What is the current state of speech recognition software ? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 16, 2012, 05:24:00 pm
content: I'd like to have a go at speech recognition software. Is it feasable these days at a reasonable price ? I had a copy of dragon naturally speaking 10 years ago and between my poor pc performance and my poor speech at the time I gave up. What is the current situation. Any recomendations of products ?

author: PeterG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 01:30:24 am
content: Dragon is still the best out thee. I have a friend who is paralysed and they set him up with a pc that is speach controlled. Very impressive to see running.Regards

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 02:30:38 am
content: The major issue i've found is they are all designed for an American accent.We actually played around with some software 5 years ago and faked an American accent.The result was quite noticeable, much better accuracy.I'm not sure if that is still the case. But you definitely want to try and find software that supports your country.

author: PeterG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 02:38:02 am
content: As far as i know, Dragon now handles many regions. It still takes time to 'Train' the software, but it does perform well once you have done that.A lot of people get frustrated and give up before Dragon has learnt there voice properly.Regards

author: Chris Wilson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 12:21:19 pm
content: I have been meaning to make a post asking the same question as the OP for ages. I'll take another look at Dragon Dictate. I wonder if it will ever be perfected 100% for all users? My typing is appalling, and seems to get worse as i get olderThanks.

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 12:45:33 pm
content: I don't use Dragon myself but did put together PC systems with Dragon for paralyzed folks in late 1990s, and they love it. Of course, they have all the incentive to get it trained right.I use voice entry on all cellphone messages using Google Voice, and its 90+% accurate. I have problems in noisy environments, it sometimes in context writes wrong words and has problems with names: say it types ONE instead of JUAN, or writes sod her, instead of solder, but if its a memo, I dont mind as its for myself, and if its a message, all I need is edit it.Most automated services by telephone now are voice controlled, regardless of accent.So in toto, given the state of many voice recognition systems in various locales, Dragon should be very good now, too.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 01:00:55 pm
content: I know a lawyer who uses it to write letters to people. Seems to have no problems.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 08:38:15 pm
content: Well I bit the bullet and bought it, just downloading the 2.2 GB ! file now

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2012, 08:55:18 pm
content: Give us a review, when you are able.Quote from: Simon on May 17, 2012, 08:38:15 pm

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 18, 2012, 03:21:49 pm
content: well so far so good this entire post is being dictated and I will not be making any corrections, I went through the basic setup to setup my profile based on my speech and my microphone. And it has done a pretty good job so far although I've only been using it for a few minutes the recognition accuracy has been very good. I will let you know what progress I might

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 18, 2012, 08:42:44 pm
content: Looks pretty good, apart from the abrupt ending. I'm surprised it doesn't automatically capitalize sentences (probably an option). It failed to distinguish the noun setup from the verb to set up, but that might be pretty hard without context/grammar awareness.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2012, 09:01:22 pm
content: If it was to try my speech it would be full of Um and Ah, as well as untranslatable kak.BTW the best person to use Dragon is Jerry Pournelle, as he provided all the english speech used originally in development.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2012, 10:54:02 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on May 18, 2012, 09:01:22 pmJust for fun, go and google the iPhone 4s siri parody with a guy from Scotland yelling and swearing at the phone.

author: PeterG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 02:31:49 am
content: It is sad to say, but i have met people who are almost as bad as this guy.I owned an iPhone once, then i upgraded to Android. Still miss the good old days of Nokia tho.Regards

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 06:46:28 am
content: Quote from: alm on May 18, 2012, 08:42:44 pmYes the Ending Was a Bit Abrupt but that was probably due to my speech. It's actually not as easy as you would think to dictate and have this thing right exactly what to say. As the instructions say you have to plan your sentences before you say them, as much and it needs to learn your voice you need to learn to speak to it. Usually sentences are capitalised for example every sentence in this I am writing is capitalised but the first word did not come out capitalised I had to tell it to do that. This seems to happen in many web forms. unfortunately I don't have masses of written documents on my computer for its analyse, during setup it will scan your computer for anything and everything you have ever written to try and work out your writing technique this helps it pickup words you use most frequently and your general wording structure so that it can predict what you are trying to say when it is in doubt.it is quite good for controlling the computer as well and there you go this sentence should have been capitalised but it hasn't done it again if I was writing this in word it probably would have. Judging by the amount of so-called spelling mistakes there are in this text I'm dictating I think it is trying to write in American English or maybe the Firefox spell checker is American actually I think it is because it tried to correct centre when centre had been written correctly. I got this not just because I want to be able to dictate my computer but I am well aware that my speech is not always the best and sometimes hard to understand and are not very good at public speaking. So I thought perhaps it would help mean that as well as I would get an unbiased response from the computer if it can't understand what I'm saying. I think when I tried this program 10 years ago my speech was much worse and it is no wonder that it works so poorly. I have had to make some basic corrections to this but as you can see is not doing too bad and usually you can just issue a voice command which scratch that which willremove what you just dictated but then see it fail to put in a space between winning and remove so it's not perfect and I need to pronounce words better like "failed". So if it does misinterpret what you say you can just tell it to delete the last sentence and then say it again I don't know if that is faster than keyboard editing. I can use it to control Windows for example opening programs and I can even click on links in my browser.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 10:09:46 am
content: That is pretty impressive for it to have written all that text from your speech. I notice it's a lot longer and contains more run-on sentences than usual, but when using this sort of software you tend to speak to it like you're having a conversation with someone, so it reads like a transcript of that.How fast does it compare to typing with the keyboard? People normally speak around 150wpm.

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 12:42:20 pm
content: The accuracy looks very good. You can't get away from a bit of manual editing to make it presentable but it gets 90%+ of what you say.Its as good as dictating to a human transcription service, you can't just speak and ramble, they will transcribe every word or grunt you make.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 12:51:11 pm
content: My sister does transcription, and some of the recordings are good, others are almost totally useless, multiple people at once, poor recording, no audio in one channel or gross overloading. Some have fascinating extraneous sound, like a court recording with sheep, goats and a chicken in the courtroom tree.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 03:28:19 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on May 19, 2012, 10:09:46 amyes it is quite good, it is not quite as fast as just talking to it because it takes some time to recognise each sentence as a whole sentence. Rather than recognise word for word it will wait for you to pause so that it can analyse the whole sentence. Yes I have noticed that I have to watch myself in how I dictate, because I can easily start writing long sentences and forget the punctuation. At work I have been praised for my reporting technique and quality of writing. I think if I was doing it by dictation through this software it would not be as good, or I would have to spend time editing it as I do normally when I type something. When I write something I usually re-read it once or twice and correct, rewrite sections and generally make it better. When I'm dictating I have one shot at this at the time of saying it. So being able to dictate to the computer does not take out the "editing" time and obviously I would have to manually edit. This is though part of what I hope will train me to be a better speaker, because I will be having a visual feedback of exactly what I said and what it looks like or may sound like somebody else. I'm very good at thinking of things in my head but when I then come to speak to people I forget what I am saying and I can't come up with sentences fast enough to deliver an ongoing speech.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2012, 11:31:52 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on May 19, 2012, 03:28:19 pmYeah! No Kidding.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 20, 2012, 07:27:28 am
content: well it's still going okay but I think I will have to get a headset as I'm fed up with holding a microphone to my mouth. The accuracy seems to be a bit less than it was at first but maybe that is because I'm not holding the microphone right. I'm just going through teach me all the swear words.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2012, 08:50:06 am
content: http://deep.bluedei.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mic-stand.JPG(Pic is too big and will blow the page width so I stripped the img tags.)

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2012, 09:03:16 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on May 20, 2012, 08:50:06 amWOW ! Never thought of doing that ... for my wharfedale

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2012, 10:34:15 am
content: Kudos! Excellent and ingenious.Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on May 20, 2012, 08:50:06 am

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2012, 10:55:52 am
content: And coathangers are free at the local dry cleaners........

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2012, 12:34:54 pm
content: you can try the logitech pro 5-9k series and the new hd c900 series they have such a good digital microphone you can talk using it from the other room too crystal clear

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 04:47:24 pm
content: well things are not going to bad. Although I have been disappointed in some cases. for example "well" would never come out and instead "when" would be put in its place. I can't understand this as surely there is a distinct difference between the words. Another one was "participation" instead of "dissipation". Again I can't understand why. However having manually trained the program with the various words it was not getting right things seem to be improving. And I have been able to put in custom words and acronyms, like RGBI and Arduino. The rest is probably down to my speech which hopefully is improving as I used this.Another problem I have is that it never starts the first sentence with a capital, for example the first word of this post was not automatically capitalised. But if I try and make a correction in the middle of a sentence by moving the cursor and speaking a word, it automatically capitalises the first word. This is plain nuts!

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 06:24:59 pm
content: well I am suddenly becoming unimpressed, the program is still confusing words despite the fact I have manually trained it for both. It is also coming up with some recognitions which are totally in the opposite direction from the word I said. Therefore I call slight bullshit over it so now it interprets bull as will and will as well when bull is nothing like will so to be honest this software is CRAP !I have had to delete a word because it kept confusing it with well and it's a word I never say which I can't say now because I deleted it from the dictionary !

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 06:35:38 pm
content: I have been finding one thing, the volume level shown on a volume Level meter has always been quite low even with the microphone close to me so now to get some higher levels over the halfway mark I am practically eating this microphone. I think recognition accuracy has improved slightly, but then now I have two feel my own press been bounced back in my face when I talk. I think there are some hardware issues here to, perhaps the people that produce these software should also provide a very high-quality headset with amplified microphone if possible, preferably with a variable gain amplifier built in.if and of course now with a microphone shoved in my mouth right under my nose simply breathing is costing 20% of one processor as the air from my nose come straight down onto the microphone and it tries to work out what I "said". Breathing is a word it does not know Also.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 07:43:33 pm
content: if well to be honest I am far from impressed, I even tried starting the training from scratch, yet it cannot distinguish between pin and pain and decides I said 10, what a heap of crap this software is !

author: PbFoot
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 08:16:31 pm
content: I think it will still be a few years before computers can wreck a nice beach very well.-PbFoot

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 08:19:38 pm
content: Quote from: PbFoot on May 24, 2012, 08:16:31 pmI'm not sure what that means. I am seeing some slight improvement now that I am eating the microphone I have started a new profile. But still I'm not that impressed as words that has to distinctly different sounds to them are being confused.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 08:48:58 pm
content: Simon, check if the mic in has a setting for extra gain, they are often there and enabled by a checkbox. The extra gain might be a necessity to get more signal in to the sound card.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 09:08:16 pm
content: I'll take a look, this is a USB headset so I'm not sure what options I have.there is not really anything obvious in the control panel or the sound of properties. It would be good if it could at least filter out my breathing, this must be something that can be easily done that way it won't try to type things for me every time I breathe.

author: PbFoot
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 09:12:15 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on May 24, 2012, 08:19:38 pm"Wreck a nice beach" == "recognize speech"This comes from a infamous demo by IBM where their flagship speech recognition software made this error in front of a large audience at some tradeshow.- PbFoot

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 24, 2012, 09:13:27 pm
content: I thought it was Microsoft that made laughing stocks of themselves at a demonstration. Admittedly Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a dam site better than that. I will persevere and see if it learns.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 25, 2012, 03:16:38 pm
content: one thing I have noticed though, while it claims to be 64-bit it is actually 32. With part of the programme in both the 64-bit program folder and the 32-bit program folder. It will also only used one of my four processors. Now this really is shocking, the speed of recognition is not always terrific. Presumably it is comparing what I am saying to a number of known audiocassettes. Surely this is an ideal scenario for multiprocessor use, so that more than one possible solution can be analysed at a time and therefore bring the correct recognition much quicker.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2012, 03:27:23 pm
content: 64 bit doesn't mean faster unfortunately due to overhead. I don't know the program but I believe it is a single binary to run on as many chips as possible. With 64bit winders now, they have made the same code base run on the 64 bit os, but I doubt the program it's self is 64 bit per se.Proprietary software, it's hard to know how to help you. What they do is obscure and we can't change it.You might be able to cheat and run 4 VM's and do 4 tapes at once. But you'll go nuts sorting that out.

author: olsenn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2012, 04:33:15 pm
content: I'm using speech recognition software reich now. I haven't lad any pog lambs with it so march.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 25, 2012, 04:57:36 pm
content: haha that is funny. Mine is not quite so bad, I have been consistently using it for posting on the forum since I got it and it has not done too bad all things considered. But there are some silly maybe things. And it would help if the instructions actually matched the commands. I have seen a number of hints tips and tricks that do not actually work a mismatch between the program and the instructions.