Buddy Microphones Amigo Cobra USB Desktop Microphone with FilteredAudio Technology, Purple (ISA12025)

I've used Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software for several years now. As I never use a headset, I've experimented with different brands of microphones and, until now, have never found one that worked perfectly with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The problem seems to be that most microphones are omnidirectional and consequently pick up a lot of background noise.The Amigo microphone, in contrast, is unidirectional. It is also small and attractively styled. I just plugged it into a USB port on my computer and Windows installed the driver software automatically. I then had to go through the process of setting up a new microphone in the Dragon software. Unlike other times I've installed a new microphone, though, the setup process for this one was really fast and easy. It works perfectly with Dragon and I am getting by far the best dictation accuracy I have ever obtained using this software.Highly recommended for use with dictation software!

1. The audio level is way too low. I had nothing but complaints from everyone on the other end. It cancels noise great, but in the process it reduces the audio level and has no boost to it. Unusable in a professional environment. You will embarrass yourself.2. We bought this a couple months ago and just got to installing it. We tried to return it and it was denied.Terrible product, terrible business practice.

First, the good stuff. The microphone is very directional. It has good sensitivity in the direction the microphone faces, but as the sound source get further away from in front of the microphone the sensitivity falls away, until you almost can't hear anything when the source is 90 degrees from the front of the mic. It seems as if there is a slight bump in the sensitivity in exactly the opposite direction (I think this means it is a hypercardioid microphone).Now, the bad stuff: the audio quality is awful. Right off the bat the intrinsic sample rate is only 22.5kHz, which means that you won't hear much of anything above 10kHz. But, even worse, there seems to be some heavy-duty audio compression going on. Listening to a quiet room through headphones, and you'll hear constant background strangeness, as if it were using MP3 compression at an incredibly low bit rate. But, even worse, there's some incredibly coarse automatic gain control going on, so that as a sound gets slowly louder, the recorded signal will suddenly drop to a lower level and then start increasing from there. If the sound keeps getting louder, it will do it again, leading to a stairstep effect. Plus, the audio quality after these steps gets even worse.So, if you were using this as a source for a PA system, then you'll probably be fine. If you're thinking to do your podcasting with this mic, though, prepare to be a source of ridicule from anyone with ears.

I had an important exam to take and needed to use this microphone for dictation. After research, I discovered this product that would free my head and ears yet provide me with excellent quality. Unfortunately, it did not work well with dragon and I had to use the head phones. I am not sure when else I will be using this microphone since it has limited accuracy.

For about $15 I extended this by 2 feet. It works nicely with this mobile phone holder:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J3NO3FSAlso, I contacted customer service to ask them about this, and apparently this microphone has the same filtered audio technology has other microphones in the buddy and the flamingo lines. Considering that this microphone is probably about half the price or less of the other ones, I would say it's a pretty good deal. The only downside is that it's a reasonably short microphone so positioning it might be a bit of a challenge. I used to have mine positioned right in front of my monitor on the monitor stand (until I bought the above extender). It works quite well for voice recognition for both the built in windows speech recognition, and dragon naturally speaking.

I bought this for my 12 year old daughter who uses Dragon Speak for school work because she has dysgraphia. She is thrille to have a microphone which helps Dragon Speak get most of the words right. She was getting very frustrated with her old microphone which is one we had laying around because with it Dragon made a lot of mistakes. I am happy it has a usb cord which equates to a thicker cord than the cords on 3.5mm jack microphones. My daughter has destroyed more than one microphone/headset cord because they were too thin. This one works great for her and makes her written work easier to do.

This microphone only works at an AM Radio Quality (1channel, 16bit, 22050Hz). The "FilteredAudio" even seems to create noise that isn't there. I was looking for a cheap, but average quality, alternative to a 35 dollar headset I bought years ago. The Amigo Cobra created a watery sound effect constantly while the headset, with its mic at DVD quality (1channel, 16bit, 22050Hz), picked up nothing. The original listing price for this mic is 60 dollars, and is vastly outperformed by a headset purchased at just over half the price.

It had really good reviews for picking up speech, but when I attempted to use this as my primary microphone in Mumble, Skype, and TeamSpeak, it was picking up a ton of ambient noise. Keyboard typing, mouse clicks, moving around at my desk, etc. Attempting to adjust levels in the Sound management of Windows helped, but then everyone said I sounded very quiet. The only way I could get it to perform how I wanted was to hold the think close to my mouth, with the levels down at a reasonable level (50-60%), which defeats the purpose of a desktop mic. If the boom was longer it might be a better product, but it definitely didn't live up to expectations as a reliable desktop mic.Also attempted to go to their website for additional support to see if I needed to configure it differently, but the website was absolutely no help. The forums are empty (literally, no posts, no data anywhere) and you have to register to look at their support section.

No sirve este producto, no lo compren porque además no te dan la opción para devolverlo. No se escucha nada de lo que dices.

This desktop microphone is cheap, sometimes does not pick up sound and the microphone itself is very poor. My biggest complaint is that the mute button sometimes malfunctions and still picks up sound even when it is supposed to be off. I think this mic is good for temporary use but voice quality is not good.

Really not fit for purpose. Very disappointing quality of performance all round. Returned immediately. First time that I have found it necessary to return something.

J'ai reçu ma commande dans les délais mentionnés par contre malgré que l'emballage était intact, le microphone, lui, montrait des signes d'usure. J'en conclu que c'était peut être un démonstrateur. Je suis un peu déçu.

I bought this to use with Dragon Naturally 12. I find it more accurate than the headphones and head mic. provided with the Dragon software pack. It was simple to set up, and Dragon quickly recognised it. A joy to use, positioned just in front of the keyboard. I can type round it if I want to, and the flexible neck means I can position it at just mouth height.