Possibly I could be using this in a VERY loud environment. I'm a paraplegic, and my application is essentially an electric foot pedal presser to enable me to use foot pedal equipped machines without needing to modify them.
The primary place I'm going to be using the device when I get it finished is a place in Somerville, MA called the Artisan's Asylum, which is one of the country's largest "hackerspaces". It includes some very loud machines that reach out even to the quieter spaces, but I'm likely to be using it in the welding shop on a TIG welder, with other people running angle grinders and the like just a few feet away...
The person who talked me into using the speech reco said that he used to make similar systems many years ago that used a throat mike to control pipewelding equipment in an oilfield environment, so presumably it can be done....
OTOH, the EasyVR FAQ said in one question that they didn't recommend a noise cancelling mike because it introduced to much distortion...
My primary concern is with meeting the electrical specs - I figure that even if the so called "speaker independent" vocab doesn't work right, I probably have more than enough speaker dependent slots available to train it for what I need - and if I use the same setup for training as I do for use, then any distortion won't matter....
ex-Gooserider