Sony Mini Disc Recorder

Last Modified: January 14, 2000

(Editor's note: this information was originally written in October 1998. Some of this information may be out of date.)

Dragon has announced a relationship with Sony where the Sony MZ-R50 MiniDisc will be sold as part of two new products called the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Suite for Medical and the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Suite for Legal.

The Sony MZ-R50 MiniDisc recorder is a handheld digital recording device. The MZ-R50 is approximately the size of the palm of your hand. It is wider than other pocket recorders (like the Norcom or Olympus), mostly because the MiniDisc is much larger than a mini cassette or the flash RAM chip which is used in the Olympus D1000 recorder. However, the Sony MZ-R50 is so accurate that you will not have to retrain your voice models when using this recorder, and you should achieve accuracy comparable to live dictation using a headset.

The MZ-R50 does not have a built-in microphone. Dragon has been supplying a small microphone which plugs directly into the microphone jack. This small microphone is about two inches tall, and looks like a small Tootsie pop. It is actually a noise canceling element, designed for close talking.

You can also use a headset microphone with the MZ-R50. Simply plug the headset microphone jack into the MZ-R50, and optionally also plug the headset's earphone jack into the MZ-R50. When using a headset microphone with the MZ-R50, the quality of your dictation should be almost identical to using that same headset microphone directly on your computer.

The MZ-R50 can connect to your computer using either the line input or the microphone input. The line input is supposed to provide a slightly higher quality (because it has a stronger signal) but some laptop computers do not have a line input into their audio subsystem.

The MZ-R50 is more accurate than the Norcom analog recorder which I have described before. However, the ergonomics are not as good. The MZ-R50 is larger, slightly heavier, and has more controls. More controls may be useful to some people, but for simply capturing dictation, they are sometimes confusing. On the other hand, if you are looking to get the highest accuracy than there is no substitute.

By the way, the Olympus D1000 unit which is popular among many people is even less accurate than the Norcom recorder. In fact, the Olympus unit was not certified by Dragon Systems because its accuracy did not meet Dragon's rigid standards. This does not mean that you cannot use an Olympus D1000 unit with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But you should be aware that your accuracy will not be as good.

(Personal opinion: I understand that there is a product which includes the Olympus recorder and IBM's ViaVoice. Although I do not have any direct evidence of this, I would predict that ViaVoice is less accurate with the Olympus recorder then Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It's just that IBM's accuracy standards seem to be lower.)

There is also another Sony recorder (ICD-70) which is commonly combined with speech recognition systems. This recorder is much smaller than the MZ-R50. Smaller, in fact, than any of the other digital or analog recorders commonly used with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However, this recorder because of a combination of its low sampling rate and high compression, does not perform well with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

(Personal opinion: I understand that IBM and Sony have struck some sort of deal to use ViaVoice with the ICD-70 recorder. Again, although I do not have any direct evidence of this, I would predict that ViaVoice is less accurate with this recorder then Dragon NaturallySpeaking. When this recorder was shown at PC Expo, the representative generally sent people over to the station where they were showing the MZ-R50 with Dragon NaturallySpeaking if they were interested in automatic transcription.)

With version 3.0 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and the NaturallyMobile set of features which is available in the Preferred Edition, Professional Edition, medical products and legal products, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will easily support input from the Sony MZ-R50 MiniDisc recorder, or the Norcom cassette recorder, or the Olympus D1000 recorder, or any number of other digital and analog recorders. Just because Dragon Systems has announced products which included MZ-R50 does not mean the Dragon NaturallySpeaking will only work without device. (See What is NaturallyMobile? for more information.)

Personal opinion: If you are interested in using a recorder with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I recommend the new Dragon NaturallyMobile recorder. It has the best combination of ergonomics and accuracy. The Sony MZ-R50 is more accurate; however, it is more expensive and more difficult to use. The Norcom analog recorder is a reasonable choice (although less accurate and more expensive than the Dragon NaturallyMobile recorder). I would not recommend the Olympus recorder because of its lower accuracy, and I would stay away from the ICD-70.

This web page (http://www.synapseadaptive.com/joel/SonyMiniDiscRecorder.html) was last modified on January 14, 2000. The contents of this page are (c) Copyright 1998-1999 by Joel Gould. All Rights Reserved. See Copyright Information for more details.