Can a throat microphone work with VA?

[Dean Robbins]

Hello,

I really enjoy using VA for playing games, but can only use it with a headset. I also love to play games through my PCs external speakers in 5.1 surround sound, but VA fails to work with a standard mic when sound is coming from speakers, so I was wondering if VA could work using a throat mic with external speakers as well.

What's so special about these mics is they pick-up the voice sound only and ignore any other external sound sources. Here's an example of someone's voice recorded and playbacked using an xbox throat mic.

Throat mics cost about £17.85 ($30) for PC, but I'd like some feedback from other (if others have used one) before considering such a purchase myself. 

[Jerry Ozbun]

As long as you train the speech recognition and it comes in as a standard recording device - I cannot see why it would not work.

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[Dean Robbins]

Thanks for replying. 

On further investigation it would appear that a lot of "throat mics" are in fact not real throat mics at all. These false ones use a open-air mic which defeats the purpose of what a throat mic is truely meant to be do: cancel outside noise. A real throat mic is actually a layrngophone and instead of using a microphone it uses a transducer coil, such a device do not pick-up external sound whatsoever, only the sound vibrations from the voice get picked up. which is why the army use them to avoid background noises such as gunfire explosions etc, its to make voice communication between soldiers as clear as possible when in combat situations. 

So anyone buying one of these, beware, make sure it's the real deal, and not a phoney. Make sure it's a layrngophone.

On Tuesday, 22 April 2014 14:00:21 UTC+1, Juber wrote:

As long as you train the speech recognition and it comes in as a standard recording device - I cannot see why it would not work.

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 2:37 AM, Dean Robbins <dean.p....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I really enjoy using VA for playing games, but can only use it with a headset. I also love to play games through my PCs external speakers in 5.1 surround sound, but VA fails to work with a standard mic when sound is coming from speakers, so I was wondering if VA could work using a throat mic with external speakers as well.

What's so special about these mics is they pick-up the voice sound only and ignore any other external sound sources. Here's an example of someone's voice recorded and playbacked using an xbox throat mic.

Throat mics cost about £17.85 (£17.87 ($30)) for PC, but I'd like some feedback from other (if others have used one) before considering such a purchase myself. 

[Jerry Ozbun]

Your email really got me interested in one of these so I started doing research as well. I found the same thing as you but I DID find one with a "reasonable" price and since I have been really frustrated with mic bleedover in a variety of things. Since I work from home the kids and dogs can really become a nuisance on conference calls. I went ahead and bought this: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/c8e1/

Will let you know when I get it working

[Dean Robbins]

Hi Juber,

Thanks for replying. I'll be most interested to hear back from you on this. That mic does look good for the price. I checked one reviewer's rating and was pleasantly surprised that this mic does not pick-up high volume levels from external surround sound speakers. (source:  http://www.amazon.com/IASUS-Special-Black-Throat-Microphone/product-reviews/B004I8KFWI  ).

I'd be interested to know if Windows Speech recognition software works well with this device for you too, coz if it does then this will work really well with VA.

On Thursday, 24 April 2014 18:15:59 UTC+1, Juber wrote:

Your email really got me interested in one of these so I started doing research as well. I found the same thing as you but I DID find one with a "reasonable" price and since I have been really frustrated with mic bleedover in a variety of things. Since I work from home the kids and dogs can really become a nuisance on conference calls. I went ahead and bought this: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/c8e1/

Will let you know when I get it working

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Dean Robbins <dean.p....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for replying. 

On further investigation it would appear that a lot of "throat mics" are in fact not real throat mics at all. These false ones use a open-air mic which defeats the purpose of what a throat mic is truely meant to be do: cancel outside noise. A real throat mic is actually a layrngophone and instead of using a microphone it uses a transducer coil, such a device do not pick-up external sound whatsoever, only the sound vibrations from the voice get picked up. which is why the army use them to avoid background noises such as gunfire explosions etc, its to make voice communication between soldiers as clear as possible when in combat situations. 

So anyone buying one of these, beware, make sure it's the real deal, and not a phoney. Make sure it's a layrngophone.

On Tuesday, 22 April 2014 14:00:21 UTC+1, Juber wrote:

As long as you train the speech recognition and it comes in as a standard recording device - I cannot see why it would not work.

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 2:37 AM, Dean Robbins <dean.p....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I really enjoy using VA for playing games, but can only use it with a headset. I also love to play games through my PCs external speakers in 5.1 surround sound, but VA fails to work with a standard mic when sound is coming from speakers, so I was wondering if VA could work using a throat mic with external speakers as well.

What's so special about these mics is they pick-up the voice sound only and ignore any other external sound sources. Here's an example of someone's voice recorded and playbacked using an xbox throat mic.

Throat mics cost about £17.85 (£17.87 (£17.87 ($30))) for PC, but I'd like some feedback from other (if others have used one) before considering such a purchase myself. 

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[Jerry Ozbun]

Well I got it today shortly after replying and it was a complete dud.

When I wanted to exchange it ThinkGeek told me 1-2 WEEKs and then budget shipping for an exchange on an item that I paid for 2 day shipping on. Needless to say I am getting a refund in 1-2 weeks and am trying out some lower cost alternatives. Will let you know what I find.

[Jerry Ozbun]

I'm giving this one a try but it will probably be a few days to a week before I get it.

http://www.ixradio.com/shop/neck-microphone-xcn913h-for-iphone.html

[Dean Robbins]

Sorry to hear you had such bad luck with your first mic. Fingers crossed for your latest purchase. I look forward to hearing from you once you've tried out your new mic. 

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[Jerry Ozbun]

I'll keep this email in my list of emails to reply to and let you know.

This latest purchase is coming from China and I'm a little leery. If it's defunct the returns process is likely to be convoluted and probably not worth my time. I suppose we'll see :)

[Jerry Ozbun]

So, after my last updated ThinkGeek got back in touch with me based on a survey result and offered to cross-ship the microphone so I went ahead with it as the NT3 throat mic had good reviews. Initially I thought the new NT3 was also a dud then I realized that the original one I had gotten probably HADN'T been a dud but that I was missing the correct 3.5 mm jack. That was another $20 off ThinkGeek.

Now I have the mic and preliminary tests are good.I've managed to get it to recognize commands from the throat mic with music running. The issue I am running into is I need to completely retrain Microsoft Speech Recognition because this new microphone picks things up differently.

I'm going to use it with a Google Hangout tomorrow night and we'll see how my friends like the different audio.

[Dean Robbins]

Hi Jerry, this is encouraging news. I'm glad this is working out well. I had thought you might have to retrain your voice recognition software for this kind of mic. 

I have a few other guys over at the Elite: Dangerous game forum interested in using a throat mic for VA too. I'm going to inform them later of your tests, once you've finalized your results. Please do keep me updated on your progress.

best regards

Dean

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[Dean]

Hi Juber,

Just checking in with you to see how you've been getting on with your throat mic. How's it been working out for you? Have you had success with voice chatting and VoiceAttack .

I'm curious to know if you had to retrain MS speech recognition to understand vibrational changes with the throat mic too.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Regards,

Dean

On Thursday, 8 May 2014 22:42:43 UTC+1, Juber wrote:

So, after my last updated ThinkGeek got back in touch with me based on a survey result and offered to cross-ship the microphone so I went ahead with it as the NT3 throat mic had good reviews. Initially I thought the new NT3 was also a dud then I realized that the original one I had gotten probably HADN'T been a dud but that I was missing the correct 3.5 mm jack. That was another £11.95 ($20) off ThinkGeek.

[Jerry Ozbun]

Hi Dean (and all)

I just got back from a 2 week trip to the UK with the wife for a Wedding, so I have not had any time to test since we last spoke. :)

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[Dean Robbins]

Hi Jerry,

No problem. I had thought maybe you were away. I'll patiently await your review. My fingers are crossed here that a throat mic works with the speech recognition okay.

regards

Dean

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[Jerry Ozbun]

I've finally had some time to sit down with this.

Unfortunately the results aren't good. I spent a full training session with Windows Speech and could tell there was trouble. I had to repeat training sentences a lot and so was not very confident. After the training I went ahead and fire up VA and I could get perhaps a 30% response rate on words with a lot of vowels. Words that had a lot of hard consonants made with the teeth and lips (t, p, j, g, etc) were not picked up well for obvious reasons and I could only get them to execute perhaps 10% of the time.

I recorded myself in Audacity using a variety of throat positions and even at the best my voice was quite muffled and had more background noise than I expected.

It's unfortunate but the throat mics aren't quite there yet for the clarity necessary for this sort of thing. Human ears and minds can work together to automatically decipher somewhat muffled speech but windows does not seem up to it.

[Dean Robbins]

Hi Jerry,

What a pity this hasn't worked out. This would have been really great for those of us that wanted to use VA with external surround sound speakers. Ah well, we'll just have to keep using VA with a headset.

I did see an article on the Internet where someone had experimented with speech recognition software to work better with a throat mic. It was using some specially written third party software algorithm to help improve voice communication with the mic. The problem is this article was done in 2009, and I haven't seen any new info on its development since. But the end results were very positive indeed.

I trust all is not lost with the mic, and that it serves its other purpose for you in your online chatting.

Regards,

Dean 

 

[Jerry Ozbun]

Yes, it's still good for regular stuff as well as being compatible with my phone I will still get some use out of it. :)

[Trevor Woodcook]

Jerry try changing the settings in the VA settings program. I forget what the setting is called but if you increase/decrease the number it'll make VA guess your commands more broadly based on audio similarities and your profile commands. It may be you just need to adjust that to get the throat mic to work better.

[Jerry Ozbun]

I have the adaptive command recognition turned on (it's an on/off setting) but I am not familiar with a configurable setting like you describe. Looking for it now, any idea where it is?

[Jerry Ozbun]

Found it - "Command Weight"

[Trevor Woodcook]

That's the one, it has a mouse-over explanation too I think so whichever makes VA guesstimate more on commands may be what you are looking for. Let us know if that works.

[Jerry Ozbun]

Setting "Command Weight" to 100 matches the commands properly but it matches anything I say with a command, any command. I have a relatively complex command profile for the X3 series of games that I've used extensively and with VA Command Weight at 100, I get about a 80% accuracy ion known commands. The vast majority of unknown verbalizations are matched to one command or another, so if I were talking with friends on Skype/Ventrillo I would be killing myself in-game.

The major issue is the hard consonants. The T is especially dificult to get it to "hear" because there is almost no detection of the T at the throat. I would need to test more extensively, perhaps a little more training of the speech engine might get us a little closer to 100% recognition with a high command weight but the issue then becomes the application of random speaking to commands that aren't intended. That could be even more devastating than commands not being recognized.

[Gary]

Lol... yeah... that sounds about right.  With command weight to 100 you could pretty much grunt and it will recognize it as something  :)

Gary

On Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:26:32 AM UTC-5, Juber wrote:

Setting "Command Weight" to 100 matches the commands properly but it matches anything I say with a command, any command. I have a relatively complex command profile for the X3 series of games that I've used extensively and with VA Command Weight at 100, I get about a 80% accuracy ion known commands. The vast majority of unknown verbalizations are matched to one command or another, so if I were talking with friends on Skype/Ventrillo I would be killing myself in-game.

The major issue is the hard consonants. The T is especially dificult to get it to "hear" because there is almost no detection of the T at the throat. I would need to test more extensively, perhaps a little more training of the speech engine might get us a little closer to 100% recognition with a high command weight but the issue then becomes the application of random speaking to commands that aren't intended. That could be even more devastating than commands not being recognized.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 9:09 AM, Trevor Woodcook <tgwoo...@gmail.com> wrote:

That's the one, it has a mouse-over explanation too I think so whichever makes VA guesstimate more on commands may be what you are looking for. Let us know if that works.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Jerry Ozbun <uber...@gmail.com> wrote:

Found it - "Command Weight"

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Jerry Ozbun <uber...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have the adaptive command recognition turned on (it's an on/off setting) but I am not familiar with a configurable setting like you describe. Looking for it now, any idea where it is?

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Trevor Woodcook <tgwoo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jerry try changing the settings in the VA settings program. I forget what the setting is called but if you increase/decrease the number it'll make VA guess your commands more broadly based on audio similarities and your profile commands. It may be you just need to adjust that to get the throat mic to work better.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 7:27 AM, Jerry Ozbun <uber...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, it's still good for regular stuff as well as being compatible with my phone I will still get some use out of it. :)

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 12:54 AM, Dean Robbins <dean.p....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jerry,

What a pity this hasn't worked out. This would have been really great for those of us that wanted to use VA with external surround sound speakers. Ah well, we'll just have to keep using VA with a headset.

I did see an article on the Internet where someone had experimented with speech recognition software to work better with a throat mic. It was using some specially written third party software algorithm to help improve voice communication with the mic. The problem is this article was done in 2009, and I haven't seen any new info on its development since. But the end results were very positive indeed.

I trust all is not lost with the mic, and that it serves its other purpose for you in your online chatting.

Regards,

Dean 

 

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[Dean]

Bone-conductive headphone are already here! But what about bone-conductive microphones?

I found an interesting article from Microsoft Research. It's been looking to develop a bone-conductive microphone to aid speech recognition software to ignore background noise while speaking. The articles not new, but researchers have developed algorithms that combine the sampled signals from a high-frequency close-talk microphone and a lower-frequency bone-conductive microphone so the software knows how to separate background noise from the sound of the human voice.

So Microsoft seem to be well aware of these issues with background noises conflicting with speech recognition programs. Who knows, maybe one day we may just get to use VoiceAttack with external speakers afterall. :) 

For those interested in reading more about this stuff, here are the links to the sources:

tl;dr version: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/witty.aspx 

Indepth study: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/63603/mmsp04-direct-filtering.pdf