Re: MacSpeech Dictate Amazon reviews - comments?

On Apr 5, 8:06 am, Mark Conrad <non...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<e70d20ac-60f5-4591-82f7-1a6790e57...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 billmcc <william.mcclatc...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is no good microphone for the Mac available as of yet.  And
I don't mean in terms of the audio quality, but in terms of the
ergonomics.  Can you imagine your doctor with a headphone and boom
mike seeing you??  There needs to be a more traditional dictating
microphone, similar to the Philips Speech Mike used in Dragon on
Windows, that contains some control buttons as well as a quality
microphone for the audio input.  This is the microphone shape that
has stood the test of time, not the goofy and geeky headphone
with boom mike.

Quick question, Bill.

I went to the Philips website, it appears to me that the
several models of "Philips Speech Mike" were all combination
products, i.e. both a microphone AND a digital recorder in
one hand-held package that looks like a TV remote control.

Was I looking in the wrong place on their website?

I am confused because most all digital recorders nowadays
have built-in microphones, but they  _call_  the combination
device a "recorder", not a "microphone".

Only some of these combination recorder/microphone devices
are of sufficient quality to earn Dragon's blessing,
according to the Dragon/Nuance website.

Usually the higher priced recorders in the $300 range perform
well, like the Sony model ICD-MX200, (my recorder) - and the
higher priced Philips and Olympus models.

The best recorders in the world will not be able to be used
until  _someone_  grinds out the necessary driver software
to allow their high quality sound files to be transferred
over to theMacSpeech Dictateapp'.

I think MacSpeech presently supports one older Olympus
model MS-2, they have not got around to certifying any
more modern recorders yet.

In fact, even the old Olympus MS-2 will not presently
perform well withMacSpeech Dictate, because there are
no software drivers to pump in the high quality sound
from the Olympus MS-2 to theMacSpeech Dictateapp'.

Only way presently to get the recorded sound from the
Olympus MS-2 recorder to 'Dictate is via the headphone jacks
- and we all know that method yields very low quality sound.

In the case of Dragon and Sony, Dragon got Sony to create the
necessary driver utility for the Sony ICD-MX200 recorder.

What a friggin' circus that was.  I paid extra to get a Sony
model ICD-200R9 model recorder, because supposedly the driver
software was included with the recorder, on a CD.

Come to find out it was obsolete driver software on the CD,
so I had to download an upgraded driver from the Sony website.

Only difference between the Sony ICD-200 and Sony ICD-200R9
is that infernal obsolete driver CD.  grrr

Just another case of "buyer beware".

Sorry for the rant, but it really bugged me.

Back to my question, was I looking in the wrong place on
the Philips website, concerning the Philips "microphone"?

Mark-

--
I really wanted to get into WHY digital recorders are so
important to medical professionals, but that can wait for
another post.

A couple of things here, if I may:

First, you would want to hook up a recording device to a Mac through a
USB adapter - not through the sound input jack (and certainly not
through the headphone jack, as that is output only).

Second, for the absolute best quality for a digital recording use an
iPod with the Voice Notes feature. That would be the iPod Video,
Classic iPod or iPod Nano (2nd or 3rd generation). Use it with any of
the three external microphones available (From Belkin, Griffin, or
XtremeMac), but plug the microphone that came with iListen or
MacSpeech Dictate into the microphone adapter's sound input port
instead of using the built-in Mic. For those who fine this
inconvenient, we recommend the XtremeMac MicroMemo because it has a
boom mic that allows you to hold the iPod in a more ergonomically
comfortable position while maintaining the proper distance between the
microphone and your mouth.

The reason the iPod is better is because a). it samples at 22kHz in
low quality and 44kHz in high quality - digital recorders typically
sample at lower rates, usually around 11 or 12kHz; and b). the samples
are saved in a format that can be easily converted to something
useable by iListen using iTunes. (MacSpeech Dictate does not have an
option for transcribing files yet. That will be coming later, at some
point after Correction and Spelling Mode are done.)

Finally, here is a link to the Philips SpeechMike page on the Philips
web site: http://tinyurl.com/69hfqn. But keep in mind that it is not
supported for use with either iListen or MacSpeech Dictate.

Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
.

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