

We're not saying that you can't make your digital recorder perform double duty and you even have the additional advantage of being able to utilize a USB soundcard because digital recorders, by their very nature, are also USB soundcards. However, this is not what they're designed for and although the Olympus DS-30, 40, 50 and DS-71 digital recorders will probably work, they're not ideally suited for use with NaturallySpeaking.

Bottom Line: If you need a jack of all trades but master of none, digital recorder which doesn't need to play an important part in your workflow then you could probably get by with a consumer grade recorder. In other words if speech recognition doesn't play a major role in how you make your living and you have the time to correct twice as many errors than even the Olympus DS-30 should meet your needs.

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