Can you dictate in a noisy room?

Yes, you can dictate in a noisy room, but the software will make more errors as the noise rises. Speech recognition has to separate your voice from everything else the microphone hears. The three things we would check first are a microphone close to your mouth, less steady background sound, and an ordinary, steady voice.

Noise lowers accuracy because the software cannot separate your voice from the room

Speech recognition turns sound into words by matching what it hears against speech patterns. Any other sound in the same signal competes with your voice. A 1996 study on recognition in noise states that the performance of a speech recognition system degrades rapidly in the presence of ambient noise ¹. The authors also modeled the Lombard effect, the way people change their voices when they talk in noise, and tried to compensate for it.

Dragon's own guidance says the same. Its dictation guidelines tell users to reduce background noise, because Dragon hears and transcribes everything ². Other dictation tools differ in detail, but the principle holds: whatever reaches the microphone is input, including the coworker in the next chair.

Distance from the microphone is the first thing to fix

Distance is the first thing to fix. In the Ravanelli et al. study, close-talking read speech recorded in a studio had a word error rate of 3.7 percent ³. With a single distant ceiling microphone in an apartment, using real recordings, the error rate was 12.0 percent ⁴. The two conditions differ in room and speech, so the comparison is a rough guide, not a test of noise alone. The gap is still large, and it points at the microphone.

Apple gives the same practical advice for Dictation on a Mac: a headset microphone may help when Dictation is used in a noisy environment or a room with excessive echo ⁵. For a headset, Nuance advises keeping the microphone element about an inch from the side of the mouth, but not touching it ⁶.

The answer depends on the kind of noise and the room

The answer changes with three things.

Steady noise, such as a fan, an air conditioner or a car engine, is easier to reduce. A voice in the background, a siren or a slamming door is different, because it is sound that can be transcribed as words.

Echo is a separate problem. In a bare room with glass and hard floors, each word blurs into the next. A furnished room with carpet and curtains is often a better place to dictate than a quiet but empty one. We did not find an open test that measures error rates at several echo levels, so treat this as direction, not a threshold.

Other people's speech is the hardest case in an open office. The authors of a 2019 laboratory study write that it seems accepted that speech noise in open-plan offices is the main source of discomfort for employees ⁷. That study measured a memory task, not dictation, so it shows the cost of nearby speech rather than a dictation error rate. It is still a reason to keep your own voice at a normal level.

Shouting does not fix any of this. A louder voice at a distant microphone is worse than a normal voice at a close one, and it adds to the noise your colleagues hear.

What to do before you dictate in a noisy room

1. Move the microphone close. Keep a headset about an inch from the side of your mouth ⁶, and check its position at the start of each session.
2. Cut the steady noise you can control. Close the door, turn off a fan or air conditioner if you can, and move away from machines.
3. Soften the echo. Pick a room with carpet, curtains or upholstered chairs over a bare room with hard surfaces.
4. Speak at a normal, steady pace and volume. Nuance tells Dragon users to speak clearly at a normal conversational tone and to keep a consistent speed and volume ⁸.
5. Test one change at a time. Dictate the same short passage, count the errors, change one thing, and dictate it again.

If the room is too busy for dictation at all, a meeting room, a private booth or a closed office is the practical alternative. Yap, which we make, runs on your own device, so the noise your microphone captures is the only input it gets. The same steps apply to it and to the built-in dictation tools on your computer or phone.

For the full picture, read the guide to dictation and background noise. If the noise is coming through the microphone you own, see how close the microphone should be for dictation and whether a laptop microphone is good enough for dictation. For a headset, read whether a wireless headset is good for dictation. The dictation overview lists every guide in the series. For the term, see the glossary entry for noise-canceling microphone.