Speech Recognition

22 Mar 2008 09:53:28

John Surtees

A while back, I seem to remember somebody posted a query asking if speech recognition software was worthwhile. I replied saying that I've used ViaVoice and MacSpeech iListen in the past and found it OK for general stuff but in my experience it wasn't much good for technical or medical use.

iListen was based on a Philips based recognition program. However, for Intel Macs, MacSpeech has now released 'Dictate' which is based on the Dragon Naturally Speaking program for PC.

Anybody who attends the Fareham or Bournemouth meetings will know Joy, my other half. Well for her sins, her employer has equipped her with a Dell 430 laptop loaded with Naturally Speaking and I have to say it is impressive. It's fast and very accurate, but most impressive is the fact that whereas ViaVoice and iListen needed a lot of training, i.e. reading it stories so it could learn you voice, Dragon only needs 10 minutes or so. Also VV and IListen were very sensitive to room acoustics and would be virtually unusable if you tried using them in a location other than the room you originally set it up in. Whereas the Dragon based program seems unaffected in this respect. It will be interesting to see what the magazine reviews say.

Re: Speech Recognition

23 Mar 2008 09:48:04

Terry Willis

Any chance of Joy doing a demo at Fareham? (She can have two Doughnuts!)

Re: Speech Recognition

25 Mar 2008 08:43:23

John Surtees

You smooth tongued operator, how can a girl resist the lure of a second doughnut?

The good lady hasn't said yes, but she hasn't said no. One of her concerns is that she has only had the Dell and software for a week or so, and while it appears to be very location tolerant, she is unsure about changes in her voice due to nerves – Well how would you feel entering a WAG meeting with a Dell?

Unfortunately, due to work commitments, we will have to leave any decision to the last moment.