Re: Voice recognition

[Jeff Larson <Jeffrey.Larson@Sun.COM>]

Krispen Hartung wrote:
 > Off this topic, has anyone explored the concept of voice
 > recognition-activated MIDI switching?  You could wear a head set or cell
 > phone-like mic that connected to the computer....when you said, let's
 > say, "Ring Mod", the computer would recognize the command and make the
 > MIDI change to your rack gear.

This has been a holy grail of man/machine interfaces for a long time.
Much progress has been made, but they still tend to be a bit quirky.
I'm not familiar with any products specifically for musical use, but of
the ones that I've seen, you have to have a clean quiet signal and
e n u c i a t e  v e r y  c l e a r l y.  Most systems require "training"
where they make you speak a few words or phrases in order to analyze
the characteristics of your voice.  Once trained, they can only
recognize a similar sounding voice.  The difference between male and
female (pitch) or between healthy and sick (timbre) will confuse it.
When performing live, you have the added complication of sound bleed
from other sources.

I'm sure there are pieces you could hack together that under the right
circumstances would work.  But I'm not aware of anything that is
packaged and optimized for use by musicians.  Even if there were,
it would still be unreliable unless you could ensure a pristine
signal (i.e. no stage microphones).

In practice, nothing beats a dumb old foot switch.

Jeff