VoiceAttack Speech Recognition

VoiceAttack Speech Recognition

VoiceAttack will take commands that you speak into your microphone and turn them into a series of keyboard key presses (and do other things like launch programs). VoiceAttack is designed to make games and applications more fun to use by adding your voice as an extra controller (by that, we mean PWN your buddies without taking your hands off your keyboard and mouse). It defines individual profiles with unlimited commands and actions. Have a profile for each game you play, every character in each game and every application that you use with VoiceAttack.VoiceAttack uses the Windows speech engine for its speech recognition functionality.  On a properly-configured system, the speech engine will usually work with little or no fuss.  Sometimes that’s just not the case.  Out of the box, Windows will (usually) come with a built-in speech engine.  If your installation is English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese or Chinese, you will get a built-in speech engine in your language.  If your locale is not one of those listed, I *think* you will get an English speech engine (not sure what’s going on nowadays… my installations always occur in Texas, so, English it is 😉 ).  Your system may or may not be configured with all that is necessary to get that speech engine to light up right away, even if you have a brand new installation.  I will get messages from time to time, each with its own unique set of circumstances along with a user that has their own unique set of skills (that may be you – you’ve probably been sent here by me via email -welcome!).  Since it seemed like each issue was unique, it always felt like a stretch to try to make a help guide, however, as interest in VoiceAttack has grown, some form of help in a central place is becoming necessary.  This post is going to try to help out with the most common issues and questions when dealing with VoiceAttack’s speech recognition functionality, based on different experiences I’ve had over the years.  Below are a few situations, a whole lot of rambling, and then some things to try (including new speech engines!)  😉

“VoiceAttack does not listen to what I am saying at all”

EDIT – Before you go digging through all this, please try something out first: Open the VoiceAttack options window, and try checking the box labeled, ‘Disable Acoustic Echo Cancellation’ on the “Recognition” tab. Restart VoiceAttack if necessary. I’m finding that it’s quite common for other software to interfere with this configuration of the speech engine. If that does not fix your issue, please read on 😉

EDIT 2 – Something that has been coming up a lot as of late is, ‘noise reduction’ software that comes with some headsets is on by default.  Try switching this off to see if that helps things out a bit (I’ve had personal experience with this – turning off software noise reduction made the speech engine very responsive without having to talk loudly).

When working properly, VoiceAttack will display a moving bar at the bottom of its main screen when you talk into your microphone.  In your case, that bar does not display anything no matter how loud you yell.  There are a few pieces involved in getting speech into VoiceAttack.  It usually looks like this (from a high level): Microphone -> Cable -> Sound Card/USB port -> Audio Driver -> Windows Audio -> Speech Engine -> VoiceAttack.  Anything in that route that is out of sorts can make things not work right or not at all.  You’ve probably got oodles of years of computer experience and the PC you built yourself was wrought with many hours of toil and painstakingly fawned-over details, but, sometimes we fiddle with hardware or settings we either didn’t know we changed or have forgotten about.  Also, other software will make changes to your system and you won’t even know it happened (bleh).  In addition, this is could possibly be the first time you’ve messed with or even considered speech recognition on Windows, so it’s easy for the settings regarding speech recognition to go unnoticed.  I’ve compiled a checklist below for you to look over, and hopefully figure out how to get your system back in shape.  Good luck, captain!

The basics, as indicated mostly in the VA help document (It’s kind of the bleeding obvious, but it’s got to be here… my apologies for wasting your time!):

– Make sure your mic is plugged in (all the way) and any volume or power controls on the mic are turned on and up (I also need to indicate here that the mic should be in working order and does not have a short in it or in its cable o_O).

– Make sure the volume of your microphone is adequate and that it is not muted in Windows.
Additional places to look regarding volume:
Go into Control Panel & run the ‘Sound’ app.
Select the recording tab.  Select your input device (it will have a green checkmark next to it).
Go to the levels tab.  Make sure the volume is adequate (mine is up all the way).  If there is a balance button,
click it.  Make sure that the microphone channels are at adequate levels (mine are both up all the way).

– Confirm that the box labeled, ‘Disable Speech Recognition’ is NOT checked on the Options>System/Advanced tab.

If the basics did not help, you’ll want to check out this other thread on this forum regarding to setting up audio input, as it’s helped a LOT (this should probably be #1):

Recently (relatively), it’s been found that certain third-party software may find itself getting between your sound card and the speech engine.  The idea behind this software is to, ‘enhance’ the recorded audio, but what the software creators have failed to do is make sure that their software doesn’t trash your speech recognition experience on your Windows installation.  The main culprits (as of late) are SonicStudio by Asus and Nahimic by MSI.  These will come pre-installed on higher-end computers made by these manufacturers, as well as be part of a motherboard and/or sound card software installation.  If you have one of these apps running, and your mic level is not moving, there’s a high probability that the software is getting in the way.  You’ll want to refer to the documentation provided by the manufacturer on how to configure or close these apps.  This happens quite a bit, unfortunately.  It’s very frustrating to pin down, as most users do not even know this is running, and it only blocks the speech engine in very specific configurations.  VoiceAttack makes an attempt at startup to alert the user that it has detected this software running by adding an entry to the log (just FYI).  One thing that works in some cases that you can try is going to the Options>Recognition tab and then try checking the box labeled, ‘Disable Acoustic Echo Cancellation’.  This may get you up and running, but I’d still take a look at the settings of the third-party software just to see what’s going on (noise gates, noise reduction and other, ‘enhancements’ may still be affecting input into the speech engine).

Less probability, still worth checking if what’s above didn’t help:
It could very well be that your speech profile is totally borked.  You’ll want to look at this thread to see how to get another speech profile set up (ignore the title):

One thing I always suggest is running a system file scan (which is something that you should do from time to time anyway):  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929833/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-systeReinstalling VoiceAttack *may* be an option.   It could be something just as simple as reinstalling to fix a messed up installation.  Kind of rare, but it’s possible.  Your profiles and registration/settings will remain intact, so have no fear.

Some users have pointed out that antivirus software may be blocking the use of the microphone.  You might want to try adding VoiceAttack to your antivirus whitelist to see if that makes a difference.

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