Plantronics Foldable USB Stereo Headset (Optimized for Laptop Use) (Audio 470 USB)
From Plantronics
The Plantronics .Audio 470 USB headset combines portability with your choice of analog or USB connection. Outstanding digital sound quality makes Internet calls, music, and DVDs sound even better. A personalized fit, lightweight design, and fingertip controls deliver hours of comfortable use for discerning mobile professionals -whether working or relaxing.
Brand: Plantronics Model: .AUDIO 470 USB Format: CD Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .75 pounds
Surprisingly good results with DNS 9 Preferred Okay, I'll be honest and reveal that I bought these on a lark. After moving to a new home, I found that my Telex Digital USB microphone that I'd been using for DNS 9 Preferred and had been training for so long had been smashed inside a packing box. This was disconcerting because that microphone is no longer made. Coming to Amazon.com, I specifically looked for USB headsets that reviewers said worked well with DNS 9 Preferred, and I was amazed that so few people had reviewed microphones for use with this program. Just about the only USB headset that anyone had mentioned at the time as being good with voice recognition software was this one. At about 30 bucks, I thought it was worth a try. So I plug it into the USB port and do the shortest training I can find, creating a new user for use with this microphone. To my shock, dictation on this microphone after such short training was even better than I had achieved in many months of training on the Telex USB Digital microphone! This fact was made all the more bizarre because DNS 9 Preferred's user set up did not appear to like this microphone at all: this microphone only achieves a signal-to-noise rating of 18-19, while the Telex was easily up into the mid-20s consistently and easily. Go figure. But I sure am NOT complaining. True, the build is a bit fragile feeling, so I'm not sure just how "optimized for laptop use" these truly are. Yes they fold up very small, but they don't do so without resistance, and I'm not quite sure how much folding and unfolding they will take before breaking into tiny pieces. But, for a desktop where I can simply hang them up when I'm not using them, I think their build quality will not be such a big issue. I didn't think I'd use it, but the shirt-pocket volume control and mic mute have come in quite handy when watching streaming video, catching up on some TV shows I've missed during the move. I'm not quite sure how significant the Dragon/Nuance/ScanSoft/whoever-owns-them-this-week rating of the low signal to noise ratio for these is. It might not be great for all programs, but it seems to work well for DNS 9, and that's all I use them for. The one star negative I added in, making this a four-star rating, comes from what so many of us have come to experience as the "Chinese Build-Quality Syndrome." (Don't try to make an acronym out of that) I hope these are sturdier than they appear, and I hate to have to handle them with kid gloves -- o.k. I don't own any kid-gloves (it's a metaphor!) -- but it's solid tech, and for 30 bucks I don't think one can do much better. IIRC, I think the Telex was in the $90 neighborhood some years ago. Lastly, I don't think that the Plantronics stereo headphone-component of these will replace my Grados or AKGs any time soon, but the sound quality is much better than expected, and it definitely is useful for speech playback. If you want to listen to Strauss, Mahler, Tchaik, or Branford, well, refer to the above models.... Excellent for conferencing and music I purchased this headset mainly for use with Skype and TeamSpeak. I tried it for the first time last night and it did not disappoint. The sound quality from the mic was better than I expected when I did a Skype test call. The guys I was chatting with in TeamSpeak said it sounded great. One pleasant surprise was the audio quality of the headphones. I played some of my music and the bass response was quite acceptable for everyday listening. The headset was truly plug-and-play on my MacBook Pro in both Windows XP Home (using Boot Camp) and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Excellent microphone for speech recognition software I just got this new Plantronics 470 microphone with a USB adapter to replace two old Plantronics headset/microphones that I have been using for the past 2 1/2 years. I use the microphone primarily for speech recognition, using Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8.0 professional. The first thing that I've noticed using this microphone is that the recognition accuracy increased tremendously! The playback is also loud and crystal clear. I could barely hear the playback on the older Plantronics microphones, but the playback volume and voice quality on the new Plantronics 470 microphone was about 10 times better! I have tested the Plantronics 470 on my IBM laptop and work desktop computer using the USB adapter, and the volume and quality appears to be the same on both machines. In the past, I usually get worse recognition accuracy with my laptop than my desktop computer. The superior quality of this microphone is due to the external USB soundcard and adapter that comes with it. This external soundcard appears to minimize electrical interference and noise that plague the internal soundcards. I am glad I bought this new microphone, because I don't have to make as many corrections in my dictation anymore! The only problem I have with this headset is when I put it all my neck and bring it back to my head, I would lose a few strands of hair which are trapped by the top folding mechanism.
