DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

The MB Pro1 is considered to be mid-range noise filtering which should be considerably more than ample to deal with furnace noise. Even if your microphone wasn't noise filtering enough, Dragon shouldn't hang. Before considering a new microphone or running the following tests, do you have another microphone that you could use for test purposes? If not, we recommend the following:

1. If your microphone is turned off, does Dragon still hang when the furnace comes on?

2. Do you see 3 ??? marks pop up briefly when your microphone is on; just before Dragon freezes?

3. Can you try opening DragonPad, trigger the furnace, dictate a few words and then say play that back, to listen for interference.

4. If #3 is not an option, can you try making a recording in Windows 11 Voice Recorder or Windows 10 Recorder while your furnace is running? Then play it back

Considering your test results in different rooms, our best “unqualified” guess is that your microphone has lost all of its noise filtering. We considered the Bluetooth connection but it didn't seemed unlikely.

If noise turns out to be the problem, you might consider the new Shokz OpenComm UC Bluetooth headset which is about 3 times more noise filtering than the MB Pro1. 

Note that if your MB Pro1 is under 2 years old, Sennheiser (877) 736-6434 might replace your unit.

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How would I notice if Dragon has hung if  my microphone is turned off? ;-}  ...    I'll have to try "triggering the furnace"  to test this.

Certainly I have seen ???  in the results box, and also occasionally in the recognition history  around the time  of a hang. However, I frequently do not notice the results box. And for example right now I can't find it worth a damn,  it was working a few minutes ago but it's disappeared.

(Side question:  what's the best way to get the results box to show when it has disappeared?  Normally I have the results box Anchored and Always Visible. Changing those options to Unanchored and 60 seconds  recovered it just now. Is there a better way? I think that the results box may have disappeared when I detached  my tablet, changing the screen geography.)

Good idea. Haven't done so. I will have to figure out  how to "trigger the furnace".  

BTW,  I am 99.99% certain that I have observed the problem when the furnace starts up. Not when it is running in steady-state. Occasionally when the furnace and/or fan start together,  there is a "clunking" sound  as the ducts "inflate" -  i.e. as a piece of sheet metal in the duct  changes from bent slightly inwards to bend slightly outwards.

Since I observed this, I just turn the fan to always on. Less of a startup clunk.

Perhaps.  But since this problem 1st reared its head within a month or so of me getting the Sennheiser headset, either it has been suboptimal since the beginning, or  ...

---

I say again: the problem is not constant.   Things work fine when differences off, and things work fine when the furnace is  on. I have only observed this problem recently when the furnace "clunks" as it is turning on or off.

DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

Tis the season of a lot of things this year, Ag ... coughing, fervescing, stagflating, kabooming ...

But the season of heating, causing Dragon to be hanging ... now that's gotta be a new thing, giving us a stirring.

Fortunately for me and you, this place is all about solving problems.  Even I could volunteer 4 solutions in 4 distinct price brackets (pardon me if mine are a smidgen less pertinent next to the 4 above from Lunis, but they could work no less well).

1. Get a new Shokz - the steep cross-border Fedex shipping may be deterring some of us, but not affect others.

2. Get a couple electrical blankets, Dyson heater, +/- a fireplace, while letting that gasping furnace catch a little break.

3. Get a new furnace - unfortunately this was imposed on me as the jolly heating season comes early where I am.  My furnace also got louder and next thing I knew it let out something worse.  If there is any consolation, the new one is quieter.

4. Get a new house - ???!!!

Looking back on some of your prior posts, Ag, I see that you went as far as getting a decibel meter a while back to quantify this "furnace roar".  Very engineer of you.

Now I got me some additional brain sparks going (hopefully a sign of finally getting over the "fog" ... or else presage absence seizures?) ...  Anyhow, I am starting call again, which tends to make the mind race.

1. Have you considered EMF/EMI, especially if your formerly miraculous Nvidia DSP software couldn't eliminate such low-frequency growl?  HVAC can be non-trivial sources of EMI in residential areas.  Wired (dynamic) mics are susceptible if they don't have a good "noise coil" in them.  Bluetooth is just "non-resilient".  Then again, you said at one point that the recordings on Windows sounded alright.  Anyway, this is voodoo territory AFAIAC.  But more than likely closer to your wheelhouse.

2. Further along the line of EMI, perhaps it is directly doing a number on your laptop when the furnace kicks in?  EMF is strongest when equipment turns on, no?

3. If it is determined that the "furnace roar" is nothing more than a decibel thing, something like the Sony WH-1000XM5, whose 4-mic array (2 on each side) could deliver a fairly noise-cancelling package, might worth a glance, especially if you are not into PTT.  But I'd have to echo Lunis in that the form factor sucks.  In fact I am thinking about returning mine.  Not because it is not astounding in what it could pull off, but because I couldn't stand wearing it.  All microphones are compromises.

Btw, I had a chance to appraise one of the Shokz products at a local computer store.  Not the OpenComm UC, which they ain't got.  The Shokz felt like a "dry octopus tentacle".  I mean that entirely as a compliment.  There is literally no bone to pick when it comes to wearing comfort.  The "bone-conduction" takes a wee bit of getting used to.  I think there'd be no problem with voice-applications.  For music with strong bass I am not so sure.

4. Sound-proofing your room, or a "corner" of it.  There was an old-timer (Edit: phils) who used to be resident here before Covid.  He was a well-spring of knowledge on all manners of hardware, microphones, sound-proofing, and related topics.  Anyway, I did learn one thing in the last 3 years, which is that plexiglass is quite a sound-deadening material - very much the opposite of drywall.

P.S., why stop when we could go further on the tangent: could it be a "resonant frequency" thing, whereby the furnace rumble just caused certain components to "shake" and vibrate, as in how a Janet Jackson tune took out laptops?

Now  you are making me nostalgic. My dear old dad was a vibration analysis engineer.   He brought his sound meters into our kitchen and said that our family at breakfast was louder than the Concorde taking off.  He applied an entire wall full of cork sound deadening.  

Again you are making me nostalgic: one of my favorite of my dad's consulting jobs was at a sugar refinery in the Ivory Coast, where he solved the problem by putting a rubber mat under several machines. They had been hitting a resonant frequency that was liquefying the soil.   This did not last long, no Tacoma Narrows, because as soon as the soil liquefied enough to throw the shafts out of alignment  the  frequency changed, but eventually the machines wore out.

In my case it's impulse noise, which can hit a resonance,  but quickly subsides. Again nostalgia:  usually my dad would take me along  and it was my job to provide the impulse, by  hitting something with a hammer or sledgehammer while he recorded the frequency response.

Hmm...   I think I saw his old spectrum analyzer in the basement last time I was back home. It hasn't been used in 30 years, but it might still work...  :-)

DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.