AirLine Micro - Camera Edition for Dragon Naturallyspeaking Professional

KnowBrainer Speech Recognition Perspective of the AirLine Micro - Camera Edition

The Samson Airline Micro Camera Edition is a new wrinkle on the Samson Airline Micro which is a popular small portable wireless microphone with one limitation; it includes a non-replaceable wireless microphone. The biggest advantage of the new Samson Airline Micro Camera is that it will allow you to convert any analog microphone (terminating in a standard 1/8 inch plug) into a wireless microphone. Our favorite microphones, to pair with the AirLine Micro are the FlexyMike SE and FlexyMike DE headsets because they're very lightweight and comfortable, as well as accurate. The Samson AirLine Micro Camera is a completely self-contained wireless unit which includes built-in rechargeable NiMH batteries in the transmitter and receiver. It has professional look and feel, is very small and doesn’t require an AC outlet. The transmitter includes a belt clip but it is so small, we prefer to drop it into any available pocket.

Tom Hamilton - KnowBrainer.com http://www.knowbrainer.com/
 KnowBrainer Speech Recognition Forums - http://www.knowbrainer.com/forums/forum/index.cfm

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.

SpeechWare FlexyMike DE and SE Review

SpeechWare Introduces an Ultralight Titanium Headset Microphone

 

SpeechWare has just introduced the lightest, most accurate, noise rejecting headset microphone we have ever tested. If you would like to see what we have come to believe to be the next evolution in headset microphones, check out our FlexyMike SE (single ear) and FlexyMike DE (dual ear) review at http://www.knowbrainer.com/downloads/FlexyMike_Review.pdf 

SpeechWare SpeechMatic MultiAdapter USB Soundcard Review

New SpeechMatic MultiAdapter USB Soundcard Can Potentially Increase Your Speech Recognition Accuracy

Have you noticed how the blue bar bounces up and down as you are running the Dragon Audio Check? Our voices never maintain a steady volume level so Dragon has to make an educated guess which means that potentially, our accuracy is never quite as good as it could be.

 

From a speech recognition point of view, USB soundcards have remained virtually unchanged since their inception in the late 90s. While some of the latest models include pretty blinking LED lights, low noise floors and high fidelity output, none of these innovations are relevant to speech recognition and that’s why, until now, we have been hesitant to publish a USB soundcard review. Fortunately, that’s all changed.

We have always endorsed the use of external USB soundcards or USB microphones but as of today, the only USB soundcard we will be recommending is the SpeechMatic MultiAdapter (due August 22, 2013) because it not only includes auto gain control but additionally includes auto EQ to compensate for vocal tonal changes that occur when speaking at lower or higher volume levels or extending or shortening the microphone distance. Besides being the only USB soundcard to include auto volume/EQ, it will also features global broadband noise filtering, a de-clicking algorithm (to block non-words such as clearing your throat) and NaturallySpeaking 11/12 algorithms impregnated onto an integrated circuit board. This new USB soundcard, which we have been testing for the last 6 months, is introducing 6 new technologies which you’ll find covered in our KnowBrainer Soundcard Face-Off ~ http://www.knowbrainer.com/downloads/Battle_of_the_USB_Soundcards.pdf but the bottom line is we found the new SpeechMatic MultiAdapter increased our speech recognition accuracy by approximately 1% over other soundcards. 1% may not sound like much until you realize that raising your accuracy from 96% to 97% translates to more than 25% fewer misrecognitions. To demonstrate this new technology, we were able to place our headset, approximately 12 inches away on our desktop, and continue dictating. Although our accuracy dropped a bit, we know of few other headset microphones that could be used from 12 inches away.

Tom Hamilton
Nuance Gold Certified & BBB Accredited
KnowBrainer Speech Recognition Forums http://www.knowbrainer.com/forums/forum
KnowBrainer.com http://www.knowbrainer.com
TheMicrophoneStore.com http://www.themicrophonestore.com