I dont think you're really taking into consideration background noise...
considering the waves themselves generate great amounts of "White Noise" (no
reference to the movie)... the only way of actually getting a clear voice in
a situation like that is to either do noise cancellation, or remove the back
ground all together... "More microphones" isnt going to help the situation.
What would need to be done for noise cancellation is record background noise
(when no one is talking) generate a 'noise map'... and when it recognizes
speech, or something it considers speech, apply the noise map in the noise
reduction... and voilah! clear voice, or nothing at all!... but this is very
cpu intensive... but can be done, and i've done it for years with now
outdated software, "cool edit 2000" great stuff.
-James G.

"Alan" <info@optioncity.REMOVETHIS.net> wrote in message
news:ejL%23Lz9YFHA.2128@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>
> "Jonathan Sachs" <xxxxxxx@earthlink.not> wrote in message
> news:thmh919jtg4r571utpdnvfvma1ssf4sr7e@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 28 May 2005 12:42:29 -0700, "Alan"
>> <info@optioncity.REMOVETHIS.net> wrote:
>
>> That said, I think that if the e-book concept is viable at all, the
>> limitations of current display technology are the main thing holding
>> it back. LCD displays are too low in resolution to be read easily for
>> long periods of time, and too reflective for use in brightly
>> illuminated places. The lack of bandwidth (displaying only one page at
>> a time) is also a major drawback, a practical one for some users and a
>> psychological one for others. I think that when and if the e-book
>> becomes popular, it will consist of a bound volume of electronic
>> paper, rather than a "slab" with an LCD screen.
>
> Thanks for your feedback, Jonathan.
> Since I want my e-book to have a cover, if you opened that and had
> two 6 x 9 pages displayed, that would be even better for me.
> However, the need to have multiple pages that you can physically
> 'turn' seems to me entirely psychological unless I am missing something.
> I don't feel that need at all.
>
>>
>> I will caution you about the use of voice recognition.
>> Limited-vocabulary voice recognition can be pretty reliable, but its
>> performance is likely to be seriously degraded by background noise.
>> Until their attention is drawn to it, many people do not realize how
>> loud the background noise is in many common environments: buses, city
>> streets, even the beach. I would be very skeptical of an e-book reader
>> whose user interface depended on voice recognition, and considering
>> the resources required, I would question the wisdom of offering it as
>> an option.
>
> You could be right --- it's perhaps the least necessary of my 'specs', and
> I would
> likely jump at a reasonably priced device with all my other 'requirements'
> but not that one
> My tv remote shows me that you can get pretty far with a few buttons.
> Yet ... you need to be able to do a search on author, title, keywords,
> etc.
> I wonder if a requirement that you talk "into the open e-book",
> combined with a few strategically placed pickup microphones, couldn't
> substantially filter out the background? Or, how about a wireless, clip-on
> microphone? Of course, at the beach, I'll have to clip it onto my hat :-)
> Surely the acoustic engineers can solve this little problem.
>
> regards,
> alan
>
>
>
>