So I’ve been playing around, or rather doing the speech training and tutorials built into Windows, with the new headset microphone that I bought. I bought the Microsoft Live Chat LX-3000 headset.

So I got through the tutorial, including the whole commands and controlling windows programs with it OK. But despite the dictation practice I did via the Windows integrated training the dictation isn’t the least bit easy. I can say a word like ‘OK’ which you say a lot inside the WSR software and it will tell you to repeat it didn’t understand despite you successfully using it dozens of times before.

I’ve tried to find tutorials on how to clearly enunciate online thinking it’s my speech pattern/voice that causing the software to have so much trouble in the dictation which of course given the complexity of dictating words over giving a select amount of commands which would be easier to the computer to accurate interpret.

I’m still awaiting the other half of this order which is coming by the same courier service but from another depot and is still marked via tracking as ‘out for delivery’.

I’m not going to give up. I want to use the dictation to help when my hands/wrists are too bad to use because of either my RA or my Carpal Tunnel (0r both!).

As I’ve only been using it for barely two hours it’s still very early days for me as I haven’t used SR software apart from the free dragon dictate application in the iTunes store which isn’t exactly accurate half the time I attempt to use it. Especially as you can only dictate a dozen or so words before the software sends it via wireless to their database online and your words are dictated back and appear on screen. I was getting quite good using this on my iPod but once your dictation is more than a few sentences it’s hard to navigate too much more. It’s OK for dictating twitter messages or notes but isn’t much good for actual blocks of text.

I really think a lot of it could be user error and I’m speaking too far/close to the microphone or not speaking clearly enough. Or am speaking either too fast or too slow for the software to pick up my words exactly.

So it will be a learning process anyway. I’ll be able to compare it to the dictation I will use into my Sony digital recorder and import into the dragon recorder software that it comes with and see better if it’s more so my error than the program(s) when I see the transcribed text from those recordings that the dragon recorder returns.

I am thinking of recording both onto the digital recorder at the same time as dictating into the windows program via the mic and see which program more accurate transcribes my voice it will be a good measure stick for finding where the error stands in how I’m attempting to use the software and the mic as I haven’t used any mic let alone a headset before.

Well my hands are hurting again so I’ll end this here. I’m not missing or abandoning the blog, but am looking into ways to more regularly update despite my bad health. Hence wanting to use VRS and video reviews rather than rely on my hands being OK enough to type up anything substantial.