Windows Speech Recognition suddenly hates USB?

[Teffy]

I have read a lot of forum posts about microphone problems, but haven't seen one like mine with this twist: Dragon Naturally Speaking "hears" my microphone, but Windows Speech Recognition does not.

I have Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2 (build 6002) for 32-bit. Control Panel\Windows Update says my "Windows is up to date".

I went to Control Panel\Speech Recognition Options, and ran "Set up microphone", but when I speak to adjust the microphone volume, the bar indicating sound level shows no sound, no movement.

My microphone is a Revolabs xTag. The Revolabs website states that the xTag uses a device driver that is already part of Windows. So, to get Windows to reload it, I uninstalled the device driver from within Device Manager and rebooted. This didn't solve the problem.

If I right-click on the "Volume Mixer" icon in the system tray, and choose "Recording Devices" from the pop-up menu, then click on the Recording tab, I see a listing for my x-Tag with a green check mark indicating that it is set as default. The volume indicator bar on the right bounces as I speak. When I click on it and choose the Properties button and the Levels tab, I see that the slider is all the way to the right at 100%.

I also tried the Clean Boot procedure described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/331796
but Speech still could not "hear" anything.

I also made sure that no application has exclusive control of the audio device. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Sound.
2. In the Sound dialog box, click the Playback tab, click the speaker device, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Advanced tab, click to clear the Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device check box, and then click OK.
4. In the Sound dialog box, click the Recording tab, click the microphone device, and then click Properties.
5. Click the Advanced tab, click to clear the Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device check box, and then click OK.

But, it did not solve the problem.


UPDATE:
The plot thickens. I plugged in two more microphones: a Plantronics DSP-100 which connects via USB (with inline pod), and KnowBrainer headset microphone which connects directly to the soundcard. I tested each of them with Windows Speech Recognition, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and the Windows Control Panel "Sound" window, "Recording" tab.

Of the nine combinations of microphone and application, the only two which don't work (even when I yell) are:
WSR and Plantronics USB mic
WSR and xTag USB mic

Maybe WSR suddenly doesn't like USB microphones? One of them is plugged into a USB hub, but the other is plugged directly into the back of the computer. Is there a way to uninstall and reinstall WSR, short of reinstalling Windows?

The combination of xTag with WSR or DNS worked just fine for months until just recently. I've looked at the lists of applications I've installed and Windows updates installed within the last week or two, and I don't see anything which makes me suspicious.

Device manager says "This device is working properly" about each of the 3 microphones.

What do you make of all this?

[chroma]

Dragon Naturally Speaking is the powerful speech recognition software which is now-a-days used by many users and they find it really amazing. However, on the other hand, Windows Speech Recognition from Microsoft is not as powerful and exciting as Dragon Naturally Speaking and suffers lack of support many times.

[Teffy]

I use WSR because that is what I started with. At my stage of familiarity with DNS, I love it for dictating, but prefer WSR for navigation, especially with WSR macros. And, I love WSR "show numbers" command.

I know I could probably use DNS with or without an add-on to achieve the same ease of navigation, but I haven't put it the time to move up the learning curve.

[Teffy]

Success! This solved the problem:

To help Windows Speech Recognition sort out any problems it might be having figuring out which microphone to accept input from, you might want to try disabling any other recording devices except for the one you want to use. Try this:

1. Open the Advanced Speech Options/Speech Properties control panel window.

2. Click the Audio Input button, and then click the Recording tab in the dialog box that appears.

3. If there are multiple recording devices listed in the dialog box, right-click any of the ones you don't want to use, and choose Disable from the menu that appears.

4. If there is only one recording device listed, set it as the default (so that it has a green checkmark on it).

5. Click OK to confirm your settings, and try your microphone with WSR to see if it works.

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