Failure to pass the Audio Setup Wizard, or poor dictation accuracy

Products: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6, 7, 8, 9

Information:

• Sound card conflict
• 20-decibel boost
• S/PDIF control was enabled

Sound card conflict

When using a USB microphone with an internal sound card, there may be a conflict between the two devices. As a troubleshooting step, the internal sound card may be disabled to prevent such a conflict.

Steps to disable internal sound card:

1. Click on Start > Control Panel.
2. Double click System.
3. Choose the hardware tab.
4. Click the Device Manager button.
5. Expand the section entitled "Sound, video and game controllers" by clicking the “+” sign.
6. Double-click the sound card and under the Properties dialog box that appears, disable the device.

20-decibel boost

Computers that use sound chips instead of sound cards often provide a 20-decibel boost to the sound system to give a better quality to the sound output. This 20-decibel boost may cause background noise that affects the audio set up as well as the quality of dictation. This feature should be shut off in any unit that uses a chip instead of a sound card.

Please follow the steps below to disable the 20-decibel boost:

1. Right click on the speaker icon in the system tray on the bottom right of the screen.
2. Click on "Open volume controls."
   
   
   • If microphone is not shown, click on “Options > Properties”. Check the box next to “microphone” and click “Ok”. In some cases, the microphone option is not listed or the advanced options are grayed out. When this happens, adjust the volume for the recording instead of playback and check the box next to “microphone”.
   
   
   
   • If there is a microphone option, click on “Options > Advanced controls”. This will put an advanced box in the microphone control. Click on the advanced button. On the bottom of the window there should be a box marked either "20 DB boost", "microphone boost", or something similar. If this box is checked, uncheck it.
   
   
3. Once again click on “Options > Properties > Recording” radio button and be sure that microphone is also checked.
4. Click “OK”.
5. Click “Options > Advanced controls” to put the advanced box in the microphone control.
6. Click the “Advanced” box to confirm that the microphone boost or 20 DB boost box is unchecked.

S/PDIF control

In some cases, computers that have S/PDIF enabled may not be able to complete the audio setup wizard. This option may be available with multiple sound cards, such as the Avance AC97 audio sound card. S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is a standard audio transfer file format. It is usually found on digital audio equipment such as a DAT machine or audio processing device. It allows the transfer of audio from one file to another without the conversion to and from an analog format, which could degrade the signal quality.

Steps to mute S/PDIF:

1. Right click on the speaker icon in the system tray on the bottom right of the screen.
2. Click on "Open volume controls."
3. Check the "mute" box under the SPDIF control.
4. If there is no S/PDIF control, click on “Options > Properties”. Make sure the S/PDIF box is checked under "show the following volume controls."

TechNote Number: 4507 Published: 7/21/2003 Last Modified: 10/10/2006

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