DNS hearing a garbled version of my speech
Submitted by vayup on Fri, 05/09/2008 - 06:20.
Oftentimes I encounter a really frustrating problem with DNS. Lets say I speak a phrase that takes me 3 seconds to say. Dragon NaturallySpeaking will print some gibberish on the screen. I say "correct that" and listen to the playback. The playback will be some unintelligible gibberish that is one second long(note that my original sentence is three seconds long) derived from my speech. Basically, the playback that I would hear will be bits and pieces(not even whole words) of my original speech glued together with significant parts missing. For example, once I spoke "print the proof of price for" and the phrase that I heard back was "print-pr-pri-fr". I think it only happens when I am speaking something inside a text box in a web page (Firefox). I don't recall any instance in which I encountered this in any other application.
Does anybody have any suggestions about how do I go about diagnosing the problem?
The machine in which I am seeing this problem is Dell inspiron 600m Laptop with the following configuration:
Intel Pentium M processor 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Microsoft Windows XP home edition version 2002 service pack 2, Plantronics .Audio 550 DSP USB headset,Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5, Vocola 2.5, Natlink 1.4, unimacro
PS: I wish I could send you an audio file of what I'm hearing in the playback. But I do not know where I can find that in my user profile. Any instructions to get the audio file of the playback is also appreciated
vayup wrote: Oftentimes I
Oftentimes I encounter a really frustrating problem with DNS. Lets say I speak a phrase that takes me 3 seconds to say. Dragon NaturallySpeaking will print some gibberish on the screen. I say "correct that" and listen to the playback. The playback will be some unintelligible gibberish that is one second long(note that my original sentence is three seconds long) derived from my speech. Basically, the playback that I would hear will be bits and pieces(not even whole words) of my original speech glued together with significant parts missing. For example, once I spoke "print the proof of price for" and the phrase that I heard back was "print-pr-pri-fr". I think it only happens when I am speaking something inside a text box in a web page (Firefox). I don't recall any instance in which I encountered this in any other application.
Does anybody have any suggestions about how do I go about diagnosing the problem?
The machine in which I am seeing this problem is Dell inspiron 600m Laptop with the following configuration:
Intel Pentium M processor 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Microsoft Windows XP home edition version 2002 service pack 2, Plantronics .Audio 550 DSP USB headset,Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5, Vocola 2.5, Natlink 1.4, unimacro
PS: I wish I could send you an audio file of what I'm hearing in the playback. But I do not know where I can find that in my user profile. Any instructions to get the audio file of the playback is also appreciated
First, there is no way to capture the playback from the Spell dialog or correction window. Corrections are stored in dra files that cannot be played back by anyone else. In addition, they are only available to you during the correction process.
Second, I have a couple of questions for you:
1. Does the playback sound like it's sputtering and/or stuttering? If so, then something that is running in the background is interfering with your speech input. If this is intermittent, then it is very likely being caused by a hardware interrupt conflict that is causing the interrupt service host to run in the background. This causes your speech to sound as though it is sputtering/stuttering.
2. When you run the Audio Setup Wizard, is the playback clear when you complete the quality check ratio test? If so, and the problem is intermittent, run the Audio Setup Wizard when the problem is occurring and checked the playback. The audio.wav file for the Audio Setup Wizard is located in the following location.
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking9\Users\MD431 II Med USB 2\current\voice_container
You can attach that file, but I would only attach it if the problem that you're experiencing shows up in the Audio Setup Wizard.
3. If the problem is not being caused by the hardware interrupt service host constantly checking hardware interrupts, then the problem may very well be something that you're running in the background (i.e., a utility or application that runs either constantly if the problem is consistent or periodically if the problem is intermittent). In this case, you need to check what background tasks are running and shut them down until you find the one that is causing the problem. Unfortunately, the problem has to be occurring when you perform this check. Otherwise, you won't find it. This type of problem can be caused by a flaky antivirus program that is hogging CPU time, or it can be caused by running something like be fragmentation in the background. Nevertheless, there are any number of possible utilities/applications running in the background that can cause this type of interference with your speech input. Regardless of what it is, it may be difficult to track, particularly if the problem is intermittent.
Nevertheless, something is interfering with your speech input that is causing the microphone/soundcard/USB pod to intermittently cut off your speech input.
Chuck Runquist
Former Dragon NaturallySpeaking SDK & Senior Technical Solutions PM for DNS
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee - that will do them in. - Bradley's Bromide
My answers to your questions
My answers to your questions follows:
1. Yes, the playback sounds like it is sputtering and/or stuttering.
2. The problem is intermittent and I'm not able to reproduce the problem at will. I tried the audio setup wizard and the playback turned out fine.
3. Windows XP occasionally complained that one of my USB devices is an unknown device without a driver. Even though I founed no correlation between that Windows XP warning and my DNS problems, I disabled the offending USB root from the device manager. Now I don't get those Windows XP warnings. But my DNS problems still exists.
I will try shutting down the background tasks one by one and see whether that makes any difference. It is almost time for me to upgrade my laptop. Maybe I just have to tolerate this for a few more months.
Thank you everyone for your inputs.
vayup wrote: My answers to
My answers to your questions follows:
2. The problem is intermittent and I'm not able to reproduce the problem at will. I tried the audio setup wizard and the playback turned out fine.
I will try shutting down the background tasks one by one and see whether that makes any difference. It is almost time for me to upgrade my laptop. Maybe I just have to tolerate this for a few more months.
The first thing I would look at is disconnecting from a network if you are connected to one. Then try dictating and see if the problem occurs. If it does not, then there is an issue with your network when connected.
You could try doing some basic maintenance. Run a registry cleaner. Run a defrag. Increase the amount the space reserved for playback. Make sure you have enough free disk space. If not free some up.
My guess is all your problems will go away when you get a new computer.
--
Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Reco
vayup wrote: Oftentimes I
Oftentimes I encounter a really frustrating problem with DNS. Lets say I speak a phrase that takes me 3 seconds to say. Dragon NaturallySpeaking will print some gibberish on the screen. I say "correct that" and listen to the playback. The playback will be some unintelligible gibberish that is one second long(note that my original sentence is three seconds long)
Chuck Runquist's analysis of your problem due to a hardware interrupt is the most likely problem. However, it is uncommon.
The very first thing I would try is a different USB port.
The problem could possibly be a short circuit in your microphone cable. To test for this, run a Windows sound recorder recording test. As you are speaking, say and do things like, "I am flexing the cable where it meets the earphone, I am flexing the cable where it meets the USB Soundpod, I am flexing the cable in the middle, and the cable is being flexed where the USB port meets the USB cable." If there is any short circuit, it will be obvious in the playback where it is coming from.
For Windows XP here are easy to follow directions: http://www.emicrophones.com/docDetails.asp?DocumentID=30
For Windows Vista: http://www.emicrophones.com/faq_answer.asp?contentID=77
My final comment is that your system specifications for running Dragon version 9 are marginal. Version 9.5 runs on my old notebook computer, a five-year-old IBM ThinkPad T40. It is just a little slow, but I make sure that no other programs are loaded and running when dictating.
--
Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy"
Both Chuck and Martin have
Both Chuck and Martin have some useful info and suggestions, but the hypothesis that it only occurs in Firefox text boxes is suggestive of an interaction with that piece of software rather than an intermittent hardware problem.
Certainly switching USB ports is the easiest thing to try. Also note whether it shows up every time you dictate into a Firefox text box, or only with certain text boxes, that is, on certain sites or a specific site. If indeed that is the only time it shows up, you could try switching browsers. There is a beta Firefox 3 that is leaner and meaner and close to production quality, although I don't think add-ons work yet. There is also an IE8 beta, but its definitely for developers and thrill-seekers.
Let us know if you figure anything else out or get more data.
Bruce