SpeechWare SpeechMatic MultiAdapter Customer Review

Some initial impressions of the SpeechWare SpeechMatic USB pod.

As I have said on multiple occasions my office is very noisy at the best of times. Since we are building a large server room in space next to my office (as well as doing earthquake retrofit) the last week has been insanely noisy.

So I've had Roto-hammers, sledge hammers, circular saws, pneumatic nail hammers, regular hammers and the crew marching in out of our office as they cut holes in the wall with Sawzalls and yell at each other. My Pro audio system was unable to keep up with this as most of the noises are coming from behind me and therefore relatively direct the Airline77.

I posted my first impressions here:
http://www.knowbrainer.com/forums/forum/messageview.cfm?FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Threaded&catid=6&threadid=17092&discTab=true#95583

But yesterday and today I tried a new combination. I used my Airline77 direct to the DBX noise gate in front of the SpeechMatic USB pod. I use the ARTccessories Clean Box as the interface to the SpeechMatic.

I created a new profile, as my gated Pro audio profile did not work well with the SpeechMatic. However I imported my vocabulary that I created back in March with all of the pronunciations of my custom words (not a text word list). I also ran the usual "adapt to writing style" document analysis and one session of initial training.The resulting sN measurement is now at 39 (equal to my Pro audio score). Based on some preliminary documentation provided to me by Rüdiger, I have surmised that DNS use of the SAPI  has an application-specific upper limit for the sN score of 39 (of course I could be wrong).

well I was wrong, with further fiddling with the DBX noise gate I have been able to get an sN score of 43

The difference in sN scores with or without the dbx box in front of the SpeechMatic shows that I am getting my 10+ dB of noise rejection out of the DBX noise gate.

More importantly, I am getting excellent recognition despite all of the construction noise where with either the SpeechMatic USB pod or my previous Pro audio setup I was getting terrible recognition due to construction noise. In fact my speech recognition rate seems to be about as good as my 99%+ recognition rate was with my Pro audio setup in a normally noisy office. I will need to use the new profile for a couple of more days before I can tell whether or not this is actually the case

Making sure that the dbx noise gate's settings were optimal with the AGC on the SpeechMatic took a little fiddling but this is the best overall noise rejection set up I have had so far.

Note, that alone, the SpeechWare SpeechMatic noise rejection is not as good as with the Pro audio set up.  However, together with only the dbx noise gate the combination has noise rejection superior to either.

It's going to be a week or two before I will have the time to do a statistically significant dual microphone & dual electronics recognition rate comparison under normal office conditions.
However I am favorably impressed.

Phil Schaadt


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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine (i7-3617U processor). DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Philips SpeechMike 5276 / Philips SpeechMike Pro 5274

The Philips SpeechMike LFH 5276 and LFH 5274 models were discontinued about 5 or 6 years ago and what few are left are ridiculously overpriced. Philips replaced the SpeechMike II models with the SpeechMike III LFH 3200 which, in our opinion, is only marginally improved over the SpeechMike II. We believe that Philips eventually realized their mistake and went back to the drawing board. A few months ago they released the Philips SpeechMike Premium (LFH-3500) USB Handheld/TableMike which, in our opinion, is a head and shoulders above the LFH 5276. The LFH 5276 is still a good unit but if you can't get it working, you might consider checking out the newer technology. Unfortunately, even if yourLFH 5276 is actually new, it's no longer under warranty. It's time to put these old horses to pasture.

theBoom quiet Headset

theBoom Quiet is a unique noise cancelling headset microphone! Great for speech recognition, cell phone use and the only speech recognition microphone designed for high fidelity music playback.