Recently, Dragon announced that the Norcom portable dictation machine can be used in conjunction with Dragon NaturallySpeaking to allow people to dictate their thoughts away from their computer, and then have their thoughts transcribed. (See Dragon's press release for details.)
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| I have a Norcom portable dictation machine. The Norcom model 2500 portable dictation machine is a small, high-quality analog recorder. It is 5" x 2" x 3/4" in size and weights around 6 ounces. It records on a mini-cassette which holds 15 minutes on a side. The unit is powered by two AAA batteries. |
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| There is a small microphone at the top of the unit. You dictate by holding the unit about 1 1/2 inches from your mouth and then speaking in the same style of dictating voice that you use when talking directly to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. On the side of the unit there is a control which allows you to start and stop recording as well as rewind and start playback. |
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| In order to use the Norcom portable dictation machine with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you also need the black box (the Norcom SRC-1). The black box contains some type of circuitry which allows the Norcom output to be fed into your computer. There are places on the black box to plug a cable from the black box to the microphone input of your computer, and a cable from the black box to the ear phone output on the Norcom 2500 portable dictation machine. |
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| To use the system, you talk into the Norcom unit. Then, later, you rewind the tape and connect the Norcom unit to the black box and the black box your computer. Then you start Dragon NaturallySpeaking, turn on the microphone, and then start playing the Norcom recorded tape. Dragon NaturallySpeaking will then recognized the speech being played from the Norcom recorder. |
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| When using the Norcom unit, I recommend creating a new user and training that user explicitly using the Norcom system. Training in this manner is a little tedious. For every paragraph in General Training, you first have to read that paragraph into the Norcom system, and then playback the Norcom recorded speech into the General Training program. However, I was able to complete General Training with almost no rejections successfully. |
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| Once trained, the recognition accuracy of speech recorded on the Norcom unit is very good. The accuracy is not quite as good as speech spoken directly into the headset microphone, but it is close. The main drawback of using the Norcom unit is that there is no visual feedback while you dictate to tell you that you are not speaking clearly. You have to wait until you feed the recorded speech back into Dragon NaturallySpeaking to find out whether or not you're talking clearly enough. |
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| The Norcom system does a very good job of maintaining a steady volume. You can actually vary the distance between the microphone in your mouth by as much as an inch or two in each direction while you talk and Norcom unit will make sure that the volume remains constant. This is important since the Norcom unit does not require a headset microphone so the microphone position will tend to drift. |
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| The Norcom unit seems to be very good if you are away from you computer and want to dictate a few thoughts for later transcription. It is not, however, a solution for recording meetings or conferences since (1) you have to train it for one voice, and (2) the close talking microphone can only handle speech within 1 and 2 1/2 inches. |
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| In general, however, I like it. The ergonomics are very good, and resulting dictation is very accurate. |
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