Wireless Headsets Phone Accessories

Posts Tagged ‘Sennheiser VMX Office’

The Sennheiser “VMX Office” is a Bluetooth headset microphone which offers unique functionality, very high levels of accuracy with speech recognition, and a very comfortable fit. It is designed to integrate simply with a wired telephone as well.

Set-up and Mechanics:

The headset itself is very similar to the Sennheiser VMX 100, which is reviewed elsewhere. It is extremely small, weighing only 15 grams and has an articulating speaker/boom which allow for very comfortable mounting.

Like the VMX100, the headset uses the Sennheiser “VoiceMax” DSP and dual microphone technology which leads to very high levels of noise cancelation in a microphone with a short boom.

The headset can be paired with a cell phone, with the included base station, or directly with a Bluetooth equipped personal computer. When connected to the base station, it can toggle back and forth between a wired telephone and a wired connection to your PC.

The headset allows for 5 hours of talk time and 100 hours of standby time. The headset has a maximal range of 35 meters from its base station and about 10 meters from a mobile phone. When removed from your ear, simply folding the boom back will turn it off completely and allows for long term storage without energy drain.

The base station packaged with the VMX Office includes typical functionality, including a microphone volume control, “ABC” switch for phone integration, and a switch to allow output to confirm with EU standards.

The AC adapter for the base station can accept 100 – 240 volts, allowing easy use world-wide. When coupled with the optional HLS-10 headset lifter, the VMX office will automatically pick up the headset of your wired phone when an incoming call is answered.

Unlike other wireless phones used with both a pc and wired telephone, the lifter mechanism will be initiated only when the VMX Office is used with the telephone (other set-ups have the disadvantage of initiating the phone lifter even when using the microphone with the PC which makes this impractical).

Alternatively, if you have a telephone with DHSG capabilities, the VMX Office has an output jack to allow connection to your phone such that calls can be initiated and ended without the use of any accessory devices.

Packaging is excellent and everything you will need is in the box. Specifically, the box includes:

• Headset
• Base station
• AC charger (100-240 volt input voltages accepted)
• RJ9 cable for connection to wired telephone
• Sennheiser CUIPC1 modular to PC cable to connect to microphone and speaker jacks on PC
• Car charger which accepts 12-24 volt input and has standard USB jack for output
• USB charging cable which allow charging of the headset from your pc or the car charger
• Quick Guide (brief overview instruction
• CD with complete user guide

Performance:

Connected with a wired telephone we have noted absolutely superb performance. The sound is crisp and the output volume is easily adjusted based on the phone with which you are using the microphone using a rotary dial on the base station.

We were skeptical about the use of a microphone with a short boom in conjunction with an application as demanding as speech recognition. But like the VMX 100, the VMX Office is uncanny in its ability to work with NaturallySpeaking.

We attribute this to the dual microphone technology which apparently samples noise arising away from the axis of the boom and excludes or subtracts this from the overall signal. We provide an example of some dictation created with a brand new user profile at VMX Office Demonstration. Keep in mind that playback on Bluetooth microphones typically does not sound great, but the results are a different matter.

Reading both the Rainbow Passage and doing unscripted sample medical documentation (we typically train with a profile pre-loaded with a Cardiology Vocabulary) we got accuracy levels in the 99% range. Here’s what we got reading the rainbow passage (330 words):

Reading 1: 1Error (99.7% accurate)
Reading 2: 1 Error (99.7% accurate)
Reading 3: No errors (100% accuracy)

Overall accuracy: 2 errors out of 990 words = 99.9% accuracy

Purchase VMX at our special Price by Going to our Sennheiser VMX Office Page

For a microphone as comfortable and otherwise functional as the VMX Office, we consider this great. In terms of noise cancelation, we found it to be surprisingly good, although obviously not perfect. We tested this with both a TV playing quietly behind us, and with the added challenge of construction noise immediately outside of the home office.

It both situations, the microphone appeared to be only minimally, if at all affected by this noise. Our sense is that the noise cancellation of this microphone was on par with the Sennheiser BW900 although not quite the level of the most noise cancelling wired Sennheiser ME3.

Summary: This is a great, multipurpose microphone which works well with a wired telephone, cell phone and personal computer. The accuracy with speech recognition is surprisingly good despite its short microphone boom. In addition to the comfort, an added advantage of the microphone is the streamlined appearance which makes it less obtrusive for the physician or other user who wants to wear the microphone while interacting with patients or clients without the appearance of the microphone being distracting.

Purchase VMX at our special Price by Going to our Sennheiser VMX Office Page

Additional links:

Speech Recognition Solutions description of the VMX Office
View the full User Guide
View the Quick Start Guide
View Demonstrations of VMX Office with NaturallySpeaking