Quick answer
First, make sure the user profile you originally trained is the one that's open — a fresh or shared profile will always be inaccurate. Then run Check Microphone from the Audio menu, sit the mic in the same spot each time, and cut background noise. If it's still off, run Accuracy Tuning and always fix mistakes using Dragon's correction, not the delete key.
WHY IT HAPPENS
Dragon learns you — so the setup matters.
Dragon builds a personal model of how you sound and the words you use, stored in your user profile. Accuracy drops when that link breaks: the wrong profile is loaded, the microphone changes or moves, a noisy fan or air conditioner creeps into the audio, or mistakes get deleted instead of corrected so Dragon never learns from them. Work through the list below and most accuracy problems clear up without reinstalling anything.
THE FIX
Work through these in order.
- Confirm the right user profile is openOpen Profile → Open User Profile and select the one you originally set up and trained. If someone created a second profile, or you're signed in under a shared or generic one, Dragon has none of your voice history and will guess. Always dictate under your own trained profile.
- Run Check MicrophoneFrom the Audio menu on the DragonBar, choose Check Microphone and read the sample aloud. This confirms Dragon is hearing a clean, strong signal. If it flags the audio quality, that's your accuracy problem — fix the mic before anything else.
- Get the microphone position rightA headset mic should sit about a thumb's width from the corner of your mouth — close enough to hear you clearly, off to the side so it doesn't catch your breath. Keep it in the same position every session. If the boom has been bent or the headset swapped, Dragon is effectively hearing a new voice.
- Use a decent microphoneThe built-in laptop mic or a cheap earbud will always struggle. A good USB or Bluetooth headset with proper noise cancellation makes the single biggest difference to accuracy in a busy office. If accuracy fell off a cliff after a hardware change, that's usually why.
- Cut the background noiseFans, air conditioning, open-plan chatter and speakerphones all muddy the audio and confuse Dragon. Dictate somewhere quieter, close the door, or move away from the noise source. A noise-cancelling headset helps, but a calmer room helps more.
- Always correct, never deleteWhen Dragon gets a word wrong, use its correction feature (say "Correct that" or select the text and fix it) rather than deleting and retyping. Correcting is how Dragon learns; deleting teaches it nothing and the same mistake keeps coming back.
- Add your specialist words to the vocabularyNames, legal or medical terms, product codes and local place names won't be in Dragon's default vocabulary. Add them via the Vocabulary Editor so Dragon knows they exist and how you say them — this is a big win for law and health practices.
- Run Accuracy Tuning and keep Dragon updatedAfter a few weeks of correcting, run Accuracy Tuning (under Manage or the Accuracy Centre) so Dragon reprocesses your audio and text to sharpen the model. Also install the latest Dragon updates — updates fix recognition and compatibility bugs, especially after a Windows upgrade.
If accuracy stays poor across several people or machines — the cause is usually the environment, the microphone standard you've rolled out, or how profiles are being managed, not one person's technique. That's the point to bring in your IT provider to standardise headsets, profiles and setup across the practice rather than tweaking each PC by hand.
