Bluetooth and WSR (Windows Speech Recognition)

Several weeks ago we began testing the new VXI Xpressway Bluetooth headset. Because the VXI Xpressway Bluetooth headset samples at 16 kHz, the same sampling rate used by WSR, I would have thought the VXI Xpressway would work with WSR. However, being Bluetooth it seems that the low end and high-end frequencies dropped out somewhat and you get a fairly compressed range of the human voice. Initial testing with WSR was disappointing with accuracy in the 80% range, 1-2 mistakes a paragraph. 

I went on to do many other things the past couple of weeks, but the initial poor accuracy kept gnawing at me because a couple of years ago, VXI worked with Nuance, the developer of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Nuance created a Bluetooth language model and a designation for a Bluetooth microphone. Accuracy was actually quite good with the VXI Bluetooth because of that.

Today I decided to create a new user in WSR, named it Bluetooth and read the first training. Enunciating clearly, not speaking particularly slow, accuracy rose to 95%. I corrected the paragraph, reread the paragraph, and attained 98%, two mistakes. Tomorrow I am going to do an additional training and see if that improves accuracy even more. I would say the additional training and careful enunciation make the difference. I would also guess if you use the WSRToolkit to add your typical medical reports this would also help make the use of the Bluetooth headset viable.

For anyone interested in the VXI Xpressway we not only include a padded neoprene zippered carry bag, but will include the WSRToolkit if you put in the Special Instructions box, “Send the WSRToolkit free of charge,” a $15.99 value. This offer is good until the end of the year.

Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

Nuance created a Bluetooth language model and a designation for a Bluetooth microphone.

Because Martin is not a Nuance certified speech recognition solutions partner, he is not privy to some of the inside information that is afforded to the “lack of a better term” insiders.

We recommend against Martin's advice on using the BlueParrott Xpressway bluetooth microphone in WSR. You can't force hardware to work in software that isn't designed for the task. Additionally, Nuance did not create a Bluetooth language model because it isn't physically possible. Nuance created was a specialized Bluetooth Acoustic Model which does not exist in WSR. It is unlikely that any Bluetooth microphone will work well in WSR until Microsoft develops their own Bluetooth Acoustic Model. Martin may have managed to eventually massage higher accuracy out of his user profile but at the cost of additional training which isn't a particularly good recommendation for any speech recognition application. Warnings against overtraining speech recognition applications have been covered in detail on various other speech recognition forums such as the KnowBrainer Speech Recognition Forums and speechcomputing so we will leave that topic for another day.

We can appreciate Martin's extra effort but the only speech recognition application we can recommend for the BlueParrott Xpressway is NaturallySpeaking. Anyone who purchases this microphone for WSR will most likely be disappointed. Martin even admits to having to work on making the Xpressway function in WSR. Personally, when we're shopping for a microphone, we like it to work right out of the box. Attempting to utilize extended training to compensate for the lack of a dedicated Bluetooth Acoustic Model is equivalent to spinning your wheels in the mud. We suspect that most people, who make the mistake of purchasing the Xpressway for WSR, will wind up returning it.

 

PS: We also include the same $2 thickly padded Neoprene Zippered Microphone Bag. 

 

Because Martin is not a Nuance certified speech recognition solutions partner, he is not privy to some of the inside information that is afforded to the "lack of a better term" insiders.

We were invited to the Dragon dealers conference in Phoenix this past June. We gave two presentations, one on Microphones for Dragon and one to educate Dragon dealers on WSR (Windows Speech Recognition). We did not see you there to learn some of the tricks of the trade?

We can appreciate Martin's extra effort but the only speech recognition application we can recommend for the BlueParrott Xpressway is NaturallySpeaking.

Using the WSRToolkit, a $15.99 add on to Windows Speech Recognition, eMicrophones did two things to the Bluetooth User Training we created yesterday:

1. We used the WSRToolkit's Add From File to parse twenty or so orthopedic medical reports. This feature improves the accuracy of your personal "Language Model." This works the same as Dragon's Add words from your documents feature.
2. Next we read two of the orthopedic reports to the WSRToolkit's "Train From Text" which improves the acoustic model (how you speak words) of the user profile. I then read the two orthopedic reports referenced in 2 above. Of approximately 400 words there were four mistakes which works out to 99% accuracy.

Lunis Orcutt said, "Anyone who purchases this microphone for WSR will most likely be disappointed."
Lunis, you also said you could never recommend the original VXI Bluetooth B10-GTX headset which hundreds of our customers have been using successfully the past two years. It does take some effort to discover how to make some things work.

Following the training procedures described above is what we normally do when we create a Dragon new user profile in terms of adding our typical documents. Taking a few minutes to read a couple of documents in order to use an inexpensive wireless microphone successfully is well worth the trouble to many people.

--
Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

We were invited to the Dragon dealers conference in Phoenix this past June. We gave two presentations, one on Microphones for Dragon and one to educate Dragon dealers on WSR (Windows Speech Recognition). We did not see you there to learn some of the tricks of the trade?

Really! (As they say on Saturday Night Live) Would that be the same VAR conference where you initiated contact with Larry Allen and casually mentioned that you just happened to be driving through Phoenix "on vacation" on coincidently the same day of the event and you would just happen to be willing to perform your microphone dog & pony show? Would that be the same conference that you are obviously hinting that we were unwelcome to attend. Outright stating this has gotten you in trouble in the past when Larry Allen had to come onto this forum and publicly embarrass you by pointing out your deception here. Would you be referring to that Phoenix conference that you essentially invited yourself to? Are you serious? Hasn't Larry Allen (one of the key conference organizers) explained this to your humiliation enough times? As we've explained to you on those few forums where you were still allowed to post, the Phoenix VAR conference was held for on-site vendors and trainers; not Web vendors. Do you not realize that your behavior was noted by both the VAR channel and Nuance.  You can pretty much count on NOT being allowed to crash another NaturallySpeaking or Nuance shindig. Your term “tricks” certainly applies.

Again, we can appreciate the steps you outlined in #1 and #2 even though you are apparently having difficulties distinguishing the Acoustic Model from the Language Model but just how much extra work do you really expect your customers to go through just to make their microphone usable and even then, we're not buying your claim. You can put red lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig. We're not questioning your efforts but rather pointing out that no matter how you massage a WSR user profile, you're still not going to be able to get past the fact that it does not include a Bluetooth Acoustic Model and until it does, it's not going to be well-suited for the general public. You're attempting to change the laws of physics and that just isn't possible. Let us put it another way. This is almost equivalent to running a standard microphone output into a line in jack. Obviously the signal would be too hot for the line in jack but if you back off enough or lower the volume of your voice enough you can almost produce acceptable results but this certainly falls short of making it user-friendly.

Lunis, you also said you could never recommend the original VXI Bluetooth B10-GTX headset which hundreds of our customers have been using successfully the past two years. It does take some effort to discover how to make some things work.

You've mentioned those hundreds of satisfied customers before (although you haven't offered any proof) and all we can say is that the B10-GTX Bluetooth headset wasn't good enough for our customers with approximately 50% of our customers returning their purchase. With that kind of a return rate, it didn't take long for us to realize that the B10-GTX simply didn't meet our standards. We can appreciate that the B10-GTX worked out for you but we only offer top-of-the-line speech recognition microphones. You won't find the Andrea NC-181 anywhere on our site because We only sell the best. Now where have we heard that one before ;). Have you noticed the B10-GTX microphone is now discontinued? Hmmm...

No matter how fast you flap your arms, you're not going to fly. We realize it is not your intention to mislead the public but from our point of view, you are misleading yourself and WSR users. If you plan on selling the BlueParrott Xpressway to WSR users, you might want to include a prepaid return shipping label because you're going to see a lot of returns. Meanwhile we will stand by our original statements.

KnowBrainer:

Really! (As they say on Saturday Night Live) Would that be the same VAR conference where you initiated contact with Larry Allen and casually mentioned that you just happened to be driving through Phoenix "on vacation" on coincidently the same day of the event and you would just happen to be willing to perform your microphone dog & pony show?

Click Here to see the answer given by Larry Allen, one of the organizers of the conference to which I was invited, giving legitimacy to my speech recognition credentials. He said:
"I disagree with several of the comments made by Lunis about the purposes, attendees, and the character of the meeting; but since he wasn't invited and wasn't there I'll spare this audience those quibbles."

--
Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

We don't see what any of this has to do with Bluetooth microphone usage in WSR but we would be careful when inventing stories about how Larry Allen came to INVITE YOU to this conference, as well as why we were not there. You forgot to mention that he (Larry Allen, the conference organizer) made these statements in repudiation of your false accusation that we had been singled out to be BANNED from this conference when in fact we had simply not fallen into the particular category of VAR who would have had any reason to want to participate. You had been caught in a lie then and he publicly called you on it. Sound familiar? Detect a pattern?

We don't see what any of this has to do with Bluetooth microphone usage in WSR but we would be careful when inventing stories about how Larry Allen came to INVITE YOU to this conference, as well as why we were not there. You forgot to mention that he (Larry Allen, the conference organizer) made these statements in repudiation of your false accusation that we had been singled out to be BANNED from this conference when in fact we had simply not fallen into the particular category of VAR who would have had any reason to want to participate. You had been caught in a lie then and he publicly called you on it. Sound familiar? Detect a pattern?

What this has to do with is your saying in another post:
"Because Martin is not a Nuance certified speech recognition solutions partner, he is not privy to some of the inside information that is afforded to the "lack of a better term" insiders."

The above statement questions my qualifications. If you read what Larry says, not what you think it says, it backs up exactly what I have been saying. There was no lie. Find a reference to where I said you were Banned and post it? What I have said is that in a discussion with several Dragon Conference attendees it was mentioned they would not have attended the conference if certain outspoken members of the Dragon reseller community attended. One person then said, a learning/sharing experience would be impossible if any strong personality attended.

As for calling me a liar, you must have been looking in the mirror. Do you remember when you said things like:
1. Philips Speech Processing uses your user manual and not their own.
(A Philps manager called you to tell you to don't say that ever again)
2. The Radio Shack knockoff (good accuracy but uncomfortable) you still sell, you said came from the same factory as the highly regarded Sennheiser ME3.
(When we checked the shipping cartons, the Radio Shack said made in the Philippines and the Sennheiser ME3 said made in China).

Sincerely,
Marty Markoe

PS. I'm sure you wish to continue this thread, but it is the end for me as I really have business and customers to attend to.

I'm sure you wish to continue this thread, but it is the end for me as I really have business and customers to attend to.

We never wanted to respond to this thread and if it were not for your ploy to mislead the forum membership into thinking that they could use a Bluetooth microphone with WSR, we wouldn't have needed to post at all. Your post has the tone of a vendor who has fallen on hard times and can only put himself in a positive light by slandering other vendors. We would probably all appreciate it if you would keep your word and not respond but we are not holding our collective breaths.

The above statement questions my qualifications. If you read what Larry says, not what you think it says, it backs up exactly what I have been saying. There was no lie.

Did you say qualifications? Do you have some sort of speech recognition certification that we are not privy to? Are you perhaps a speech recognition developer, Nuance or Microsoft speech certified/licensed or even a member of the BBB? Exactly what credentials/qualifications would you be referring to? And while you're thinking about that answer, did some other person by the name of Martin Markoe create the following 3 posts on the very same thread, beginning on page 8 on the EMRupdate forum at http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/t/16627.aspx?PageIndex=8 ?

 

When I asked where my buddy Lunis Knowbrainer was, I was shocked to be told he was not invited. Apparently Knowbrainer purchases Dragon from another VAR. This VAR partner was also banned from the Nuance VAR meeting. Just giving another perspective.

Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

 

Was that really “another perspective” or an unsubstantiated lie? Where is your proof? Part of the licensing agreement with Nuance precludes any vendor from purchasing Nuance software from another vendor. Here is a 2nd similar posting in the same thread:

 

What does "not invited" imply to you? Hmm, the exact words said to me were, "Lunis was persona non gratis." Someone else mentioned Lunis' partner Paul threw a coniption when he found he too was not invited. Sounds to me like someone threw a party for 30 or so Dragon VARS (and one non VAR) and you were not invited. I wonder why???

Adios.

Marty

 

“coniption” is spelled as “conniption”. Are you even using speech recognition software? PS: the term you are looking for is “persona non grata”; not “persona non gratis”. It is usually considered best to hide one's ignorance when attempting to look more clever than the person you are trying to insult. Here is the 3rd similar posting in the same thread (we assume 3 examples will suffice):

 

Again we ask, why mention the above when 30 Certified Dragon VARs (3/4 Gold Certified) were invited to a Dragon Conference in Phoenix June 11-13, 2009 and Knowbrainer and his partner were specifically singled out for exclusion? 

 

You keep saying that you never said we were banned but you said we were “singled out for exclusion”. Which is it? If we were banned, where is your evidence? Larry didn't want to have to come on and post but after your unsubstantiated character assassination (verified in this post) he felt compelled to. Here is the part to Larry’s post that you conveniently left out which directly contradicts your previous 3 postings:

 

I disagree with Marty's statement that Lunis was banned.  Lunis was not banned.  He and many other well-qualified VARs (resellers), large and small, were not invited.  There were a limited number of attendees/agenda slots. It was intended to be a symposium-style meeting where all attendees were presenters.

 

Larry Allen

Softnet Systems, Inc.

Here is the evidence you asked for right out of your own mouth along with Larry's contradiction so who should we believe; a disgruntled desperate vendor with an ax to grind or another Nuance gold certified vendor who was one of the principal organizers of the Phoenix VAR conference? Is everyone else lying or just you?

As to your baseless charges... where is your evidence about the Philips manual and the RadioShack microphones? It seems you're the one who can't make his case. Perhaps you should consider re-channeling your energy from attacking legitimate vendors and focusing on fixing your business model. All this mudslinging does is detract time and energy from both of our businesses and you may have plenty of time for this but we don't and it's certainly not what this forum is all about.

Don't both of you (Lunis & Marty) have final exams this week and next? I really want you both to graduate from what is obviously your Sophomore year.

Chris,

Lunis uses conjecture not proof when he says the VXI Xpressway won't work with WSR. All one has to do to test this for themselves is:

1. Create a new user in WSR, Windows Speech Recognition (about 1 minute)
2. Use the VXI Xpressway Bluetooth Microphone to read the first training selection (about 4 minutes)
3. Use the WSRToolkit's Add From File feature to add about 20 representative reports or documents (about 5 minutes)
4. Use the WSRToolkit's Train From Text Feature to read 3 or 4 of the documents to improve the Acoustic Model (about 4 minutess)

In about 14 minutes of training, accuracy was 99% on reading the documents fed to the system as topic. This is slightly longer than doing this in Dragon, but then again WSR is FREE in Vista and Windows 7.

Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

Quick, somebody throw Knowbrainer a life saver. He is drowning in his own lies.

Marty

Knowbrainer wrote:
"As to your baseless charges... where is your evidence about the Philips manual and the RadioShack microphones?"

Here is the screenshot from your own forum where you misrepresented the Sennheiser microphone (clearly made in China) is made in the same factory as the Radio Shack (clearly made in the Philippines). I sent also sent Lunis a private message referencing the database link held by Nuance that shows where he said, ""KnowBrainer, the company that wrote the Philips 9600 User Guide that is now used internally at Philips,"

Marty, is this your Hail Mary? When you're in an un-defendable position, the best form of defense is to fake an offense; even when you lack evidence. One might think you were a criminal defense attorney in a former life. We can certainly appreciate that you're no doubt a little upset about your integrity and qualifications being brought into question, since you don't seem to be able to defend your position or prove your accusations. You're so-called evidence is laughable and you really should stop posting this foolishness instead of bringing it to everyone's attention. However, since you are going to insist on this adolescent behavior, we will once again placate you, even though most of the other forums where you posted this foolishness have removed your postings.

We received your hyperlink but it doesn't go anywhere. Here's the link you sent us http://support.lhsl.com/databases/dragon/webdisc.nsf/UNID/831B414DAC4362218525738A006FA4DA?OpenDocument . Referring to a dead link as evidence looks questionable at best.

As far as the posting you copied from our forum is concerned... look at the date. It's over 2 years old and it additionally states that we “believe” that the ME3 knockoff was made in the Philippines. Did you catch the “believe” part as in “our opinion”. Even if we were wrong we used the term “believe” as in “not necessarily a fact”.

Considering your recent behavior on this forum, shouldn't you be keeping a low profile right about now? From where we're standing, it looks like you're the one that needs a lifesaver. I'm embarrassed to admit that Chris is right. We are both acting like a couple of adolescences. Can we please stop feuding and go back to answering speech recognition questions now?

I recently bought a Plantronics Pro, blue tooth headpiece, for $99 at Radio Shack. This device is made to pair with a cell phone and I in fact paired it with my iPhone. I then bought from Amazon, an Iogear  Bluetooth dongle the size of my little finger nail. I then paired the Plantronics Pro with a Dell desktops running Windows 7. I am using this Plantronics with WSR with an imported medical Lexicon.  If this works well, I am going to import my profile with the Windows Profile Tool to all my Desktops running WSR. This will in effect allow me to walk up to any WSR enabled computer and start dictating without wires. I did the basic mic pairing and training and while this is no DNS Medical Pro, (which I have), I'm guessing accuracy is 94% and that is without any scanning of medical documentation, import of 9000 medical words, little training and using a mic meant for a cell phone!  I'm hopeful for 98% with dedicated tweaking.

My point in this post is that technology is changing. WSR is better than ever and apparently so are bt headpieces.

You may be able to get by with the Plantronics Voyager Pro but our test results found the new BlueParrott Xpressway bluetooth wireless microphone to be the most accurate for use with NaturallySpeaking and the only one we recommend. The Xpressway is about the same price, includes a flexible boom, 3 recharging options, 3 wearing options (traditional over the head, earhook and behind the head), superior noise cancellation, flexible boom and a 16 hour battery. Other perks include instant MultiSync with multiple devices (like the Voyager) and our version of the Xpressway additionally includes a foam windscreen for outdoor use and our thickly padded neoprene zippered microphone bag.

Besides the lower accuracy, the other problem we have with the Plantronics Voyager Pro is the “in your ear” design. Of course this is just personal but we dislike shoving anything smaller than our elbow into our ear. One of the advantages of standard headsets with one speaker (like the Xpressway) is that you don't have to position the microphone speaker on your ear. You can easily position most traditional headset microphones with the speaker in front or behind your ear which we find preferable when needing to wear a headset for more than 10 minutes.

The only caveat we have is that WSR isn't exactly professional speech recognition software and doesn't include a dedicated Bluetooth language model like NaturallySpeaking. The language model is very important for good speech recognition results. Unfortunately, some non-Nuance-certified microphone vendors actually recommend Bluetooth microphones for WSR. We consider anything under 96% accuracy to be unacceptable because you have to spend too much time correcting. We can certainly appreciate the fact that WSR is free and on every Windows Vista and Windows 7 computer but considering that you have to create a user profile anyway, we can't help wondering if it wouldn't be more prudent to install DNS on every computer that you use since it includes 10 activations which can be expanded if need be. Remember, you can Roam your user profile across multiple computers connected to a local intranet or even the Internet. Whenever you make a change to one user profile, it is saved to all profiles. We also like the idea of being able to eventually plug into any computer to use the built-in speech engine but for serious work, we recommend sticking with DNS; especially since you already own it. When you're thinking about your speech recognition options, don't forget those built-in time-saving macros (even without KnowBrainer 2008). The speech recognition engine only makes up about 25% of the total dictation equation and even if WSR's accuracy was as good as DNS, you would still only have half of the functionality and more importantly, half of the efficiency. WSR is great for consumer use but we can't recommended it as a professional work tool because it's equivalent to a professional mechanic shopping for his tools at Kmart. Just our $.02...

digital-doc:

My point in this post is that technology is changing. WSR is better than ever and apparently so are bt headpieces.

I was testing some new Bluetooth USB dongles when I saw your post. The Bluetooth microphone we use is the VXI Xpressway. In our opinion, it is the only really worthwhile Bluetooth available for speech recognition. The reason we feel this way is because VXI was able to increase the audio sampling rate to make it closer to the rate that speech recognition software samples audio at. The Bluetooth headsets generally available sample audio at a lower rate, the ones cell phones and telephones use.

Below my name quick test of two passages that were passed through our Add From File feature of the WSRToolkit. Not only did we add the documents, but we trained them to our voice in the toolkit. The implication is that WSR is quite usable if you add your typical documents and train your voice to several of them.

Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

Sample Reading

Four score and seven years ago our fathers bought forth on this continent in the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated the proposition that all men are created equal.

The rainbow passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air they act like a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers bought forth on this continent in the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated the proposition that all men are created equal.

The rainbow passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air they act like a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.