MXL AC-404 USB mic

[Colorider40]

  I recently bought the MXL AC404 USB conference microphone.  It is really incredible. I can speak *very softly* from 25 feet away (as far as I could get) and it picks up with ~94 percent accuracy my commands (quiet room of course).  If I have music on, I need to speak at normal volume.  I was in my kitchen about 20 feet away, behind a wall, with the sink on and it still accurately accepted commands.  I have the mic on the entertainment center behind my tv, which is probably not the best spot, but it still works great.
  My current setup makes for a good mix of remote and voice commands.  Sometimes it's easier to navigate with a remote, sometimes with voice commands.   For example, I have a USB uirt, which can send IR to all of my devices.  So I can turn on components (tv, stereo) with voice commands from virtually anywhere.  I can select different tv inputs and it jumps right there.  I give voice commands to get to where I want within an application and then use the remote if I want to navigate or browse items.
   In addition to voice commands for listen/ignore phrases, I have the red, yellow, and green buttons on my harmony remote set to stop, standby, and on modes in VC.  I use the blue button to mute and listen, for when I have music turned way up.  
  The only bad experience is that it has started listening while i was watching a movie a couple times (accidentally 'heard' my listen phrase).  But I think that is pretty inevitable with a whole room mic and a very loud movie.  Now, when I start watching a movie I just press the red 'listening off' button on my remote.  But I might setup a way to have vox or eventghost detect movie playback to automate this step.  For some reason, watching live tv in WMC disables VC, which is nice.  But becomes 'aware' at the WMC main menu so I can command it to 'go back to XBMC'.
   If you are looking for a mic that can pick up voice commands from anywhere in a large room, this is the one.  But understand the limitations of a very powerful mic (it hears everything).  You just need to get creative with eventghost and the groups and commands in VC, but overall I'm still very impressed. 

[jitterjames]

Thanks for the report.  It sounds promising for some users.  What approximate price are we looking at?  $75 ?

[Colorider40]

Yep, it was about 70 with shipping from Amazon.

[painy]

Sounds like you're getting 3x-4x better results then working with a cheap microphone (like myself). Good to know.
Those false positives, was that because your prefix was said in the movie? or because it picked up a false positive command?
My native language is Dutch, and I seem to be getting an awful lot of false positives when having a Dutch conversation (VC being set up in English).
I don't get as many false positive commands while watching a movie or listening to music, but it tends to happen if the volume is cranked up.
You managed to fix that quite good with the remote it appears

[Colorider40]

  I have vox commando set to default into standby mode.  It had a false positive on my listen phrase ("chuck norris") then a false positive command.  I don't use prefixes, just an idle timeout that moves it back to standby.  I've also removed one word syllable phrases commands, that seems to help with the false positives. 

[cntrlaltdel]

Hi Colorider40, would you mind running through how you mapped your harmony remote to voxcommando so you could associate the stop listening/pay attention/off features?

Thanks!

[jitterjames]

Colorider has not logged into this forum for over 3.5 years...

He said he had a USBUIRT so he was probably using something like eventGhost.

VoxCommando now has a USBUIRT plugin as well.

[Etrust]

Hi Guys, I am using the MXL AC-404 USB Mic and I am very happy. In a quiet situation I can send voice requests with 80% up to 3 meters from the mic away. I will test this mic with sound on the background like tv, music and people conversation and will  let you know.

I can suggest this mic :=)

[Phobophile]

Bought it off Amazon ($90 with shipping). First of all - nice package! A lot of useless paper and a fake leather case tell you that you've spent your money well. Nicely built too, I think it weighs even more than 90$, somewhere around 120. 
Ok, to the point. Can't say for sure about promised 25 feet, but 3 meters away in a quiet room it works ok. I get about 70-90% recognition (no matter if using English or Russian engine), so accuracy threshold should be probably lowered in Vox in this case. Obviosuly, as mentioned before, not very useful when listening to music or watching movies, or just leaving Vox in "always listen" mode - just now it triggered my "Tee vee off" command without apparent reason. Turning on prefix mode is also a good idea.
So, my resume: MXL AC-404 is a great and not very expensive solution for home automation in a small room. Especially if you don't have a lot of commands. If your main goal is to control your media center, then I would stick with Amulet. Or you can use them both.

[jitterjames]

So, my resume: MXL AC-404 is a great and not very expensive solution for home automation in a small room. Especially if you don't have a lot of commands. If your main goal is to control your media center, then I would stick with Amulet. Or you can use them both.

Thanks for a well-rounded, realistic, "real-world" report.  I just have one thing to point out.  False positives actually seem to increase when you have less commands in your tree.  When you just install the basic config which has two small groups in it you will get false positives like crazy.  Obviously, either way you are going to need to use prefix mode with an open mic, or turn it on and have it go back to standby automatically after a delay.