I’ve had a iPhone for a few years now and am definitely a heavy Siri user. I’ve learned her way, how to speak with her, and get her to do the things I need her to do (for the most part – I still can’t seem to get her to schedule anything in my calendar).
I also use Siri when I can’t access the phone, such as when running or when driving.
When I’m running, I have the Apple headset and Siri works perhaps even better than without a headset.
But when I’m the car, Siri can be quite frustrating. Y’see, the microphone in the car was never designed for voice recognition.
Unless you played with editing audio or perhaps were into computer telephony, you might not realize that not all audio channels are the same. Or perhaps you have – the degraded sound quality on radio talk shows is due to the telephone not delivering a broad enough bandwidth to deliver good sound. Indeed, the standard phone system was designed to carry the minimum amount of sound to be intelligible.
When Skype came out, folks were shocked at the sound quality – Skype was sending the maximum bandwidth to provide the best sound possible.
Back to my car
My car microphone seems to also be designed to provide the minimum bandwidth necessary for a phone call. It doesn’t try to be the best microphone because the phone system has such narrow bandwidth. Hence, when I use it, it’s quite difficult for Siri to understand me.
So my suggestion to car manufacturers: Siri (and Google Now and Cortana) need excellent sound input to optimally work. DON’T SKIMP ON CAR MICROPHONES!
Any body else want to weigh in?
