[Start Paused] no longer working for me

[Doodlewurst]

Since the last update. The option is checked, just doesn't register. I've reapplied settings, restarted, reinstalled. When I reinstalled it seems to have worked on the first run then subsequently continued to not work.

I use a voice command to wake it when I want to use it, and have voice feedback for things like switching profiles, recognition or non-recognition of commands, so it can be a bit annoying when I start my computer and it just starts yapping, or I turn my audio on only after it's loaded up and have mic unmuted and it starts asking me "WTF?" over and over. I should probably change the command for [Pause] to "♥♥♥♥ me, shut the ♥♥♥♥ up ♥♥♥♥."

And since the Windows Speech Recognition is so hit-and-miss with my Australian accent - one day it'll work 90% of the time, the next day it's just constantly "WTF?" "WTF?" "WTF?" - half the time it won't even respond to my command to mute, and I'm just about ready to ditch this at this point. Really could do with support for other third-party voice recognition engines considering the huge limitations of Windows Speech Recognition.

[Keith Lammers (Binary Fortress)]

We've tested and confirmed the "Start Paused" issue and we'll get that fixed up for the next release.

Re: the speech recognition issues, have you tried enabling the "Recognize non-native accents for this language" option in Windows Settings > Time & Language > Speech? I'm wondering if that will make any difference at all.

[Doodlewurst]

Yeah, I have. It does help, but recognition can be sporadic and I don't know where the problem comes from. Like, sometimes I notice - as I did today - Voicebot not wanting to wake on voice command. Today I was playing around with it, and it was working OK and definitely responding to wake command at least, then later after not using it for some time and doing other things it wouldn't wake until I unpaused manually, then it would work normally again.

But then, using Windows Speech Recognition sometimes works but seems to fail quite a lot. It can't really do dictation much at all, but normal voice commands it can work just not reliably, which is why I like using Voicebot because by limiting the expected inputs I do tend to get better results, though just sometimes it just doesn't want to co-operate.

One thing, I have Australian speech pack selected there, in Windows Language settings, but it doesn't show up in Voicebot. In Voicebot I have to use UK, which does work with Aus/NZ accents a little better than US but it's still not as good as native recognition.

[Keith Lammers (Binary Fortress)]

We've just posted a new version of VoiceBot and it fixes up the Start Paused option :)

Re: The Australian speech pack, the MS speech engine doesn't support that one :(

The only other suggestion I can make is to make sure you have a good mic that doesn't pick up a lot of background noise. I've found that headsets with boom mics work pretty well, versus desktop mics or mics built-in to laptops.

[Doodlewurst]

Ta. I noticed the update and can confirm that Start Paused is now working again.

Looked into the speech pack thing and found that, while speech recognition is indicated as included in the Australian speech pack it seems to be a documentation error. Had me confused.

I'm using a Razer Blackshark V2 Pro. Mic's good.

I'm not even sure if there's any viable alternative. Well. I guess it's back to the old time-tested long stick on the nose solution.

Thanks.