Microphone does not work - speech regognition engine needed? From where?

[Lee]

Installed a micophone for the first time and foolishly just expected
it to work. Of course it didn't. Having some scratting around I found
that I do not have the Speech Recognition tab in the Speech section of
the Control Panel.

A few questions if anyone can help:

1) Am I right in thinking that unless I install Speech Recognition I
will not get any microphone to work - I only intend using this for web
chats - no fancy applications.

2) If that is the case where can I get hold of the speech recognition
engine. I read it comes with Office XP but I do not have that and do
not want to buy it just to get a microphone to work.


If anyone can offer any help/pointers I would be very grateful

Lee

 

[purplehaz]

You do not need a speech recoginition program to use a microphone on your
computer. Those would be for just that, speech recognition, meaning the
computer "understanding" your words and doing what you tell it to do. To
just use a mic to record stuff or in chats, etc... you just plug it in the
mic jack on the sound card. You may also have to un-mute it in the volume
control panel. If you still can't get it to work, post the exact problem
your having and exactly what your trying to do.

 

[Alan]

Hello Lee,

I've been using a microphone for various voice chats, as well as making a
few *.wav files, using the native Windows sndrec32.exe applet since WIN 95
days.

Al I have done is plug the mic into the proper input slot in my sound card.

To record a *.wav file, I invoke sndrec32.exe and record. To use the mic on
chat apps, I just begin talking into the mic.

I don't do anything at all with the Speech Recognition feature in XP (that
I'm aware of).

To test that your equipment is set up correctly, you might want to go into
Control Panel and launch the Sounds and Audio Features applet. Then, click
on the Voice tab and in the Voice Recognition section of the dialog box,
click on the Test Hardware radio button to troubleshoot.

Alan