#Best microphone for dragon dictate mac mac os#
#Best microphone for dragon dictate mac software#

This doesnвЂ™t mean to say itвЂ™s perfect, and in fact, in writing this review so far entirely by dictation, I probably had to correct the output at least 15 times (to this point).

#Best microphone for dragon dictate mac software#

AccuracyД¬learly, the most important factor with any speech recognition software is its accuracy, and Dragon 3 is the best performer IвЂ™ve dealt with in terms of accuracy. I also used an older USB headset microphone which came with a much earlier generation of the same software, but the results IвЂ™ve gotten using that microphone and the built-in microphone, in a quiet environment, have been about the same. Generally, IвЂ™ve worked in relatively quiet rooms, and the best results IвЂ™ve gotten were sitting in the soundproof booth in our phonetics lab, so IвЂ™m tempted to say that background noise is the biggest limitation of that microphone. ItвЂ™s worth noting that at this point, nearly all the dictation IвЂ™ve done using the software has been using the built-in microphone on my computer, which, apparently, has some noise canceling ability built in. At that point, I was dictating my first emails. The initial set up took around five minutes, and reading it the very first text to calibrate the microphone took another five minutes or so on top of that. The price is very high, but for somebody who writes as much as I do, and was already starting to get a little bit of repetitive strain injury from constant typing, this is worth it.

Purchase and download were relatively easy, as I opted for a digital edition, and setup was quite simple as well. Given the price ($199), I know that this software isnвЂ™t a small investment, so I figured that putting my thoughts out there might be useful for somebody else whoвЂ™s on the fence. So far, IвЂ™ve been very impressed with it, partly because IвЂ™ve been following speech recognition on the Mac platform for a long time (Starting with IBM ViaVoice around 1999 or 2000), and partly because IвЂ™m a phonetics geek, who understands just how difficult this task is.

#Best microphone for dragon dictate mac mac os#

So, I mentioned last week that I recently started using Dragon Dictate 3, the Mac OS version of NuanceвЂ™s Dragon suite. IвЂ™m just a nerd whoвЂ™s followed speech recognition for a long time and wants to share a really good experience IвЂ™ve had. See all postsД«efore I go any further, I want to point out that this isnвЂ™t a paid review, nor do I have any horses in the speech recognition race. This was originally posted on my blog, Notes from a Linguistic Mystic in 2012.