The Plantronics analog microphone headset for my recently acquired Sony digital voice recorder just arrived. Gauging by a first test, it seems to make a huge difference in the quality of Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s transcription from the DVR. Here was my first test, with corrections of errors in brackets:

This is the test of the new analog microphone from Plantronics. I’m not sure how well this will work I might need additional training in Dragon NaturallySpeaking before this set up [setup] with the digital was [voice] recorder and microphone works adequately

So only two errors! That’s much better than what I was getting without the microphone headset. Those transcriptions were way, way off.

However, all is not rosy here in the land of transcription. Yesterday I discovered that my Sony DVR has exactly the same problem as my Sony Clie, namely that my computer (running Win2000) will not read any memory stick in the usual fashion. My computer shows the memory stick (either in the Clie or in the DVR) as a drive, but it will not read that drive. It complains that the drive is not formatted, which is a bald-faced lie. With the Clie, I managed to transfer data between the computer and the memory stick using a handy little program called BlueSync, which syncs my memory stick during a HotSync.

So now, in order to transfer my voice recordings from the DVR to the computer for transcription, I have to move the memory card to the Clie and then HotSync. This is rather inconvenient, but at least that works. And I am particularly delighted to know that Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s transcription from the DVR with the new microphone works wonders!

And by the way, this is another blog entry written with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.