With eyes and fingers not what they were, I am looking into speech to text systems.
This is not 'simple commands' - I want fill novel length audio typing as I am working on several books. and technical papers.
So far it looks at though 'Dragon Anywhere' on android may be a contender.
Has anyone else been down this road?
Back in the day Dragon Naturally Speaking was thought to be the Bees Knees - that was a few years ago though.
Andrew
My machine comes with support for dictation built in. Works for any app that supports it. So no third party app needed.
so does mine. For 40 seconds
No idea. I have no particular need for it so haven't tried it beyond using a couple of times to see how well it worked.
Well yes, IO was after feedback from people who had iused it extensively, to write books...or prepare lengthy reports.
From the brief play I've had, the Macintosh stuff is OK. But it does mean you have to buy a Mac. :o(
I used Dragon Naturally Speaking about 5 years ago and the system built into Google Docs/Chrome ( Voice Typing) more recently.Dragon was to try to use for producing procedure manuals which were quite lengthy. Voice Typing was for regular non technical text.
Voice recognition is something which is very processor intensive but it hasn't really advanced as much as everyone thought it would despite processor performance improving.
On all the systems I have tried one universal requirement is for a very good microphone and careful positioning. The best was a passive noise canceling microphone from a Nokia car kit held about one inch to the side of my mouth so no impulse noise. The microphone was used with a home made "Madonna microphone" band to keep the microphone secure and stable. The Nokia microphone is a simple small one but optimised for speech and good at noise canceling (it came from the days when Nokia knew what they were doing). I think I still have a few left over so if you want one let me know.
As for the software Dragon worked quite well and benefited considerably from time spent training it to your voice. A disabled colleague who used it all day both for control and writing had a very low error rate.
Google Voice Typing I've used less but it wasn't bad (and free), it can format text as well as recognising speech and it is easy to take text from Google Docs into Word if you want.
Problems with both (indeed all voice recognition software) was that they never made mistakes, or at least they never admitted it. If you said "Tomorrow is (mumble) Thursday" and they didn't quite get it then rather than saying "yer what?" they would find the closest word so "Tomorrow is Teatime".
Unlike keyboard entry you can't pick up these mistakes with a spell checker - nothing gets spelled incorrectly by speech recognition software, its words which get changed. If you are a good proof reader you can pick these errors up. If like me you are a lousy proof reader
- seeing what I think should be there rather than what is there - it is a pain and the main reason I don't use voice recognition.
It can also be serious if you are writing something like a manual where accuracy is essential.
Technical words were a particular problem and at the beginning a lot of time had to be spent teaching Dragon new words. To be fair its built in vocabulary is very good for normal documents but things like Thyristor, Fast Fourier etc tended to give it indigestion.
Dragon needed a large investment of time at the beginning both to enter technical words and to get the voice training and microphone positioning optimised. Once you have made this investment in time it was good. It was also expensive.
Voice Typing was for a seriously ill person so there wasn't time to do anything more than get the microphone right and the application working. It was being used for normal (non-technical) correspondence, did a competent job and allowed them to write what they wanted. During testing I was impressed by how well it worked especially for a free application. It would be worth trying (as it is free).
With all voice recognition acting on commands is far more accurate than handling free text. With only a handful of words to recognise command recognition is near perfect. Free text I never measured the error rate accurately but in a quiet room (they don't like background noise and fan noise in particular) it was about one error per 200 words. As I said though it wasn't always easy to pick out the mistake when it took place.
I've tried Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10; it's reasonably accurate for word b y word recognition, but very sensitive to microphone placement (headset ess ential), and I doubt whether it will cope well with technical stuff. There are packages available for medical and legal users.
Cloud-based recognition might be better
These days it may be surprisingly cheap to email audio files to India or th e Philippines and they come back typed for you.
The expensive option is a stenographer from comm-unique.co.uk or stenograph ylondon.co.uk who can transcribe speech as you watch.
Owain
Its built into windows 10 and google docs IIRC. Shame he can't read this as the idiot has killfiled me.
The idiot runs Linux, probably the least well supported platform for things like this. So, he's made his bed ...
Cheers, T i m
Thank you Peter, that is most valuable feedback
In article , The Natural Philosopher scribeth thus
The trusty Moto G phone has an excellent speech to text facility simply dictate it then mail it to yourself;)
In article , Peter Parry scribeth thus
Snip..
Just tried those on me Moto 3 smart phone got them tight first time:)
Compatibility libraries and virtual machines make this a fairly pointless comment.
A translator friend of mine swears by Dragon, but I don't know exactly which version.
Sure, if you are a geek.
For those who just want to install something current, supported and likely to work OOTB ... and have it work well and easily (on a PC), Linux is *not* the best choice.
As it happens, I think TNP already has Windows on bare iron to do the things Linux can't, so he could be ok, especially if the CPU hit running Windows in a VM makes that option unreliable.
Cheers, T i m
God forbid I should sell the Mac short, but I do find the voice recognition typing to be fairly poor. I try it again after every software update in the hope it's improved, but not yet. I should stick to Dragon if I were you and Dragon works OK.
Yes I can also confirm all of that. I never dictate, only eve r use the echo for commands and simple stuff. The Apple dictate a text can leave one amused. Take, feeling better, but leftme with a nasty chesty cough Actually came out in text as left me with a nasty testicle. So be careful out there! Brian
I have a sneaky feeling that some of these systems need a 'net connection and the real work of conversion is done in the cloud. Any NDA's involved? Just a heads up.
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