Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 and Parallels?

I shifted from Mac to PC 5 years ago to get Dragon

since then my two finger typing has got useable
I found Dragon made too many errors with short words and homonyms but was brilliant with 3 or more syllable words like medical terms

There were hum problems on the PC caused by the notebook power source
If i ran the VAIO on its battery it was much better

the old dragon condesner mike was very faint

have you tried an analog pre amplifier?
you had to use an extreme digital windows preamp to get enough gain on my old system

Hugh W

 

Hugh, I don't have any problems with DNS or with my microphones. My problem is with how Parallels handles usb mics.

I'm very impressed with how well DNS takes dictation. I'm running WindowsXP with Bootcamp on two different machines, an iMac core2duo and MacBook Pro curo duo. Currently, my main mic is a Plantronics usb wireless cs-50. When I don't want anything on my head or ear I use a Logitech desktop usb which, surprisingly enough for such a cheap mic, gives me almost perfect dictation results.

I'm unable to replicate these excellent results using Parallels. I've tried a number of other mics that work well in XP/Bootcamp, but it hasn't helped. My main point is that Parallels Desktop is supposed to provide be a virutal machine on I can run Windows (XP in my case), and plug in a usb mic and use it as if I were on a Windows machine. I should be able to select the device and set the input volume from within the virtual machine. This is not in fact possible. The user guide explicitly says not to connect a usb mic to the virtual machine (by, say, selecting it from the usb device list in Parallals).

Incidentally, this means that when you are in Windows/Parallels you can't use your DNS identity and associated usb mic that you set up while in Windows/Bootcamp. It isn't possible because with Parallels you must select Intel Integrated audio as your sound in.

Now, Parallels supports other usb devices without any problems. For example, I have a usb HP 5370 scanner that no longer functions at all in Mac OS X but works without a hitch in Parallels.

 

Your problem is the included microphone. It is designed for a PC sound card, which supplies power to the microphone through the microphone jack. Mac microphone jacks do not supply power. Switch to a good USB headset (there are lots of them) and you will be fine.

 

My guess is that there are a fair number of people who've turned to Parallels in order to use Dragon.


A very nice summary and I have seen the same problems running DNS in Parallels. Yes, there are probably a lot of us. It's a fairly tenuous way to run DNS, and hopefully it will improve in the future. But at least it partially works now, thanks to Parallels.

dkw.

 

Have installed DNS 9 on a MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz. It works seamlessle It's faster to dictate into Dragon Pad and copy/paste into Word. Am using a Plantronics USB headset.