Word Dictate - keeps typing 'what'

Since you are dictating into NotePad, you are not using the Dictate associated with Office 365, you are using the Windows 10 Ease of Access / Dictate / "Talk instead of Type" feature. 

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Submitting a feedback from Notepad will go to the Windows team. So your feedback about Window 10 dictate should reach the right people.

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Hi Folks, This evening (Saturday 6/6/2020) I was experimenting with my podcast equipment and decided to try Dictation, just to see what happened. From what I can tell, the inactivity timer may have been improved, because I'm able to dictate with virtually no dropouts. I was having a few transcription errors, so I adjusted my parametric equalizer to cut off anything below 80 Hz, plus I added a bandpass boost of about 3dB at 2,500 HZ, which is where most human language articulation takes place. Now, transcription is now almost perfect. I'm not sure what Microsoft Dictation does for equalization, but the Dictation developers may want to consider adding a user-adjustable bandpass boost at about 2,500 Hz (possibly, that feature could be named "articulation tune" or "voice refinement.") I'd let the user tune the center frequency of the boost from 2,000 Hz to 2,500 Hz and adjust the level of boost from 0 dB to 6 dB. Keeping in mind I'm autistic, so some portions of my voice are missing (I sound a bit like a robot), but for me, it's working better than Apple and Dragon. I'll do some testing against my Android phone. - Rob

Your observations about differences between English dialects is interesting. I'm an American and a high-functioning autistic. As an autistic, I lack many of the intonations other have, regardless of language and dialect. For me, the latest and greatest Dragon is worthless, due to bugs in the command parser and flaws in the fundamental speech-to-text conversion. However, Microsoft's Dictation is very accurate in the are of speech-to-text, but functionally worthless for me, due to the short sleep timer. So, I suspect Microsoft's Dictation is looking at the fundamentals of word formation, while Dragon is highly dependent broader individual characteristics, such as accent. For the foreseeable future, I'm guessing Dictation is stalled and will go nowhere beyond what it is, especially under Windows as a stand-alone platform. Windows is really contradictory to the new software-as-a-service cloud-based paradigm.

Can you elaborate what you mean by Dictation in Office being stalled? Azure speech services are cloud-based and we are not under Windows as a standalone platform. You can use the same Dictate functionally on Mac Word and Outlook, IPhone, and Android Phone today.

I think one of the big issues is Windows and desktop applications have been "demoted" in favor of cloud-based applications. At this point, I'm not optimistic and I'm only buying software that also supports Linux. It's really too bad. I've asked a lot of people about dictation and most have the same reactions: 1) It looks nice, but not ready for primetime; 2) Why is Microsoft so far behind Apple and Google in voice-based technologies?