good microphone if you use both iListen and ViaVoice

[T. Patrick Henebry]

I do not remember if I posted this information to the list before 
(though I know I've sent it privately to various people).  But this 
is worth repeating.

I use both ViaVoice for Mac OS X and iListen.  Having a microphone 
that works well on both programs is a necessity.

Microphones I have:

Andrea Electronics ANC-700--this is a high quality active noise 
canceling microphone that can be used with PC sound cards or via USB 
ports on both Macs and PCs with the addition of a USB adapter

Andrea Electronics NC-7100 USB microphone--this is the microphone 
that shipped with my copy of ViaVoice for Mac OS X

VXI TalkPro Xpress--This is another analog microphone that can be 
used with both Macs and PCs

My USB adapter is an Andrea Electronics USB Pod--I've had this Pod 
produce results equal to $200 sound cards when using it on PCs when 
connected to the ANC-700 for those interested, and the Pod works 
quite well on my G4 iMac

I use ViaVoice for Mac OS X (with the recent update from IBM 
installed) and iListen on a 800 MHz G4 iMac with 768 MB of RAM 
running Jaguar.

Both the Andrea Electronics microphones work well with ViaVoice, with 
the Andrea Electronics ANC-700 producing better results.  However, 
Andrea Electronics microphones do *not* produce good results with 
iListen (MacSpeech technical support acknowledges mixed results with 
Andrea Electronics microphones).  While these are good microphones it 
has long been known that Andrea Electronics microphones have a weaker 
signal.  iListen has a problem with this.

The VXI TalkPro Xpress works quite well with both ViaVoice and 
iListen.  Very early in training iListen with the VXI TalkPro Xpress 
I was already getting better accuracy than fully trained profiles 
with either of the Andrea Electronics microphones.  I specifically 
purchased the VXI TalkPro Xpress because it did not have the battery 
box that most VXI microphones for speech recognition have.

NOTE: be sure to run the microphone setup in either ViaVoice or 
iListen after you start it.  Each speech recognition program requires 
slightly different microphone settings.  Running Microphone setup 
will assure the correct settings for the program you are using.

With the exception of the NC-7100 USB microphone that came with 
ViaVoice for Mac OS X all microphones and the USB adapter were 
purchased at eMicrophones.com  <http://www.emicrophones.com> 
eMicrophones.com is run by Martin Markoe a long-time and widely 
respected reseller of microphones for a variety of uses.

With the VXI TalkPro Xpress connected to an Andrea Electronics USB 
Pod I now have a combination that lets me with between ViaVoice and 
iListen at need while getting good accuracy in both programs.  As 
someone who depends on speech recognition due to a disability this is 
a *necessity*.
-- 
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T. Patrick Henebry