Thanks for your comment. Essentially any good Philips or Olympus digital notetaker would do the trick. You will only need a lapel mic if the location you record in has noise in the background. The recommendation for all voice recognition software is to either dictate or record in a quiet environment for best results. If you are recording in a quiet location then simply use the recorder without the lapel mic – the mic in the recorders are excellent quality.

Any good quality recorder which records in .mp3 or .wma will be compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Don’t forget you will need the Preferred version (for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10) and the Premium version if you go with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11. The Standard (v10) or Home (v11) editions do not allow for transcription from a recording.

Have a look at the WS series recorders from Olympus also. Don’t forget that digital notetakers do not have the rewind/review capabilities of the digital dictaphones and so you will need to think about what you are going to say before you record. A tip is to use the pause option on the digital notetakers to think before speaking and to allow dictation into one audio file.

I hope that helps.

Dave
Dictate Australia

I am on the market for a simple to use digital voice recorder. I will mainly use it to record myself. I do want a lepal mic with an instant on/off feature on it…and with Naturally Dragon. So far, the Philps LFH617/27 seems to be a good choice. What are your recomemdations? I want to stay between $100-130USD.
thx,
jose

Dragon NaturallySpeaking can only be used to transcribe single speaker audio, it can not transcribe multiple voices from interviews, focus groups or meetings. You would have noticed with your Dragon that you would have had to create a profile and then train that profile to your voice. Dragon uses this profile to analyse audio and as it is trained to your voice and your voice only, introducing additional voices will serve to both ruin the profile training you have already done and produce poor quality transcription.

Voice recognition software has come along way in recent years and the accuracy that can be achieved from voice recognition software is very high. Voice recognition for multiple speakers is still some years away I believe, your only options are to transcribe your audio yourself using a transcription kit (headset, transcription software, foot pedal) or outsource your transcription to a company like our sister company The Transcription People who have a team of experienced transcription typists who can transcribe your audio for you.

I hope that helps.

Dave
Dictate

This question is in response to your You Tube video “Olympus WS-210S with Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred version 10.”

I purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking solely to use the “Transcribe Recording” feature of the software. However, the program garbles the audio when it’s transcribing multiple speakers.

Will the program work with recordings of different people’s voices – such as for lectures of different professors that you record? Does the program have to become adjusted to each new speaker? How long does the program take to become acclimated to the tone and inflections of new speakers if there are multiple speakers in one recording? I’ve been training the program to become adjusted to new words using the training feature, but that doesn’t seem to be working.

If you have any helpful advice about how to correct this problem, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Yvette Burtley

The Philips 660 is a simple to use digital voice recorder, I would be more than happy to talk you through the basic functions of setting the correct recording mode, recording audio and audio transfer from the recorder to your PC. I have just reviewed the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Digital Voice Recorder Edition and that information can be found in my blog.

Please email us at sales@dictate.com.au and we can contact you in regard a walk through of the voice recorder.

Thanks

Dave
Dictate Australia

Sorry to hear of your bad experience with Dragon. Your problems could have been caused by a number of factors, most commonly an incompatible or poor quality sound card, this supplies poor quality audio into Dragon and can lead to poor performance. Because of this, most resellers recommend and offer a high quality noise cancelling headset with Dragon, we bundle the Plantronics DSP-400 in our bundle. The noise cancelling USB headset bypasses the onboard sound card and feeds clear audio into Dragon giving vastly improved performance and accuracy.

You can check the compatibility of your soundcard on the Nuance hardware compatibilty website: http://support.nuance.com/compatibility/default.asp
Select Dragon NaturallySpeaking and then Soundcards / Integrated Audio for the list of compatible soundcards.

I have had to call the Nuance support line a couple of times and yes I agree at times it can be a trying experience but on the whole the overseas consultants have been able to help with my questions.

I would be happy to talk with you to see if I can help improve your experience with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Dave
Dictate Australia