Trying to buy a Samson Airline 77 in the UK for use with Dragon but the cheapest I've found is £275!
Anyone found cheaper in the UK?
Gary

Gary, I did a quick search on Google, and I came across the Sampson Airline 77 for £242.60. However, looking at the various options, on this particular website, some appear to have different frequencies, and I'm not sure if that makes a difference to DNS or not, as I have never utilised this particular microphone. Nonetheless, I do recall reading postings on this Forum that it can be uncomfortable to wear for a long period of time; so the Sampson Airline Micro might be a better option for you.

 http://www.gak.co.uk/en/samson-airline-77-ah1-qv-e2/16361

http://www.knowbrainer.com/NewStore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=219&idcategory=56



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DNS 12.0 Professional, Windows 7, Intel Core i7 2630QM, 16GB of RAM. Second-Generation SpeechWare 6-in-1.

I haven't found a Samson airline 77 on a speech recognition website in the UK for less than £275!
I used to have one and found it OK to wear, and I carry on for 10 hours per day, so it wasn't a problem.

Gary

At the current exchange rate, £242 translates into $383 while £275 translates into $435. Our price on the Samson Airline 77 wireless microphone (w/KB PLUS PACK) is $300 and includes a 220 V option for the UK. We are now the only North American reseller that is permitted to sell the 220 V unit and we additionally include instructions, a number of presets/speech recognition tweaking and a 3.5 mm adapter for use with speech recognition. International priority FedEx shipping is about $40 which is considerably less than £275 and we throw in a complimentary KnowBrainer microphone bag valued at over $2. OK, maybe you should think of the bag as a collector’s item.

The Samson Airline 77 comes in 6 different channels but because we are speech recognition resellers, we found no reason to list individual channels as all 6 work equally well in NaturallySpeaking. The only reason you would need a specific channel is if someone, within 300 feet of you, is using a similar wireless microphone, such as the Shure, Sennheiser and Audio-Technica UHF system on the same channel.

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Bought a Samson airline 77 from you 3 or 4 years ago Linus, had about three years of use out of it no problems. When it died on me Samson UK said return it to them for repair but when they received it wouldn't touch it because it was from USA, so obviously reluctant to buy another one from the USA.

The fact of the matter is that we Europeans are considered second-class citizens (and apparently we put up with it) and therefore have to pay much higher prices than the US. There are numerous examples of this but one personal anecdote regards the Speechware 3-in-1. The manufacturer is Belgian (whether the mike is actually made there I don't know, but I very much doubt it's made in the US) and at its site gives a "we will match" price promise' This sounds very good until you look closer and see it applies to Europe only where prices are very much higher than the US. I wrote to the manufacturer in August of last year to query this and in the reply thanking me for my interest I was "cordially invited to purchase in the most competitive US market, when the new generation of TableMikes become available since we sell them by the thousands there...".

So I am therefore not going to buy the Speechware on principle, I appreciate this won't bother the manufacturer in the least, he already sells thousands in the US and will be laughing in my face all the way to the bank, still I prefer to purchase another maybe inferior model rather than paying through the nose in Europe or having to ship back from the US something that is available here already, so much for reducing the carbon footprint :-(

Graham

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                       Welcome to the World’s Most Popular Speech Recognition Forum

We also found it interesting that the SpeechWare 3-in-1 costs less in the US and we also pay customs charges. The 3-in-1 microphones are assembled in Taiwan as opposed to China, so that SpeechWare can include a two-year warranty, as opposed to a one-year, warranty but even if they are paying customs charges or import duties, so are we. Unfortunately, we don't have an answer for you on pricing although I seriously doubt that SpeechWare is making a dime on this round or the last round of microphones because of the associated development costs.

There are other good desktop microphones on the market, especially the Buddy Desktop DSP USB microphone, which may be available locally but nothing really quite compares to the technology or the versatility of the 3-in-1. We have been almost exclusively using a prototype of the new model for several weeks.

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Non-US countries are likely getting stuck paying higher prices because the customer has to cover the additional import duties/tariffs/customs charges for your local reseller. This is also probably why NaturallySpeaking typically costs more in Australia where the US dollar and Australian currency are nearly equal.

In the event that you do require service, we can handle the shipping back and forth but it would be more expensive because we would have to charge you shipping from Samson back to us and then to you. You are correct about that disadvantage and those 4-year-old units who can't even be repaired anymore because they use a different frequency which has been outlawed by the US FCC. Samson cannot even legally repair 1 of those old units. Sorry about that. However, if you do find a reasonably priced unit locally, feel free to contact us for information on tweaking it for DNS.

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Thanks for that Luniss

Luniss, I'd like to take up your kind offer of helping me set up a Samson Airline 77 that I have bought in the UK as I can't get the thing to work!
I've used an XLR cable from the receiver to one of your and your USB soundcards, the volume on the receiver is set to 12 o'clock and is powered on as is the headset with mute set to off.
In the Windows 7 audio setup there is a USB microphone showing one green bar but no response when I talk into the microphone.
In Dragon audio/check microphone/USB audio device it says to check the microphone as it is not receiving anything (I'm paraphrasing here) and fails at check microphone level!
Basically, the transmitter and receiver are not speaking to each other for what I hope is some very obvious reason.
Would really appreciate some help with this.
Gary

You may be using the wrong XLR Cable as they are not all wired the same way. If you cannot obtain 1 wired correctly, from a local speech recognition reseller, you could try adding a 3.5 mm adapter to the other cable that was included in the box. In the meantime, we have e-mailed you a PDF copy of our Airline 77 guide.

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Thanks for the information and advice, was doing everything correctly so I expect it's the XLR cable. Will probably try and get a 3.5 mm adapter from the Samson supplier or a different XLR cable.
Appreciate your help.
Gary

Well for some reason I never really get to this forum but I am quite surprised at some of the stuff I am reading.  Regarding the cost of a Samson Airline 77 in the UK.  My company is an actual Samson reseller and resell the microphone for £229 (exclusive of VAT), we only make something like 15% on the microphone so it simply would not be worth us selling it any cheaper.  If Lunis can sell them for $300 then you can see the disadvantage we are at, I can't buy them from the distributor at anything like that.

The fact that UK users have to go to the USA to buy them just is not right but there you go.  If I were in your boat I would do the same thing.

We also sell the SpeechWare 3-in-1 at the manufacturers guideline price, I see they are sold here for $279 which is not much above what it costs us to buy them straight from SpeechWare when you include FedEx from Belgium.  I guess we just can't buy these microphones in big enough quantities.

So the bottom line is I don't know why we bother selling these as we simply can't compete in terms of price, only in terms of backup.

So any UK users, instead of complaining on this forum in the USA maybe try writing to the distributors (for which I will be happy to supply details) and explain the situation to them.

Lindsay

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

I managed to buy a Samson airline 77 wireless mic in the UK from here:
http://www.gak.co.uk/en/samson-airline-77-ah1-qv-e2/16361

only £242.60 including VAT, very helpful over the phone and microphone works perfectly, so I would definitely recommend them to UK users.
Lindsey, the XLR cable you recommended on Amazon didn't work and I had to return it. I'm using an XLR cable I got from these suppliers above and it's working fine.

All for information purposes for anyone who's interested.

My apologies if the cable did not work, I was trying to save you costs by using Amazon, I guess I should know better.

You have no idea how frustrating it is when you spend considerable time contributing freely to forums like this in terms of things like providing voice automation scripts (which plenty of people are using) and helping people with faultfinding, only to find that speech recognition users are able to buy elsewhere from, in this case a music shop, at a price we just cannot compete with. Particularly when you are supposed to be running a speech recognition business. I obviously need to wake up :-)

Lindsay

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

Lindsey, I'm guessing they can only supply them so much cheaper because they are quite a large retailer, they seem to have a number of shops throughout the UK.

I am sure you are right Gary, so instead of whingeing about it maybe I need to use this thread as ammunition to get the microphones cheaper from Samson.  Either that or stick to programming and remained dumbfounded by market/website economics which Lunis is so adept at.

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

Just out of curiosity, is the Airline 77 not MAP price (price controlled) in the UK? US Amazon is temporarily selling the Airline 77 at $299 because they don't know any better but we have reported them to Samson and they will soon be raising the price back up to $300. Although price control is illegal in the US, MAP pricing (which means exactly the same thing) is perfectly legal. Go figure…

Also note that it isn't quite as simple as going to the local music store and purchasing an Airline 77 because those units don't include a 3.5 mm adapter or proper XLR cable, speech recognition instructions, tech support or presetting the squelch, volume and the hidden headset volume input levels. This is what Lindsay, as a value added reseller (VAR) includes, along with his free support. Unfortunately many music stores, eBay and Amazon resellers are often so desperate to make a sale that they sometimes charge below their own costs without realizing that Amazon is charging those vendors an additional 8% for the sale.

Additional note: Although some microphone manufacturers offer discount pricing when purchasing in quantity, Samson is not 1 of them so unless things are done differently in the UK, from a reseller point of view, it should not make any difference if you stock up on 1 or 50 Airline 77s. For whatever reasons, this music store was apparently more interested in unloading product than making a profit. In this economy, it's not that uncommon for resellers to be overstocked which makes it a buyers market.

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