If dictating to the system via a microphone, the sound card is critical to success. Historically (1990's), this was a major issue in speech recognition. There has been steady improvement, and now (2007) even most inexpensive PC's have acceptable sound cards built into their motherboards.
Discrete sound cards work well too, perhaps slightly better than the built-in sound systems typically found today. But for the most part they are becoming irrelevant because USB sound systems are the logical path for most users when a built-in sound system is not adequate.
An alternate to a sound card is to acquire a USB "pod," a device where you can plug in your favorite microphone. These are particularly suitable for laptops or other systems where you can not or your company does not allow you to open the system case.
Plug in a good microphone and you have yourself a nice sound system.
Another alternative is a USB microphone -- a microphone with the USB electronics included. Plantronics, Andrea, Philips, Insync, Sennheiser, VXi and others make such microphones. We recommend the VXi TalkPro line of these microphones when a headset is desired. The others work well for many persons.
Some dealers claim USB audio is better. Back in 1998 that was generally a fair statement. But with the better audio systems supplied with computers today, we view USB audio as a convenient, safe alternative.
A few USB devices are having problems on Windows Vista, but as of mid-2007 these problems are less and less common as vendors improve their Vista support.
Professional recording cards (typically costing several hundred dollars) work very nicely but are sometimes difficult to set up. Some do not even produce the relatively low-quality sound needed for speech recognition on releases prior to 7. After Release 7, NaturallySpeaking is able to convert high-quality sound to the format it needs for processing.
Several sound cards will produce good results for particular speakers, or with specific microphones, or have specific production runs that produce very good results. Many of the cards listed on the ScanSoft web site fall into this category.
IF YOU DON'T ENUNCIATE THE WORDS, THE SOUND CARD, MICROPHONE, AND PROGRAM CANNOT DO THEIR JOBS.
Users with laptop computer systems must accept whatever sound system is delivered with the laptop computer system or else use a USB microphone. A USB microphone bypasses the built-in sound card.
Users concentrating on processing dictation from recorded speech using either the Dragon Mobile Recorder, the Sony ICD recorders, the Olympus DS3000 or other digital recorders will not be affected by the sound system except while trying to learn the system.
A few people need two sound systems. Generally we suggest using one USB system and one PCI sound card in these situations.
In 2006 and continuing into 2007, more and more systems are offering "HD Audio." These systems conform to a new audio specification aimed at improving the overall audio experience on new PC's. It is appearing that almost all implementations of HD Audio are proving to be satisfactory for speech recognition.
top