Utterly Voice icon image Utterly Voice

Setup

This page describes the setup window and the settings on this window. The setup window opens automatically the first time you run the application or when your license key has expired. You can also open this window at any time by saying "open setup" or by clicking the microphone signal indicator.

Understand Utterances link icon

Before describing these settings, it is important to understand the term utterance. When you start talking, the application begins capturing an utterance. When you stop talking, Utterly Voice finishes the utterance and starts processing it. If you start talking again, the application begins capturing a new utterance. The pauses in your speech separate each utterance.

License Key link icon

Go to the Download page and copy a license key. Paste the license key for this setting.

Threshold and Gap link icon

Utterly Voice has two important settings that control how utterances are captured: microphone threshold and utterance gap milliseconds. You should experiment by changing these to find optimal settings for you. The user interface has a microphone indicator which you can use to visually verify that your settings are working as expected. The indicator should turn green while capturing an utterance and grey when not capturing an utterance.

The microphone threshold setting defines the microphone signal threshold for an utterance. When the signal goes above the threshold, Utterly Voice starts capturing an utterance. See "threshold" on the diagram below. If the threshold is set too high, no utterance will be recognized. If the threshold is set too low, mostly background noise will be sent to the recognizer. Computer microphone settings, your microphone, room acoustics, and your voice can all impact choosing the best value for this setting. Experiment with different values for this setting while the setup window is open.

The utterance gap milliseconds setting defines the speech pause between utterances in milliseconds. This value is set to a recommended default, and most people will not need to adjust it. Once an utterance is being captured, the utterance will not be completed and processed until the signal stays below the threshold for this duration of time. See "gap" on the diagram below. A small number will result in faster dictation, but you must speak words faster while providing command arguments. A large number results in slower dictation, but you will have more time to provide command arguments. This setting must be greater than or equal to 500, less than or equal to 2000, and must be a multiple of 100.

graph illustrating threshold and gap settings
Microphone signal graph showing threshold and gap for an utterance

Save Button link icon

When experimenting with settings values, you can click the Save button many times to try different values. When you click the Save button, the provided settings are applied and saved to your settings files.