shotgun & array microphones for speech recognition

Archived from groups: rec.audio.tech (More info?)

"Jeff" wrote ...
> Has anyone here experimented with professional shotgun microphones for
> speech recognition? I'm considering buying this microphone:
> Audio-Technica AT835B Short Shotgun Condenser Microphone
> (http://www.fullcompass.com/Products/pages/SKU--23740/)

How are you going to keep a shotgun mic aimed properly?

The guys over on news:rec.arts.movies.production.sound
have used and discussed most of the shotgun mics available
on the planet. I have the AT835 and it is OK, but the pros
don't like it. But for your purposes, since you don't care
about sound quality or low-level noise, it may work OK.

> I believe I can achieve far better results with this mic in a noisy
> room. I actually plan to use this mic for my home jukebox system (and
> later in a car system.) The current mics I'm using do work pretty
> well though. In a car the crown pzm-10 and pzm-11 mic's work pretty
> well even while on the freeway with a moderate amount of road noise.
> With the crown mic's I can control my jukebox from 20 feet away with
> high accuracy in a quiet room. My headset microphone (parrot talkpro)
> works even better with lots of road noise and the stereo turned up.
>
> I'm also considering buying this microphone - Acoustic Magic
> (http://www.acousticmagic.com/products/)
>
> Does anyone know which mic might be better in a noisy environment,
> e.g. human speech, tv, ect. The user's mouth will be from 1-2 feet
> away from the microphone.

I'm amazed that you can get speech recognition to work in that
environment with ANY mic. PZMs would be my last choice
if I were looking to separate the signal of interest from the ambient
noise.

The laws of physics/acoustics say that the closer you can get
the mic to your mouth, the greater the signal-to-noise ratio and
the better chance you have of speech recognition. The only
reliable ones I've seen use headset-type mics.