Help, using Dragon in parallels, what mic works?

D

djames114

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I recently got a new mac pro, 2.66 GHz, 5 gigs of RAM, parallels with windows XP installed successfully. I also put on Microsoft Office and my favorite windows program, Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation 9.5.

All programs are running okay, but the problem is getting a mic to work in Parallels Dragon. Mac Pro won't take analog mics, so I tried cyber acoustics usb stereo headset. It operates, but there are way too many mistakes to be normal. When I go to play back sentences I've just dictated into Dragon, I hear lots of static. Based on previous threads I've read, I've tried adjusting input volume on my mac and on parallels, but the audio I speak to the mic still comes out badly.

Is this just a case of a bad mic for my system, or am I missing a step? If it is the mic, what mic would be most likely to give good clean audio?

Thanks.
 
Blue screen on use of Mic in Dragon

I'm running the new macbook pro 2.5ghz on Leopard with 2gb RAM.

I've been able to use both the internal mic, and my Plantronics Bluetooth headset, and Dragon recognises them both. However, after less than a minute of usage, the Virtual Machine blue screens and restarts, every time.

Any Ideas?
 

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Parallels, Dragon & Mic Problem

I posted this last week after MUCH trial and error. It surprises me that Nuance or Parallels don't knowledge base this problem.

Hope it helps. Again gratefully acknowledge post by Webair of 22 July last year.

The trick is not to attempt to connect your USB microphone to the virtual machine, but to connect the USB mike to the Macintosh by selecting it in system preferences> sound, which will make it the default microphone for the Mac - and for the virtual machine, as long as you don't attempt to connect it to the Virtual machine.

Below is the procedure you should follow:

1. In the Mac OS go to the "System Preferences" - "Sound" - "Input" - highlight you device in the list (this will make it the default audio input device for Mac).
2. Set the input volume in the Preference pane so that the microphone input level peaks near the middle of the bar range.
3. Start Parallels Desktop, choose your VM. In Configuration Editor turn "Autoconnect USB devices" to OFF. [NOTE: in parallels desktop 3.0 Build 5584, you don't seem to get this option; you should choose "connect to the Mac" or "ask me what to do", but if you choose the latter option, whatever you do don't connect the USB mike to the Virtual Machine].
4. In Configuration Editor, in the Audio tab, choose the Default Audio as the input device.
5. Run the VM.
6. Voice settings for Playback and Recording in the Windows XP Control Panel should be left at Intel[r] Integrated Audio.

[I would double check that your USB mike is not selected in the USB options in the devices menu.]

If you have already set up a user in NaturallySpeaking, when you try to open it under this new configurations, it will probably ask you to redo your audio settings, which will simply involve doing the volume check and the signal-to-noise check again; this will take a minute or so.

The result: the bizarre CPU fluctuations that were destroying my dictation accuracy have vanished. Instead of CPU usage hovering around 100% when using NaturallySpeaking, and then inexplicably crashing, CPU usage runs between about 25% and 50%, the Mac runs nice and cool and dictation accuracy is better than it has ever been.

PS: the above procedure WITH PICTURES can be found at this address which I found at the Dragon NS forum hosted by Nuance:

http://www.speechrecsolutions.com/parallels_setup.htm

Highly recommended.

Cheers, Tom
 
Problems with Dragon Naturally Speaking

I have tried this several times, following exactly the procedure described here. It used to work in the past, however it does not seem to work since I installed Leopard and a BootCamp partition.

I am using a Plantronic USB headset DSP 400, DNS 9.5, Parallels 3, bult 5584.

Sometimes DNS works for a short period and then stops recognizing (I get <????> on the Dragon Bar)
If I test hardware under windows control panel > sound > voice > test hardware, the sound quality is terrible and full of static noise.

Configuration is as follows.
On the Mac side Plantronic is selected as the Default device
On the VM - Devices > Sound > Default is slected

I ran sound configuration and everything seems to work, however DNS won't recognize speech at all.
Also, while dictating CPU usage jumps to 100%...

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks,

Sergio
 
Copying the DNS user files to the VM hard disk (instead of having them on an external drive) lead to some (minimal) improvement.
DNS recognizes speech and seems to work for a short period.

Any suggestions on how to make this work?
 
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