Voice recognition. Or, more specifically, speech recognition. It’s a kind of technological wonders that all of us appear to take with no consideration, while simultaneously throwing laughter its way for not being nearly sophisticated enough. Anyone that’s used an early generation Ford SYNC system — or pretty well any vehicular voice command system — knows exactly what we’re getting at . While processing speeds and user interfaces have made great strides previously handful of years, voice recognition has managed to repeatedly disappoint. It isn’t that things aren’t improving, it’s just that they don’t seem to be improving on the same rate because the hardware and software surrounding them. Even today, most new automobiles should be spoken to loudly, pointedly and directly, or even then it is a crapshoot as to if or not your command may be recognized and acted upon.
For up to we complain, we totally get it. Teaching a working laptop or computer program how one can recognize, understand and act upon the movement of human vocal chords is a Herculean task. Throw in nearly unlimited amounts of dialect and regional variation with even a single language, and it is a wonder that programs comparable to Nuance’s Dragon Dictate even exist. Teaching a vehicle find out how to route calls, adjust volume and tweak a radio station is some thing, but having a program that turns actual speech into presentable documents requires a heightened level of accuracy. The latest build of Dragon Dictate for Mac (v2.5) allows users to seamlessly combine dictation with mouse and keyboard input in Microsoft Word 2011; it also gives yappers the power to more finely control how Dragon formats text along with dates, times, numbers and addresses, while a free iOS app turns your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch right into a wireless microphone. We recently pushed our preconceived notions about these things aside so they can spend an exceptional week counting on our voice rather than our fingertips — read directly to see the way it turned on.
Installation and setup
For those unaware, Dragon Dictate is relatively new to the Mac platform. In brief, it’s an application that runs quietly within the background and picks up whatever you assert into the bundled Plantronics USB microphone. The installation process is comparatively painless — our boxed test unit did indeed require an optical drive to be nearby, but digital download versions are available in for people who have opted for one in every of Apple’s ODD-less machines. Essentially the most time-consuming a part of the setup is good in the beginning. Users are asked to read 10 or 15 paragraphs aloud in order that the software can learn the way you speak, the way you pronounce certain things and even if you’ve a southern drawl.
Once your profile is created, you are able to then add certain words which can be inside the (admittedly gargantuan) dictionary. As an instance, we hastily added DARPA, MHz and BRB — , essential phrases on this line of labor. That said, we were downright flabbergasted by what number words were already included, including ye olde Engadget. Some of the things that we wondered about going into this review was compatibility; the corporate doesn’t exactly shed light on if you would like a undeniable program to have words transcribed. Thankfully, we found that in most cases any program that accepts text works just fine with Dragon Dictate. Featuring Microsoft Word, TextEdit, Skype, insert-your-IRC-app-here, Gmail, ScribeFire, Microsoft Excel or even the URL bar in Google Chrome.
Inputting text via voice couldn’t be easier. This system incorporates a few modes: dictation is one — it is the one you will likely use most often — and command mode is another. If you are inside the latter, you can simply tell your computer to open a program, close a window, or quit a undeniable program. In practice, i discovered it easier to exploit my mouse cursor to choose which program i wished my voice to input text into. For instance, i’d exit the conversation in IRC, mouse over to Gmail, and start talking again. As long as you retain an eye fixed on where your cursor is, you could have no problems getting voice memos into your application or area of choice.
In practice…
Additionally it is worth mentioning that there’s somewhat of a learning curve for first-time users. Unfortunately, such things as natural pauses aren’t recognized as a comma. In other words, you definitely should say the word “comma” to ensure that it to insert one. An analogous goes for some other variety of punctuation mark, and while it’s rather awkward at the start to chat out these marks that always fly through your thoughts as you are going from word to word, it grows easier with time. At the plus side, with the ability to input commands through your voice lets you actually initiate macros with spoken command. Yeah, meaning you may close an existing Firefox tab by just saying “Press the secret Command W.”
In practice, this system had no issues whatsoever recognizing our commands. It was only after we attempted to chat entirely too fast that we saw missed actions. Nuance claims that you just don’t even have to modify how you speak for this system. To an extent, that’s true. However the reality is that this: you’ll want to speak solemnly, deliberately and enunciate properly so that they can reduce the quantity of errors you notice. In case you start to speak quickly, as though you were just jawing with a chum, the quantity of errors will inevitably rise. Trust us on that one. That is not to claim it’s essential speak slowly, but examine it this fashion — you’re aiming to talk more like Brian Williams at the Nightly News then you definately are like yourself when talking to your long-lost sister.
Like many stuff, this program works best when you put plenty of effort into learning the right way to use it up front. It took us around two to 3 hours before we felt completely comfortable speaking into the microphone, and predicting exactly what would happen at the other end. As time went on, the amount of mistakes we saw decreased. But, that’s largely because we began to compensate for the program in areas where we knew it was weak. To some extent, that’s an unfortunate necessity. We found ourselves with fewer errors, but we were intentionally sidestepping words that we genuinely wanted to use simply because we knew the program had a difficult time translating them. If you work in an industry where flowery language isn’t exactly an expectation, this may be a nonfactor for you.
Productivity impact
Overall, we were supremely blown away by just how great Dragon Dictate operated. We went into this with the goal of seeing just how much more productive we could be by speaking all day instead of typing. Turns out, those who consider themselves to be Professional Emailers stand to gain quite a bit from using this. We can attest to the wrist pain that creeps up after banging away for 10+ hours, and folks who are looking to at least delay the inevitable onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome will be downright thrilled in the boost in perceived health. After years of typing for the majority of our waking hours, being able to cut that by a good 60 to 70 percent (in favor of using voice) was downright heavenly. If you don’t type for a living, there’s a solid chance you won’t be in the target market looking to drop $137 on a program like this, but if you do… well, you can probably relate.
The real kicker, however, is speed and accuracy. On our Core i7 test rig, speed was never an issue. The program didn’t visibly bog down our system, and our words were spat out onto digital paper mere milliseconds after we uttered them. Accuracy, however, still isn’t perfect. But it’s wildly close. When banging out long-form content (such as this review, or a term paper, or a dissertation), you might see five to ten errors throughout. Errors that are easily addressable as you’re proofreading your content before submitting. Annoying? Sure, but no more so than leaving out words altogether or trying to peck out “convenience” for three minutes sans a dictionary — things we routinely do when typing. For what it’s worth, the updated build does indeed integrate well with Word 2011, allowing users to insert typed text in the midst of spoken text. In fact, that functionality extended to every single application we used, and it’s a vital part of the workflow.
We often came upon sections of text — mostly littered with subscripts, parenthetical references and a litany of quotation marks — where we simply preferred to type them out instead of speak them. So we did. And when we started speaking again, it simply picked up wherever the cursor was left blinking. Every so often we’d have a word wrap issue, but those were few and far betwixt, and could be solved with a close + reopen. While we’re at the topic of errors, we should point out that we spoke this entire review, top to bottom. All told, we had six errors that needed fixed via typing, and we’re guessing that we would’ve found at least six had we penned the entire thing on a keyboard. Specifically, the software erroneously understood “eye on” to be “aisle,” “aren’t” to be “are,” “end” to be “hand,” and “weak” to be “week.” It also tried to close TextEdit when we said the word “close,” and it routinely assumed that “nah” was “now.”
Some of those problems are more grating than others; we had to train ourselves to say “aren’t” in a way that the software could recognize; otherwise, we handed out the complete wrong message when speaking. We also longed for more slang terms to be understood. When conversing with colleagues, the use of “nah” is a far softer way to express dissent than “no,” but we found it nigh impossible to get it to recognize that. Words like “duuuuuude” and “hahaha” also have no place here — not that we’re shocked or anything, but we’re guessing the corporate set will want to exploit this for friendly sidechats on occasion.
Wrap-up
Is the newest edition of Dragon Dictate worth its weight in gold? The v2.0 box set is selling for $137 on Amazon today, and the v2.0 to v2.5 update is gratis. For folks that spend more time each day typing than sleeping, we can’t help but heartily recommend this. The dramatic decrease in wrist strain alone makes it a worthwhile purchase in our estimation, and the inevitable productivity increases are just icing at the cake. Now, if only they’d update their dictionary with a few words heard first at the playground…
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