Hello. I've started a new position, and the company is very willing to provide Dragon, but I'm working with Windows speech recognition while I wait for Dragon to be purchased and set up.

The accuracy I'm getting with WSR ranges from poor to terrifyingly bad.

I'm using the  Andrea PureAudio USB-SA USB Sound Card with the Audio Technica Pro headset, so I know the microphone is not the issue.

Any advice on getting tolerable performance out of WSR while I wait for Dragon would be greatly appreciated!

The short answer is you can't improve WSR! Microsoft pretty much gave up on WSR in 2006 and planning on replacing it this November in Windows 11.

PS: You might mention to your company that not all Nuance licensed Dragon resellers are equal. When it comes to support, Nuance is the worst. You automatically have their support when you purchase from a certified reseller but we recommend looking for someone who includes training and details on avoiding 3 dozen DPI 15.61 sandtraps (which Nuance won't mention). Also note that ALL ebay and Amazon resellers are software pirates. 

Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020
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Thanks for the reply. That's pretty much what I expected, but I had to toss the question out there, just in case there was a weird workaround.

I'll print this thread and show it to my IT point person on Monday. Knowbrainer is great, and I've sent a couple of folks who have asked me speech recognition questions your way. That said, I suspect there's specific purchasing channels the company is required to go through.

Hello. Just thought I would add this in case it helps somebody else searching the forum. I got some really helpful advice and support from the Talon community, and my current plan is to use Talon voice while I wait for Dragon. Here's the link in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar position. It's relatively quick to set up, and  far superior to WSR.

https://talonvoice.com/

If you can afford a Dragon solution now, forget about talon voice. You would be struggling with technology that doesn't come close to Dragon functionality. If it did, Nuance would've put them out of business for violating their patents; like they do every other company who gives away or sells a speech recognition utility that can potentially infringe on their profits.

Also keep in mind that dictation is only 50% of speech recognition equation. Many of our customers have stated that all they do is dictate. They don't. editing, correcting, opening a file etc. is not dictation. If efficiency factors into your speech recognition solution, it will take as much as twice as long with talon voice. Here's an example…

Most end-users dictate a paragraph and then find themselves correcting or eding a word or phrase. If you are going to create a new paragraph, you have to begin my moving your cursor to the end of the current paragraph and pressing the {Enter} key twice. You also have to deal with non-capitalization of the 1st word and likely correcting spacing issues. When our cursor is in the middle of the paragraph, we can simultaneously create a new paragraph and dictate. We consider this dictation but it is also 20 times faster than what you will likely have to go through. In our opinion, talon voice is a toy. It all depends on how serious you are about dictation software.

Disclaimer: We are Dragon resellers but your speech recognition need is for occasional use, talon voice may be adequate

Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020
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Whoa, I get where you're coming from, as long as someone is in a Windows environment, there are certain efficiency builders that Dragon has that other tools do not.

I know for myself, Dragon, with at least Dragon capture, and probably the full knowbrainer software, will be my long-term solution, based on your advice in my other thread about SAP-ERP.

I just needed something I could set up quickly, to get me through the next little bit at work, while I wait for the company provided Dragon to come in, it might be 3 days, I'm hoping the max is about a week and half.

Also, I know people who use Talon as a full-blown productivity tool on Linux and Mac, where Dragon support is nonexistent. It's certainly not Dragon, and for my use case, it's not a Dragon replacement, but it's a powerful tool given the appropriate use case.

I didn't mean to ruffle feathers, just wanted to share some info about a tool I'm temporarily going to find a fair bit of value in.

I post in piece :-)