Hi, using VC with a chinese USB headset that cost about $10. Even that works pretty great from 6 feet away or so.
However in search of even better accuracy at a distance, considering a better dedicated usb mic. Alot of discussion on array mics, read the wiki but not many recommendations of fairly cheap mics. I researched a bit and found two common types - Dynamic and Condenser..... anyone know which is more suitable for us?
Thing is quite hard to know what makes a good voice recognition at a distance! You can ready reviews on studio mics all day long but most of the features the money goes on we really don't care about!
I see in "Mr Wolf's" video he has a nice looking mic, likes like a samson or something....be quite interested to hear peoples views on $10 budget mics compared to more expensive "proper" studio mics....
No matter how expensive your microphone is, it is not going to work well when the person speaking gets too far away from the microphone, unless you have a very quiet room. If you want to watch TV or listen to music and your mouth is far from the microphone, you can forget it. You will need to have a means to reduce the volume. If you have a button for that, great, but so far I have not found the button for the other people in my house talking. ;)
If you have one lying around, you can try a ps3 eye. I think it works OK from about 6-10 feet away if the room is relatively quiet. I do not recommend buying one, just worth trying if you have one lying around.
A microphone that is more focused on sound coming from a single direction would be better than one that picks up everything, this is the idea of a microphone array, but they still don't do a great job (AFAIK) when there is a lot of competing noise.
Well I have my eye on a midrange USB studio mic, I'll do a comparison to my $10, 12 year old chinese headset I use at distance of upto 6 feet or so, which when in a quiet environment seems to hit 9 / 10 commands! Pretty impressive. I have high hopes for one of my knock off Smart USB panic buttons for the ambient noises!