Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12.0 cannot recognize 3.5 mm jack headset

[Quadzilla]

hello everyone, I'm hoping someone can help me with a problem I'm having with Dragon Naturally Speaking 12.50 on my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. the problem being DNS will no longer recognize the headset/microphone that's hooked up to the 3.5 mm Jack in front of the laptop. it's the (unsure of brand) headset/mic that came with DNS 12.50. The laptop is running on Windows 7 and I installed DNS some 8 years ago, I'm disabled and use DNS to navigate windows and occasional dictation.

The headset Mike seemed to be working okay up until a few days ago and when I accidentally changed the text in the name field of the device in the general menu for the microphone. I had to access that menu every time I used DNS because my mic levels were always too low and I was getting poor recognition. I would have to go in and increase the mic boost but it would never stay boosted, it would pretty much always get reset to 0 at some point during my usage of DNS. I noticed the Apply menu button would always stay grayed out, even after I increased the Boost. I do not know what function I used in DNS that caused the Boost to go back to zero but again, most of the time it would change back to zero boost.

At some point when I was changing the Boost level, I must have changed the text in the name of the device because the following day DNS gave me an error saying hat it could not find the device named SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC. I'm not sure if that's the exact device name but it was something like that. I tried reentering the name of the device in that field again but DNS would still not recognize it. I tried disabling then enabling the microphone, unplugging it and plugging it back in and a few other things in order to for DNS to recognize it without any luck. FYI, the DNS mic was always listed as the default recording device, I tried changing it to another input as default and changing it back to DNS but this is did not help. I worked on having DNS recognize this mic for at least 2 hours without any luck and decided to create a new user profile instead.

Problem is, even when creating a new user profile, DNS would not recognize the DNS microphone plugged into the 3.5 mm Jack in front of the 1525. FYI, several times throughout this process I would open the Sound / Recording Devices menu and would see the microphone listed there and could see that it was working fine, I could see the input level change on the Green Bar level indicator whenever I would talk into the mic.

I also tried using the "Add dictation source to current User Profile" menu item in DNS but the DNS headset/mic was not listed in the pull down menu. Again, this device was listed as the default recording device in the sound / recording devices in control panel. This is a very strange and annoying problem. I tried creating a new user profile several times as well as rebooting the laptop several times without any luck. I searched Google for a fix but again, had no luck.

FYI, when I right click the speaker icon on my taskbar, the menu that pops up has the following options:.
Open volume mixer.
Playback devices.
Recording devices.
Sounds.
Volume control options.

When I click recording devices, a window titled sound pops up which has four tabs, it opens to the tab labelled "recording" which has two items listed. The first item has the name " line in mic" and the description below reads SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC with a status of ready. The second device has a name and description of "SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC" with a status of Default Device. Whenever I touch the laptop, the level meter on the first device increases and whenever I talk into the microphone, the level meter on the second device increases. FYI, when I use the windows sound recorder application, the headset / mic works fine, I'm able to record, save and playback a sound recording using the headset headset/mic. Also FYI, I bought a 3.5 mm to USB adapter with hopes Dragon would recognize it and while it did, it did not work out in the end as the USB ports on the laptop are in bad shape and loose, the mic would sometimes get unrecognized by Windows. So, I'm not sure why DNS is not recognizing the headset/mic, any info on this matter is greatly appreciated! Thanks!


Dan G.

 

[file3456]

The second device has a name and description of "SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC" with a status of Default Device. Whenever I touch the laptop, the level meter on the first device increases and whenever I talk into the microphone, the level meter on the second device increases.

It sounds like the first device is the on board laptop microphone and the second device is your headset microphone. So in that Recording devices window right click the second device which should be your headset and set it as Default Device.

 

[iko22]

...
FYI, the DNS mic was always listed as the default recording device, I tried changing it to another input as default and changing it back to DNS but this is did not help. ...

Problem is, even when creating a new user profile, DNS would not recognize the DNS microphone plugged into the 3.5 mm Jack in front of the 1525.

If the mic is listed as default device, then I'd assume that the user profile has got corrupted. Have you enabled backups of User Profile in DNS? Possible you could restore the profile from the backup.

Otherwise, you would have to create a new user profile, which is what you said you have done, but you did not say whether you deleted old profile before creating new profile? Once upon a time I had DNS 11.0 and I think I remember having to delete old profile before creating a new profile, after profile corruption. Now I have DNS 15 and I do not get profile corruption like I used to.