I have a Plantronics CS 55 microphone which I have used for the last five years for speech recognition with DNS Pro and telephone. I have never been too happy with the Plantronics, but it is the only option my office offered, and it is now going downhill by the day. I have read something about the Jabra Pro 9470 which indicates it may be a better choice. I tried looking at the comparison tables here at the knowbrainer site, but the hyperlinks don't work with my browser, probably a security issue.

 Can someone tell me if the 9470 is an excellent choice for speech and telephone, with good accuracy. I am in an office which is a relatively quiet environment. Currently, I have the Plantronics going through a GN Netcom SeleCT switch, and then to the USB Buddy 6G into the USB input of my laptop.  Would I need any different or additional hardware to interface the 9470 with my computer?

 Thanks much

[QUOTE]

Home: Asus Tablet PC EP 121, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB static Drive, Win 8, DNS 11 Pro English/Spanish, USB Buddy 7, theBoom V4 mic.

Office: Dell Latitude, Core i5-2520 CPU 2.5 GHz, 8GB RAM, MS Office 2007, Plantronics CS55, DNS 11.5 Pro English, USB Buddy 6G.[/QUOTE]

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Lunis,

I didn't know the Jabra Pro 9470 is a Bluetooth headset. everything I have read about Bluetooth headsets indicates they are not recommended for DNS 11.50 because of their limited microphone frequency range (I think 6 KHz versus DNS 22 KHz?.)  Your tests seem to indicate otherwise, can you please clarify?

As an alternative, do you recommend the Samson Airline Micro? It is half the price of the 9470, almost as good, and it is not Bluetooth. Does it need new accessories to work with the phone, or is my GNNetcome switch enough?

 My application is for office use, telephone and speech recognition, wireless, ear hook style, lightweight, and unobtrusive.  

Note that I don't get anywhere near the 96% accuracy shown on your tests with my five-year-old Plantronics CS 55, so I am really looking for a step up inaccuracy.  The best microphone I have ever had is theBoom - unfortunately it is wired.

 thank you,

[QUOTE]

Home: Asus Tablet PC EP 121, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB static Drive, Win 8, DNS 11 Pro English/Spanish, USB Buddy 7, theBoom V4 mic.

Office: Dell Latitude, Core i5-2520 CPU 2.5 GHz, 8GB RAM, MS Office 2007, Plantronics CS55, DNS 11.5 Pro English, USB Buddy 6G.[/QUOTE]

For speech and telephone as a combo i cant help you there.

For great accuracy as a wireless speech rec mic. The Samson 77 is great. But for my money not any better than the older plantronics that u have. Most probs with Dragon happen as the person is not speaking properly. I have a Parrot Talk Pro(wired) which is more accurate than any wireless.There is alot of marketing here....but you are pretty safe with the advice here as well. As someone said on this forum " if your acuracy is failing then ......take a big breath and do it again but speak distinctly.

I love KB and Lunis and his team are to be trusted. ......But if you get 99.00 accuracy then your xtra $100.00 for a better mic are misplaced.

R 

Rag & Steve,

Sorry guys, I have to take issue with you here. I've tested many microphones over the years with all versions of DNS going all the way back to DNS 1.0. With DNS 9.5 through DNS 11.5 I've thoroughly tested the Plantronics CS 55, the VXI TalkPro, the Sennheiser MD431 II and the Samson Airline 77 wireless microphone. Neither the Plantronics CS 55 nor the VXI TalkPro hold a candle to the Samson Airline 77 wireless microphone in terms of performance, accuracy, and noise canceling. With the sole exception of the Sennheiser MD431 II and microphones in the same class, no microphone performs as well as the Samson Airline 77 wireless microphone. Although the performance and accuracy are good with the VXI TalkPro, it doesn't hold a candle to the Samson Airline 77 wireless microphone in any way shape or form.

Nevertheless, I agree. If you're getting 99% accuracy or better with the microphone that you're using and you don't have any problems with background noise, the old saying applies, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." -- Flannery O'Connor

Yeah I could have been more precise, I wholeheartedly agree with the following from Rag however.

The following quote comes from another vendor. It seems to suggest that cabled microphones may be in fact more accurate. I don't have nor want the airline 77 but from my experience I have found my cabled microphones more accurate than my Jabra. In saying that I am never going to go back from being wireless.

Cheers
Steve

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… Not accounting for the pleonasm in your statement quoted above,…

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

 Rudiger,

You never cease to amaze me. Your English vocabulary is SSSSSSSOOOOOO much better than mine, even though your native language is German and mine English. Guess you went to better schools than me I do offer an excuse though--my 7th grade English teacher was so hot that I salivated rather learned anything for the whole year.

MDH

Mark,

Thank you so much for the kind words, but please trust me when I tell you that I've had plenty of chances for salivating also when I was much younger.

Rüdiger

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Rudiger,

Yes, please post these for everyone's edification and to "stir the pot" a little

MDH

P.S. Do I get half credit for using the word "edification", or does that not count?

Rüdiger, you know it's getting exceedingly difficult to measure microphone accuracy. In the end, it's still going to be somewhat subjective between the beta testers and we really noticed this a few weeks ago when we were finishing testing the new Olympus DS-7000 recorder to add to our KnowBrainer Digital Recorder Face-Off. Comparing the various recorders against each other was simple because all we had to do was duct tape them altogether (OK we used rubber bands) and record 500 words. We ran the tests by reading back dictation that we used on this forum from our previous answers and although we hadn't memorized the dictation, we were familiar enough with the dictation, not to mention the advantage of working with our somewhat specialized vocabulary, that we were unable to make NaturallySpeaking misrecognized anything we dictated even when using our standard SpeechWare 3-in-1 profile on the recordings, which is theoretically a no-no. The only time we managed to make an error was when we goofed and in that case, NaturallySpeaking made the same mistake on all the recordings. We quite literally recorded for almost 2 hours without a single error.

We never experienced stellar, although very acceptable, results with the Sennheiser PC 26 USB microphone but the point that we're trying to make is that as speech recognition gets better and perhaps, more importantly, we get better at dictating, it becomes harder to differentiate a top-of-the-line microphone from a medium grade microphone because it is simply so difficult to make a mistake when testing. Of course, in the real world, 99% of our dictation is freeform and because we're dictating in a choppy manner, there are far more misrecognitions. If you think of NaturallySpeaking as a car, it's easier to blame the car rather than the nut behind the steering wheel and we will probably continue blaming NaturallySpeaking for most of our problems as we have always done

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That's what it all boils down to in the end.

Rüdiger

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Alex

The Bluetooth aspect is not used for naturally speaking. From my understanding it is only used for pairing with your cellphone.

Further than that I am unable to provide answers.

Cheers
Steve

BTW Rag is right on the money with his comments.

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Alex,

Just to give you my two cents: I use two microphones - the Sennheiser ME-3 and the Jabra GN9350 bluetooth headset. The most important part of the dictation equation is your dictation style: how you speak, and how you use the Vocabulary Editor to deftly deploy your custom words, spellings, and phrasing. A good microphone and sound card will go a long way toward making a more pleasant speech recognition experience. Your speech will be transcribed quicker and with fewer errors than if you were using, for instance, the Andrea headset that comes in the box with Dragon.

Once you've made the upgrade from a subpar speech recognition microphone to a decent one sold by any reputable speech recognition vendor (like this one!), you're really just playing in the margins. So let's say, using a good dictation style and a merely adequate microphone, you can get 90% accuracy. Now let's say you take that merely adequate microphone and upgrade it to the KnowBrainer hands-free headset and a USB sound card, your cheapest option on the site: you'll probably see your accuracy jump over 95% percent.

Now let's say you upgrade your KnowBrainer headset to the Sennheiser ME-3 or theBoomO (depending on your preference for a monaural headset): you might see your accuracy jump to 96 or 98%. Or instead of these wired headsets, you go for the creme de la creme -- the Samson Wireless Airline 77. Now consistantly perfect accuracy is a reality... but, you know, they can't call it 100% accuracy because nothing short of a highly-skilled human transcriptionist is always correct all the time.

Are the marginal benefits in accuracy worth the money? Absolutely, if speech recognition is critical to your workflow. Personally, I'll take Dragon over a skilled human transcriptionist because Dragon is faster and it doesn't require a paycheck, health benefits, or the occassional words of encouragement. But speech recognition isn't an accuracy contest, it's about effectively leveraging the technology to meet your needs.

This is all to say that, yes, when I absolutely need the best dictation I can possibly put forth then I'll strap on the Sennheiser ME-3. My dictation style, and that microphone's quality, is such that I can dictate for paragraphs upon paragraphs without the need to stop and correct something. Even so, I spend most of my day using the Jabra Bluetooth headset.

Do I notice a drop in accuracy when using the Bluetooth headset to dictate? Certainly. The bluetooth headset doesn't pick up sounds like "s" and "f" as crisply as the wired microphone, and sometimes it drops the end of utterances, so it takes Dragon longer to transcribe my dictation and there are more errors. But I'll be darned if it's not super convenient to hit a button and answer the phone without having to pick up the reciever.

If you've got a solid dictation style and you don't mind a few additional errors caused by bad signal fidelity, don't be so quick to rule out bluetooth. I can recommend the 9350e. After Lunis helped me sort out an issue where the headset lost connection to the PC every time sound was played through it, I've been quite satisfied.

Eric Wright At work: DNS 12 Pro. At home: DNS 11.5 Pro,  KnowBrainer 2011, and Utter Command by RedStart Systems; Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac

Appetite for Dictation - My Blog

Thank you all for your input. In conclusion, it sounds like the Jabra pro 9470 is the best combination telephone/ PC speech recognition microphone.

Also, and probably more importantly, although I have been using DNS for about 10 years daily and I depend 100% on DNS and its accuracy to do my work, it sounds like I need some help with my dictation style! I have not been able to get accuracy in the high 90s even with a wired microphone like UmeVoice theBoom. Any suggestions?  - I have read all the usual guidelines, and speaking like a newscaster, etc. but clearly I am missing something.

Alex

[QUOTE]

Home: Asus Tablet PC EP 121, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB static Drive, Win 8, DNS 11 Pro English/Spanish, USB Buddy 7, theBoom V4 mic.

Office: Dell Latitude, Core i5-2520 CPU 2.5 GHz, 8GB RAM, MS Office 2007, Plantronics CS55, DNS 11.5 Pro English, USB Buddy 6G.[/QUOTE]

I agree with a lot of what Eric said. But now I would like to present another similar option.

I like using the boom O headset and the Audio Technica headset. Although, I haven't got my Audio Technica headset to work quite right because I just ordered the proper soundcard.

What I like about these handsets is that they provide you with great recognition accuracy and they can be comfortably worn with a small over the ear telephone headset. For example recently I tried to use the Boom "O" with the Plantronics CS 70. I had the Boom "O" on for dictation. And I was using this CS 70 for telephone use. I was able to comfortably wear the boom and the CS 70 at the same time.

This gives you the additional bonus of being able to use speech recognition and the telephone at the same time. If you simply choose to go with one of the Bluetooth headsets or wireless telephone computer headsets, you will have to switch back and forth between the phone and the computer.

However, the boom comes with a mute switch so you can actually use speech recognition to dictate notes while you are on the telephone. You simply hit the mute switch when you want Dragon to stop listening and flip it back when you want to start dictating.

This is just my humble opinion but I like the idea of being able to dictate while still using the telephone. If I am not mistaken I believe Eric has a similar set up.

It seems like they Audio Technica headset would also be good to use along with a small telephone headset.

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Eric,

You're probably not aware of it but truer words have seldom been spoken on this forum, on a scientific level. Indeed, being able to discern between the speech sounds (phonemes) "S" and "F" is just the mark between telephonic quality and anything higher than that, and this is compliant with the results retrieved both in the fields of linguistics (phonetic) research and audio engineering.

In addition to that, speech recognition at least as far as Dragon, from the start has been designed to work with anything just above telephonic quality as audio input, therefore, as long as your device is capable of discerning between those two phonemes , you're good to go, and you won't get anything better than that going "higher" (or more expensive) than that, because that's all that's required.

You can always rest assured with such statements as "device XY doesn't hold a candle to device XZ", of course, but for me personally it doesn't say anything.

Rüdiger

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

I would like to throw my two cents in. From following the posts on this forum I have come to the basic understanding that what Dragon basically needs to transcribe your voice accurately is a quality clear sound signal. This does not necessarily mean that you have to have an extremely expensive microphone.

On the other hand if you have an expensive microphone you may be able to take advantage of the increased noise canceling abilities so that you are not bothered as much by background noises around you. Also I am thinking that it might be somewhat psychological. If you have a "high-performance" microphone and you are familiar with Dragon then you might be expecting better results. If you are expecting better results you may pay a little bit more attention to your dictation style. If you do this you will probably dictate better, therefore your accuracy will rise.

Similarly, if you have an economic microphone option and Dragon is not understanding you as much as you would hope, you might blame your less than ideal accuracy on the microphone therefore, you may not pay as much attention to making sure that you dictate correctly because you feel it is the fault of the microphone.