BRIEF:

Are there any headset products that combine bone conduction speakers to deliver sound to the wearer's ears with a conventional boom mic?

 

DETAIL:

 

I can see posts like Bone Conduction Microphones that say that bone conduction microphones don't work well enough for speech recognition (yet?).

 

But I wonder if you can use a bone conduction speaker in combination with a conventional boom mic?

 

Either as a single product, or as two separate products that somehow managed to work together. 

for example: https://www.amazon.com/Pryme-Tactical-Conduction-Headset-Motorola/dp/B074JJYQPY

 

For my usage model, wireless required. ... Learning more about this product space, I should be more specific: I really do not want between me and the computer that is running Dragon speech recognition. I need to be able to move around without pulling on a cable. But it might be okay to have a headset with a cable that connects to some electronic device worn on my hip or thereabouts, and with that connecting wirelessly to the computer running Dragon. but furthermore… I want to be able to move around the computer running Dragon on a regular basis. It's usually a laptop. I travel somewhat regularly.

 

MOTIVATION:

 

Since I restarted using speech recognition this summer I have suffered increasingly worse chronic ear infections. I have suffered such ear infections for years, but was able to keep them under control by avoiding prolonged immersion in water[*], not wearing ear buds, etc., as well as eardrops of various forms both OTC and prescribed. However, since I started using speech recognition they've gotten worse. One hypothesis is that I am wearing a headset with an on the ear speaker many hours a day, somewhat limiting airflow that might help keep the ear canal dry and reduce infection. Fortunately, I bought a single ear headset, so at least one ear is not being affected, although flipping sides has not prevented the problem, only resulting in both ears having problems.

 

*: no more scuba (sob),  no more swimming distances, no more hot baths or hot tub, careful showers. I'm still boogie boarding, but fear I might lose that. Some mornings I fear that I'm losing my hearing as well as my typing :-(

 

The bone conduction headphone/speakers that I have seen leave the ear canal open to the air. This might help control the ear infections.

 

Therefore my question: has anybody found a combination conventional boom mic/bone conduction speaker headset, wireless, that works well enough for speech recognition?

 

 

 

LATE ADDITIONS TO POST:

 

The Samsung airline - 77 family looks promising, http://www.samsontech.com/samson/products/wireless-systems/airline-77/airline77ah7fit/, is wireless, but doesn't look like it's suitable for a laptop system that is moved around at least twice a week, sometimes multiple times in the same day. But I hope somebody can tell me otherwise.

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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.

We stopped carrying the Samson Airline 77 because it's not portable. It requires a base station which requires an AC outlet. Having said that it is an excellent wireless microphone.

We have never tested the Bone Conduction Headset Boom Mic Motorola XTS headset but it potentially looks like it would work. The 1 kHz frequency ceiling is also good for speech recognition. You will probably want to toss the Velcro rubber headset strap because it will be more comfortable without it. The strap is included for combat situations. The only thing we don't like is that it's corded and doesn't transfer like Bluetooth. In other words it's not true wireless. In your situation, if you need playback capability, this might be your only choice. Assuming the Boom Mic includes a standard soundcard 3.5 mm analog plug, you will also need to add a USB soundcard.

 

If you don't need sound playback the SpeechWare speakerless FlexyMike DEC was specifically designed for speech recognition and considerably more comfortable. 

PS: You could wear any microphone, like the wireless Sennheiser MB Pro1 UC/ML, around your neck rather than over your head so this is another option.

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Currently I'm using a cheap two-ear mic from Staples. Much of the time I wear it slung around my neck with the boom turned upwards toward my mouth. The recognition is not as good as if I actually put it on my head, but it is still quite usable. (In the prior sentence is the only error was the descriptor "two-ear," which came out "two-ER." It's not a standard phrase, so I think it might have even if I had been wearing the headset normally.

If I remember correctly, one of the Speech Mike options(maybe it is the one that Linus mentioned) is a flexible microphone that can be worn around the neck. It probably offers better quality recognition in that position than my microphone, although of course at a higher price.

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Since I use playback whenever I do a correction[*], and I frequently use DragonPad "read that", I think I need a sound output.

I suppose that I could be using the microphone on its boom near my mouth while having sound playing from my computer over some other speaker. But I had a few problems with that, with the microphone picking up the sound from the computer speakers.

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By the way, I would really like to be able to listen to a remote company meeting via teleconference or videoconference or WebEx or the like, while at the same time taking notes. I regularly take notes by typing and mousing, snipping screens on the video presentations and slides. That hurts, so I'd like to be able to do as much of this by voice as possible[**].  And, in the past, I have actually been able to take notes using Dragon/voice while the meeting is going on, when my outgoing voice is muted so I'm not disturbing the meeting.

Unfortunately, recently I have lost this ability. I think it may be related to my new company using Zoom conferencing. It seems that whenever I put Dragon into "start listening" mode, it mutes me on the Zoom meeting as well. I'm able to play around with Windows settings to make myself muted with respect to the teleconference and unmute it to Dragon, but the moment I toggle the button, e.g. so that I can speak up in the meeting, I lose that independent configuration.  I had a few embarrassing situations and companywide meetings before I figured out that I could no longer do what I was used to doing.

I have not yet spent much time trying to figure out workarounds for this.
.
For this and other reasons I have recently been connecting visually to the meetings using my PC, but having the meetings call me back so I can listen on my cell phone.  And often it improves voice quality .This allows me to walk away from my office, while still listening to the meeting. I suppose that I could wear both my cell phone headset ( on ear, no boom) and a voice recognition headset (possibly speaker-less) --- but when I tried to do things like that in the past I find it really hard to coordinate turning one device off and turning the other device on.

One of the reasons I bought the wireless Sennheiser MB Pro1 UC/ML is that it has the ability to connect to both a PC and to a phone, switching between the two. Unfortunately, I have not yet been very successful with this. It doesn't seem to understand that my phone is also a computer that runs speech recognition. It seems to want to do only call management stuff on the phone, and generic speech recognition on the PC.  however, again, I haven't spent too much time trying to figure this out. I'm spending far too much time on speech recognition as it is,  using the Sennheiser to connect only to my PC. ( but once again it is embarrassing to have independent devices, when I forget to say "stop listening" to Dragon on my PC before I say "turn on voice control" to my iPhone.)

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Note *:  I assume that it is bad to use "correct that" on a phrase that I have completely mispronounced, and that it is better to rewrite the text without correcting it, without training Dragon. I.e. I said Thing2 when I should have said Thing1.  It might not be all that bad if it's a non-custom vocabulary item that is being heavily trained for the correct pronunciation. But I think I've noticed it be a problem for my custom vocabulary entries that have not been so heavily trained. Especially those that I have a bad habit of mispronouncing constantly, especially as I start moving into a new field with new terminology.  

Although I suppose I may have misunderstood: I was assuming that when you did "correct that" the Dragon was doing some training even if you do not explicitly train the term after correcting it. I may be getting confused with other speech recognition systems.

 

Note**: I listened to a TED talk this weekend that said but you essentially cannot listen while you are speaking, but the brain turns off the hearing circuitry while speaking is going on. So it may not be all that good an idea to try to take voice notes while listening. Much of the time when I've been doing this, I've been listening to recorded meetings, so I can just stop the video or the slideshow, do my screen clippings and make my notes. But I think that I've done it in life meetings as well. Losing some stuff, perhaps.

 

Hey! Here's a product idea: not quite real time streaming of an interactive teleconference. Normally listen fully interactively in real time, but when you want to take a note stall the stream, make your notes, and then when you uninstall the stream listen to what was going on as opposed to having lost it. Use blank elimination so that you play back the recorded stuff in the interim at higher speed so that you can catch up.

 

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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.

It would appear that you are copying your text from a wordprocessor and pasting here. Of course that's a good idea, as long as it's not Microsoft Word, but it also looks like you pasted some of your information twice so we removed the double portion of your post.

While you can use your MB Pro1 on your cell phone or computer, you cannot do both simultaneously with any Bluetooth microphone. This is simply not an option but a relatively easy workaround would be to use a VoIP app in place of your cell phone. This will allow you to simultaneously dictate and speak with someone directly. Even Bluetooth multipoint connectivity is limited to one device at a time and there is no demand for this feature.

You are probably currently using the sound output from your computer's integrated soundcard. All you have to do is switch the sound output to your headset so that you can simultaneously dictate while while listening to a videoconference. Of course, as you have noted, you can't really comprehend the audio when you are simultaneously dictating but we found this capability to be perfectly acceptable when attending some of the Nuance's videoconferences Note that humans and Windows 98 have one thing in common. They can only process one event at a time. True multitasking didn't appear until Windows XP. We will probably have to wait for the second-generation release of humans before this function will become a reality.

Snipping screens should be easy enough but attempting to hands-free select a portion could be difficult. We use SnagIt for everything you see in our manuals but use our mouse for efficiency reasons. It might be considerably easier if you take a picture of the entire screen or Window and crop your pictures post snip (later). This could probably be done hands-free.

You can significantly increase your efficiency by using Select-&-Say correction rather than the correction box. In other words use Dragon's select <dictation> command in place of correct <dictation>. However, there is nothing less efficient than waiting for your text to hit the page, proofreading and then saying correct that. This is an inefficient bad habit. As far as worried about corrupting your user profile by correcting or mispronouncing text is concerned… Forget about it. Dragon's automatic learning capability is about as positively effective as a politician. Rather than wasting time attempting to teach Dragon, think of your corrections as quick editing but note that you cannot use Select-&-Say correction until you remove the default checkmark from Select commands bring up correction menu which you will find in the Dragon Options/Corrections tab. In our opinion, this was an idiotic default setting and is 1 of the 36 recommended changes will find in your KnowBrainer Dragon Installation/Training Guide.

PS: I currently have extremely severe laryngitis (from acute bronchitis) and sound like an alcoholic “Bronx” New Yorker who smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day, for the last 40 years. I occasionally save my user profile but he has no effect on my approximate 99% accuracy

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I was wondering if you had the chance to try out the tactical headset? It seems quite useful  for people using a boom microphone for voice recognition since most people would also need the headphone speakers component at some point in the day - whether it be for calls, for text to speech, for listening to music, etc.

I have tried some bone conduction headphones,  and I find them a lot more comfortable solution when I need to  wear headphones for 10 hours a day (as compared to both in-ear and over-the-ear regular headphones). In particular, I tried  Aftershokz Opencomm,  which is really good headset to wear all day long with an excellent noise canceling boom microphone. However, since it utilizes Bluetooth technology, there are two issues with it -  first when being that there is a couple of seconds delay once I start speaking and the transcription begins (if the microphone has been idle for a while) and  and secondly the sound quality uses the  Bluetooth headset profile which makes it unusable for things like listening to music (unless I manually change the  Bluetooth profile to stereo every single time  I want to listen to music in the background  or watch a video, which is inconvenient). 

 I'm also looking for a wired bone conduction headset with boom microphone, and it seems only the tactical headsets are the option available as of now.

Unfortunately, AfterShokz doesn't have a phone number and never responded to any of our 3 messages. Our best guess is that our emails are blocked for whatever reasons; we don't spam. This project is now dead in the water for us

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