Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance, currently at version 12, can use a digital recording of your spoken voice and transcribe that into text (Premium and Professional versions only), this is commonly referred to as deferred transcription. With so many people now owning either a digital voice recorder and/or an iPhone or iPad with a voice recording app the question is often asked “is the recording quality good enough for use with Dragon NaturallySpeaking?“.
Luckily the nice people at Nuance have a quick and easy way for you to check, via the Nuance Hardware Compatibility website. This site shows compatibility for all Nuance software but you can specifically drill down on Dragon NaturallySpeaking and then look through the Recorders (current) or Recorders (legacy) for older digital voice recorders.
The Nuance Hardware Compatibility website is also worth a visit if you are planning to buy a new microphone or mic and headset combo for use with Dragon Naturally Speaking as these too are listed and given a Dragon accuracy score out of six, the more dragons the better the accuracy. We like the Plantronics DSP-400 and have been promoting that for a few years now. The DSP-400 achieved a six dragon accuracy score and is an excellent all round headset/mic combo which is both Mac and Windows compatible, works with Skype also.
Currently the only universal (iPhone and iPad) voice recording app which is listed as compatible is the awesome Andrea Pure PureAudio Pro Recorder – Andrea Electronics iOS app (found in the Recorders (current) dropdown which achieves five out of six dragons. I have this app on my iPhone 4 running iOS5 and it works beautifully, the app also works on the 3GS iPhone.