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Kryten
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Sometime around 15/7/08 (at 03:44 -0400) Kryten said:
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“Anyone had any success with Speech recognition software?”
(Sorry, I prefer not to bounce between subject and message body when
reading posts. I’m such a pedant! 
Actually, sorta. The big problem with speech recognition is that it
really isn’t effective straight out of the box; to be able to do
free-form speech recognition for speech-to-text, rather than
limited-set phrase matching, you’ll need to train the software over a
period of time (at least some hours) to know precisely how you
normally say a wide range of words and sentences. From that training
it will then be able to recognise you a lot of the time… except
when you have a cold, are out of breath, and so on.
To be brutally frank, unless you put in a very large amount of
effort, you can generally expect it to get things right perhaps 95%+
of the time, which means an average of one word in twenty or so could
be wrong. Or, to put it another way, maybe one sentence in three
could contain an error.
I’ve seen speech recognition software working to a far higher level
of accuracy, but that’s with relatively non-specialist subjects, a
very high level of training, a superb microphone, and an experienced
demonstrator.
I’ve personally managed to get speech recognition software to around
a 99% accuracy level, which was quite astounding in use… and also
not quite as compelling as you’d think. You can’t let yourself go
'ummm…", pausing to compose the second half of a sentence on the
fly (very normal behaviour while typing) can be problematic, and you
will either have to intersperse your verbal dictation with verbal
editing commands or stay by the keyboard and mouse. Or proof-read
things fully afterwards, of course.
Don’t expect to be able to use recorded speech with speech
recognition software either, unless it was made with the absolutely
best recording hardware available AND played back with top-notch
equipment AND the person speaking has trained the system beforehand -
using the same recorded audio setup as well, not spoken live into the
mic.
Having said all this, it can be superb. And certainly for people with
problems that affect typing abilities, including RSI-related issues,
it can be a life-changing tool. But don’t be misled by marketing hype.
k
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Marvelous Keith, thank you. Did you type all that in or use SR software?? You have convinced me I should try it. Next thing, what software for Mac do you recommend??
K.
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Sometime around 15/7/08 (at 06:29 -0400) Kryten said:
Marvelous Keith, thank you. Did you type all that in or use SR software??
Written by voice? Not a chance!
I write wherever I happen to be, in this case in my office at college
with the sounds of printing and finishing machines floating across
the corridor. I like to keep my door open so people can find me
easily.
The background noise isn’t high by any means, but it would register
slightly on a decent mic. And you DO need a good mic if you’re going
to do anything more than just play around with this kind of software!
Also, I type almost as fast as I speak - well, not far off anyway -
and I construct my sentences on the fly as they’re coming out of my
head. I can also, to an extent, write while chatting. That’s the
result of writing so much over the years that I’ve literally worn out
keyboards more than once. Speech-to-text dictation is fun, but it
would be a step back for me, most of the time.
You have convinced me I should try it. Next thing, what software for
Mac do you recommend??
MacSpeech Dictate is current, although it appears not to be able to
accept word-specific training for things it regularly misunderstands.
Their previous product, iListen, has/had this ability, so it is
strange that it is not in the current offering.
IBM’s ViaVoice, the first OS X tool of this kind, is discontinued. I
found that to be pretty good.
(My first speech-recognition software, not counting the things I made
myself that were phrase-matching command tools rather than dictation
engines, was Dragon’s Power Secretary, back in the mid/late 1990s.
That was seriously impressive for its time, and came on so many
floppy disks that I lost count. They had their own binder.)
Whatever you get, DO use a good-quality mic, not something built into
your Mac. It will make a difference.
k
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Great Keith - many thanks for your detailed info. I have a lot of typed documents to do, so I thought this might be a better option than OCR.
K.
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