I wanted to test drive my Sony IC recorder with a brand new computer and Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.  I am using a brand new profile that has only received minimal training (about 5-7 minutes plus the previous article written with DNS 10).  I’m trying to emulate what the out of the box experience might be for new users, and so far I am very impressed. 

This is a test of Dragon NaturallySpeaking using my Sony IC recorder.

The first time that I’ve used my Sony IC recorder along with my new Logitech headset.

This particular headset fits over my ears and the microphone flexes to my mouth slightly. The headset has two 3.5 mm jacks, one for headphones and one for the microphone that plugs into my Sony recorder. I’ve used my Sony recorder a number of times with other head sets, and then I plug it into my computer via USB, download the MP3 files into my computer, and utilize Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 to convert the MP3 files into text.

This time I am going to be using Dragon NaturallySpeaking preferred 10 along with this new headset so this is a test both of the new software and of the new headset with a recorder that has worked very well in the past.

In the past I’ve used headsets that were much larger than this particular headset, and those were not necessarily always conducive to walking around or taking long hikes or walk through the woods. This time I intend to go hiking through the woods, specifically, up Crowder’s Mountain in North Carolina. Where I will be using the headset and my recorder to write a book I’m working on, and I will use it to write a number of other blog articles for my clients.

I work as a blogger and a ghostwriter, and this will give me greater portability than what I’ve had in the past.

I have noticed an increased level of accuracy using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, and I’m basically looking to see how well the accuracy improves with both a new headset and this recorder.

One thing about this recorder, it doesn’t have a wind screen on it, so I need to get to a craft store where I can find something to "craft" a windscreen. I’ve looked for small sized wind screens in the past, but I cannot find any at your typical music shops. As I am walking right now, I’m getting a little bit of wind on the microphone that I could hear in the earpieces. I do not know if that will have a detrimental effect, when Dragon NaturallySpeaking tries to do its thing.

We shall see, but I suspect that I will need to get a windscreen before this is all over. The wind is only blowing slightly right now, and I’m getting a significant amount of feedback in my ear.

I don’t know where you go to find that foamy material used for windscreens. But I think I might build a find something like that at a craft store and then cut or mold it into a shape that I need it to be.

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This is a quick test using my new windscreen developed for my  Logitech headset that plugs into a Sony recorder that I use for dictation purposes. I’m walking outside and hoping to catch a nice gentle breeze blowing in my face that would normally make my microphone go off the charts with static and noise that would render the dictation of my words somewhat useless. I have crafted this windscreen using a little foam that I cut from a mattress pad, along with the paw of a cat that I cut from a stuffed animal that was at the bottom of my kids toy bin that we had in storage. Hopefully they won’t miss the cat as they haven’t played with it in over two years, I do seem to recall that it may have been one of my daughters preferred toys when she was two years old, but she hasn’t seen it in a long, long time.

I’m outside walking on our dock. It is a nice beautiful day here in North Carolina although it’s a little bit chilly. I’m turning around in circles slowly trying to capture whatever breeze or wind might be blowing around and I can feel a little bit of breeze on my face right now.

Even though I can feel the breeze blowing in my face I cannot hear the breeze blowing into the microphone of my headset. That is a distinct improvement over results I was receiving just a few minutes ago before I put this windscreen onto my headset.

If you want to build a wind screen yourself for your own microphones even if they are noise cancellation microphones like my microphone is, All you need to do is get a microphone, and a piece of foam, and a stuffed animal such as a beanie baby. The thicker the fur, or the fuzzier the for the better. Think of those shaggy microphone covers that you see on microphones used by reporters during hurricanes. That is ultimately the goal that you’re searching for here for use outdoors. I molded the foam using a pair of scissors to get a general shape that I was looking for. It wasn’t pretty, but it seemed to be functional. I then cut off the leg of a beanie baby kitten, this was a large beanie baby not the typical variety. I then pulled that leg over top of the foam which I had inserted onto the actual microphone. I then proceeded to trim off the excess part of the leg of the kitten, until I just barely had the foam covered with a kitten paw.

For the record, I’ve never hurt a kitten in my life, and this is a stuffed kitten, a stuffed animal that is, and the kitten didn’t seem to complain even though I did feel a little bit like Sweeney Todd practicing for a vegas side show try out as I performed the surgery.

Once I had the paw fitted to the microphone foam, I then used a ponytail holder, to tighten the paw fur around the foam so that it would stay on the microphone and would not fall off.

That’s basically how I built this, and it does seem to be working. The wind is picking up right now, and I can hear it in my ears but I cannot hear it in the actual headphones. The wind is blowing a pretty good clip , leaves are falling off the trees and actually hitting me in the face at the moment but I do not hear any of this background noise coming through my microphone. I’ve been talking for about five minutes and 25 seconds.

For what it’s worth, the above totals up to about 606 words that I wrote in 5 1/2 minutes. That is about 110 words per minute that I was able to type while I was walking around on a fishing dock in North Carolina with a microphone headset and a Sony voice recorder. And I did that on a slightly windy day.  That’s what I was able to do and I was just testing things and playing around a little bit. Imagine what you could do if you put these tools to work.

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