In the book, "On Being a Dictator", Martin L Shoemaker says he uses a Sennheiser ME3-II headset for handsfree dictation. He plugs this into an Olympus WS-853 to get good quality audio for use with Dragon Professional (he also mentioned this forum!).

Sounds good, I thought. But I have been told, the Sennheiser headset requires phantom power. Yet, Olympus manual states it only supports plug-in power.

Confused! Not everything that I have said above can be correct.

I had been thinking, why would I buy a dictation device with a built in microphone when I am plugging in an external mic? If I, instead, bought something like a Tascam DL-10 or Zoom F2, then this could be used for other purposes, not just recording dictation. Both come with a lavier mic, but I don't know if this would be good enough to record for dictating while walking along the road.

I currently have a Sennheiser headset which I plug into a laptop using Dragon Home. The headset is good quality, but with an earphone as well as a microphone, it's not very comfortable. A headset which is just a mic would be just the ticket.

My idea is to dictate while going for a walk (co-author of the book, Kevin J Anderson does this). I like the idea of having a good headset with a small recorder to go in my pocket or clip onto my clothing. I will have to upgrade to Dragon Pro.

Currently, I only have a Zoom H1 which doesn't even support plug in power. I guess I should try walking and talking into that to see how I get on with it before I invest in more tech. But what tech?

Struggling_Author