Microphones and Headsets

Selecting the right microphone and headset is important when trying to get the best in speech recognition performance.

Unfortunately, most microphones and headsets available on the market are not suitable for speech recognition. There are various reasons for this:

  • They do not have a high-performance active noise cancellation, which means that slight background noise can result in major recognition errors.
  • They have an insufficient signal-to-noise ratio, leading to sound distortions and recognition errors, especially in the event of so-called “plosive sounds”.
  • With analogue devices (i.e. devices without USB technology), the acoustic signal must be converted using the PC’s sound card. In many cases, this results in deterioration of the signal and, in turn, poorer recognition.