Thanks for the advice. I am using the microphone that was bundled with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and mostly it’s fine but I suspect it’s not the best quality microphone in the world.

I also have another microphone but that is also a relatively cheap one and it produces similar results. I got a quality rating of 21 with the bundled microphone and a quality rating of 20 with my other alternative.

I dare say a quality microphone would answer a lot of problems but I think I’d like to see how it goes first before investing what is quite a sizeable sum of money on a microphone.

If not and you are using what you consider to be a premium microphone, I would suggest you run a a Windows Sound Recorder test to gauge the quality of your sound input. You are looking for a very clean sound quality, with no pops and crackles. The procedure is described in the body of this post:-

http://speechempoweredcomputing.co.uk/Newsletter/?p=4

If you are getting pops and crackles, either you need a USB sound adapter or a noise cancelling microphone or both.

These are some examples of microphones and a USB sound adpater that work extremely well (i.e. are noise cancelling) with Dragon NaturallySpeaking:-

http://speechempoweredcomputing.co.uk/Headset.htm

Hope this helps?

Best wishes

Peter
http://www.speechempoweredcomputing.co.uk