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Built-in mic shocks me!!

Arizona Willie

Active Member
I am SHOCKED :) !!

The other day I was trying to get speech recognition to work using the built-in mic and it was a dismal failure.
I had been cursing the idiot who designed this thing with the mic on the top edge pointed up, because it just would not capture my voice well enough for SR to work.
Yep, I turned the volume and gain up == to no avail. Tried all kinds of settings. Volume up, gain down, gain up, gain in middle ... nothing worked satisfactorily.

I installed Dragon Naturally Speaking ( they emailed me back that I could install it on one backup computer so I figure it is legal to put it on the SP as well as my desktop ).
I tried a headset and it worked well.

Today I had my Motorola S8 bluetooth headset on and tried Dragon and it worked very well. But then I checked the profile and it was using the (mic-in ) so I covered the built in mic with my finger and my SP went deaf!!
It was not using the headset mic at all.

Apparently Dragon uses the built-in mic much better than Windows own speech recognition does.

I was able to set the SP on it's kickstand on a table an arm's length away and dictate and it worked!!!!!!

I was able to speak in a normal voice without even raising my voice at all.

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY :)

I am SHOCKED at how well the built-in mic works with Dragon Naturally Speaking.

It actually works better than it does on my desktop.

So I owe the individual who works on the design team, who must be half - way to hell now --- as much as I cursed him, an apology.

There appears to be nothing wrong with the mic setup.

My brain, however, is a different story :(
 

machistmo

Active Member
So is it working with Windows Speech recognition properly? Sounds like that still does not work correctly. Just because a program whose sole functionality depends on a microphone works 'well' with the device doesn't mean it shouldn't work well with native functions.
 
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Arizona Willie

Arizona Willie

Active Member
I gave up on Windows own Speech Recognition. It < might > work with a headset mic --- but it definitely did NOT work with the built-in mic.

However, as I noted, Dragon Naturally Speaking works VERY well with the built-in mic. Since I have Dragon, which is a much better / larger / more experienced program, I saw no reason to continue to mess with Microsoft's Speech Recognition which would require me to use a headset if I wanted to use it.

Just no point in banging my head against the wall :)

I have something better which works better --- why fight it?

So is it working with Windows Speech recognition properly? Sounds like that still does not work correctly. Just because a program whose sole functionality depends on a microphone works 'well' with the device doesn't mean it shouldn't work well with native functions.
 

cafutter

Member
How did you load Dragon NaturallySpeaking on to the SP? I didn't see it in The Store. Do you download or did you attach a CD player to your SP?
Thanks

As I read through later posts, this same question was asked and answered. Copy files to USB drive or map & share a DVD drive on your network.
 
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Arizona Willie

Arizona Willie

Active Member
All I had to do was put the DNS disk in the DVD on my desktop computer and fire up the SP and use Explorer to go through my wireless network at home and went to the DVD drive and ran setup.exe and it installed on my SP just fine. I had to SHARE the DVD drive first though. Once I did that the DVD drive became available to any computer on the wireless network and can be used just as though it was part of the SP.

I installed programs from my Downloads directory on the desktop computer on the SP the same way.

How did you load Dragon NaturallySpeaking on to the SP? I didn't see it in The Store. Do you download or did you attach a CD player to your SP?
Thanks

As I read through later posts, this same question was asked and answered. Copy files to USB drive or map & share a DVD drive on your network.
 
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