Dragon Voice Recorder Edition or DVR Edition as it is more commonly known is often the keyword of many a Google search that ends up on my blog. I have referred to this product a couple of times over the life of iDictate but now feels like the right time to dedicate a post to this often overlooked Nuance family member.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking Voice Recorder Edition is a Windows only product and comes, depending on which country you are in, with either an Olympus, Philips or Sony digital voice recorder. Now the recorders included are not particularly flash – they are generally the lower end of the range recorders, but they are good enough for digitally recorded voice to text. The DVR edition is generally priced very low and for those unaware when bundled with a voice recorder looks to be a bit of a bargain. But buyer beware there are a few things you need to know about this little bundle.
DVR is a drastically scaled down version of full blown Dragon NaturallySpeaking, in fact all it is capable of doing is transcribing from your voice recorded on the digital voice recorder it comes with. Note how I said your voice – you can not record your lecturer, an interview, a meeting or any combination of those and expect DVR to transcribe it from audio to text for you, it won’t. You and you alone must voice train DVR and you and you alone must record your mumblings that you would like transcribed via the magic of Dragon.
Often people are looking for a Dragon solution that will both transcribe live spoken word via a mic while sitting at their PC and the ability for them, whilst travelling perhaps or away from the office, to record their dictations, thoughts and mumblings for Dragon to transcribe when they return to their PC. DVR is not the solution for this, that would be Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium Edition which allows both spoken and recorded audio to be transcribed from voice to text using the Dragon speech recognition engine.
One other key thing to note with the DVR edition. I mentioned earlier that the digital voice recorder included is often a lower end digital recorder – these are notetaker style digital voice recorders. Notetakers are designed really to record interviews and small meetings [can Dragon transcribe meetings or interviews?], they work by hitting record leaving alone on a desk then hitting stop at the end of your session. They do not have the rewind/review functionality of the more expensive digital dictaphones or the original micro tape dictaphones. With a notetaker you are best to make use of the pause button while speaking your dictation. Use it to pause and think about what you are going to say before you say it. This will allow you to record one long continuous digital audio recording that can be fed to Dragon rather that stopping/starting which will create many small, fragmented, individual digital audio files that will be time consuming to feed into DVR one after the other.
So if you are considering the Dragon Voice Recorder Edition please think wisely, do you only want to record your voice on a digital voice recorder for Dragon to transcribe. Or, like most, would you prefer the flexibility to either speak to your PC and have it transcribe (Home Edition) or best of both worlds speak to Dragon and be able to run a recording of your voice into Dragon (Premium Edition).
Should you buy it? In my opinion no – you would be much better served with either the Home or the Premium edition, just my opinion.
I was wondering when you say ‘all it is capable of doing is transcribing from your voice recorded on the digital voice recorder it comes with’, does this mean you cannot also use a second similar device with that software and it is literally limited to the one it comes with?
Many Thanks
Ian
Hello Ian
This is an old post and I am not sure this combo is still around. The cut down Dragon in this version would only take recorded audio so yes could take audio from another device as long as it is in the same audio format created by the packaged recorder. Much has changed since this post in the Dragon world.
Essentially if you just want to talk to your PC and have it type what you say go for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home edition. If you want to talk to your PC and have it type what you say and also listen to a recording of your voice, so two options, then go for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium.
Hope that helps.
Dave
Dictate