Sennheiser MD431II -worth the money?
Submitted by markr on Fri, 06/29/2007 - 19:06.
In a previous post I asked about a recommended microphone or moving to a noisier environment and maintaining good accuracy. The Sennheiser MD431II and the Sennheiser me3 were recommended. TheSennheiser MD431II costs almost 3 times as much. I have terrible tendinitis and will probably use a good microphone for a number of years and am willing to invest. Any testimonials from users or vendors?
I currently use the most recent microphone from Andrea which gets six dragons out of six on the nuance website as a rating for accuracy (exactly how good is that?)
Mark
markr wrote: The Sennheiser
The Sennheiser MD431II and the Sennheiser me3 were recommended. TheSennheiser MD431II costs almost 3 times as much. I have terrible tendinitis and will probably use a good microphone for a number of years and am willing to invest. Any testimonials from users or vendors?
We have been selling and using Sennheiser MD431II for 12 years. It was the microphone originally supplied in IBM MedSpeech back in 1995. It is absolutely the most accurate and noise canceling hand-held microphone we have ever tested. The advantage to using this microphone is that it can be mounted on a Balanced Spring Microphone Arm which enables you to bring the microphone in front of your mouth when you want to use it and with a little push get it out of the way when finished. CLICK HERE to go to the page for the MD431II and watch the movie of how this works.
The Sennheiser ME3 is no slouch either. It is the equal of the MD431II. If you do not mind taking off and putting on the headset, you will not be disappointed with this device as well.
I currently use the most recent microphone from Andrea which gets six dragons out of six on the nuance website as a rating for accuracy (exactly how good is that?)
The microphone that got six dragons we assume is the Andrea NC-91. If used in a quiet environment is certainly okay. However, add a little bit of noise and accuracy goes out the window. Even in a quiet environment, you will get anywhere from one to 3% better accuracy with a better noise canceling microphone.
The Dragon ratings are based on audio throughput. The microphone that is poor at noise canceling will actually score better. Microphones that are good at noise canceling will somewhat muffled sound. Although this does not affect accuracy, it will give a lower rating.
--
Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy"
I've been using the ME3 for
I've been using the ME3 for about 2 years now and haven't thought about microphone issues since except when responding to queries like yours -- it seems darn near perfect for me.
Judging from Marty's post, the choice between these two seems to be a matter of ergonomic preference rather than performance.
Bruce