Dragon version 9 and Bluetooth microphones?

[Suntzu]

One of the new features of Dragon version 9 as advertised on the Nuance website and on various Dragon NaturallySpeaking marketing documents is the Bluetooth support for microphones.

I've done some investigation about this:

The Bluetooth support is only available for US English vocabulary models and you actually have to select a specific vocabulary called 8 kHz Bluetooth.

So it's not suitable for other Accent models including Australian English. The problem is the Bluetooth is that it does not supply a sufficient quality audio signal. 8 kHz is insufficient for good speech recognition accuracy. I think what Dragon/Nuance have done is made a special vocabulary that is optimised for this lower quality input. This is commendable because obviously they want to support Bluetooth due to its prevalence. But at the end of the day if Bluetooth has insufficient quality it's not worth persevering with.

I also understand that there is a higher quality version of Bluetooth becoming available called something like super Bluetooth. I'm hoping that this new version of Bluetooth will be more suitable for Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

For now the best and most accurate wireless microphone is the Plantronics CS60 USB microphone. This can be obtained from here www.voicerecognition.com.au/pc_headsets_bluetooth. htm (http://www.voicerecognition.com.au/pc_headsets_bl uetooth.htm)
http://www.voicerecognition.com.au/image/plantroni cs_cs60_usb_big.jpg

The CS60 USB has the added bonus of having 50 to 100 metres range and superior audio quality and not just Dragon NaturallySpeaking but also voice-over IP applications.

I've quite a bit of experience with various microphones with Dragon naturally speaking so if you have any questions post in this forum, even better create a new thread with the specific model that you wish to discuss.

Cheers

[Suntzu]

Soon we may have these http://www.xovoxcommunications.com/products/xcommu nicator.htm

in Australia . They apparently work very well with dragon. Yes, they are bluetooth, but they have carefully selected components and drivers to optimse them for speech recognition.

The XCommunicator5 is a true workhorse Bluetooth? headset/adapter bundle offering the best possible sound performance. It has been designed with business people in mind, offering enhanced performance and support for Speech Recognition, Voice capture and a host of wireless and PC based applications.

I am told the XCommunicator6 , the new enhanced version will soon be available. These may be available in australia by the start of October. Estimated street price will be approx: $350 so a bit cheaper than the cs60 USB. This may change though.

cheers