Buddy USB 7G Sound Pod (with FilteredAudio)

I have Dragon Naturally Speaking Home ver. 11.5 and I I bought this amazing USB sound card to make my headphones compatible with my HP Elite computer that runs on Win 7 Home 64bit OS and only has intergrated sound from the motherboard. And, I believe that even if I had a separate sound card then, it would still work without conflict. Amazing device! I am so used to big PCI computer parts from when I had built a couple of computers at home for myself, years ago.A fellow Dragon Naturally Speaking consumer on their forum told me about this really great other forum that responds with answers to questions at www.Knowbrainer.com. I went there and found a lot of information on what works well with Dragon Naturally Speaking Home ver. 11.5, as well as other versions. So my purchases are based on everything that I read there. And yes, the Stereo/dynamic Boom Mic by Audio-Technica that this USB sound card plugs into, works really well. I had also ordered a pair of sound cables just in case this cable was too short but, it's not. That's okay there were very inexpensive and I seem to collect boxes of extra cables.

I bought this thinking I needed more sound filters. The buddy headset works fine without this $49.95 device.The unit came without any instructions. The 7G has a button on it that does what? I didn't hear any difference when I pushed the button. I put it my desk drawer for now.Save your money unless you must spend $49.95 like I did for something that maybe works.

I was hoping this might improve my dictation accuracy with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Although accuracy was already fairly good, I thought this might help in environments with a little background noise. It did not go as planned.I tried this device on two different newer laptops, and this thing straight up didn't work at all. Drivers loaded fine, and I even went to the website to check for firmware updates and learn a little more about how it worked, but it still didn't work. Neither Windows nor Dragon could detect sound from this mic, despite some fairly thorough troubleshooting that lasted 6 hours and included several restarts, changes to the default sound recorder as recommended, sound tests, etc.This was bad out of the box, and based on the packaging, I suspect it may have been a previous return. On that note, the two reviews on Amazon are about the only positive reviews you'll find for this device. The drama in the thread at [...] sheds more light--I wish I had seen this prior to ordering.I never return stuff, and this is my first time with Amazon. The good news is that returning appears to be straightforward--just print the shipping labels, tape them to a box, and then drop the box off at UPS and wait for the credit back to your credit card. Unfortunately, that's the only "good" news with this order.I wouldn't buy this for any reason, except possibly as a gag gift for someone you don't really like.

Not what I expected.

I have had multiple problems working with Dragon Medical on my MacBook Pro through a Parallels VM. The biggest is that you can't really use the mic on the machine to dictate and you have to use a USB mic on the MBP. This little device really cleans up the signal and makes a BIG improvement in dictation accuracy. I would recommend this for anyone trying to use a headset to dictate as it bypasses the sound card and improves the quality of dictation. I also bought the Buddy USB 7G headset. This is not as comfortable as some headsets but the sound card again works great and your dictation improves.PS: I just increased my RAM from 4 to 8GB and this makes everything work faster.

This little gadget saved me from having to buy this expensive mic for use with Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS):Sennheiser ME 3-EW headset EW microphone[...]A Google search for best mics for speech recognition for DNS brings up the Sennheiser ME 3-EW coupled with either this Buddy USB sound device or another USB sound device of different brand (USB sound devices tend to work better for speech rec than on motherboard or card inside PC installed sound devices). I still had an ancient Plantronics headset mic that came with an older version of Dragon or its competitor from about ten years ago. Even the mic sent with my new version of DNS wouldn't pass its own tests using my Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit ext. USB. I'm up and running now with the Buddy USB 7G and the old Plantronics (old tech noise canceling) mic. The Buddy device has its own noise canceling tech.

works fine with my Sennheiser MD431 microphone. Better recogntiion then my very old Andrea and my Buddy 6G. Worth the extra bucks.Update: using for almost 2 years now and I remain very satisfied. I find no difference between it and my highly rated Speechmatic Multiadapter which costs more than twice as much. I get better sound volume with the Buddy. Using with Dragon Medical software.

These are not as good quality as Andrea pods. I have owned three over the past 3 years, and two have broken. My Andrea pod has lasted me five years, with no problem.