speech recognition software?

Recent thread about it here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281685

It can be great for some, and not so great for others--I am one of them. I found it too tedious to setup and work with, and I like proofreading what I'm writing as I'm writing and it was hard to do this with the program. It's also faster typing for me, since you have to speak loud and clear for the program and I'm rather slow at it.

You can buy the standard edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for $50 (old version that probably doesn't have anything better going for it for $31), but you'll need to get a decent USB headset (or standard headset if you've got a soundcard or external DAC). Too bad there's no free trial...

I didn't have the patience to train Dragon, which I got free with WordPerfect many moons ago. If you have more patience than the average toddler, it might work for you.

Fruitbat said:

Does anyone use it? I just saw a commercial for one called "Dragon" on TV, for $59. What do you think?

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I started using it when I broke my wrist and I absolutely love it, when it works. I'm a very retro writer who writes first drafts of every scene by hand before transferring to computer. That can be very tedious---now I just read the draft aloud, tweaking as I go. I also teach and edit online. Dictating editorial letters instead of typing them takes half the time or less; and because I can avoid the tedium of typing them, I actually go into more detail.

Note the proviso: "when it works." I've had more problems with Dragon than any other software. It's sensitive. It sulks. When you upgrade the program, you have to re-do your user profile. There are inexplicable formatting issues. Customer service is routed through India. Big issues.

Nevertheless, it saves me a great deal of time and energy. I recommend it to anyone who types a lot.

Dragon works fine, but it changes the way you write. I hate it. Even more than I hate Siri. And I don't even have an iPhone.

Jeff

I hate Dragon software. I got it for free after my mom got it for my dad who couldn't stand trying to get it to understand his southern mumbling. Training it is a pain, and I don't know, I like writing, either with a pen or a keyboard. I don't like talking my story. It also eats up a lot of room on your computer so make sure you have the space and it won't slow things down.

Dragon is a decent product (not fantastic) but training it is a bitch.

Training v10 takes about fifteen easy minutes: all you have to do is read aloud the text on the screen. It's hardly difficult. The current version is v12, I think, and it can be used straight out of the box if you don't have time for training, but if you do go through training you'll get better accuracy.

My husband uses it for adding information to a very large database. He has a love-hate relationship with it. The love is for keeping him from typing 80 bazillion numbers. The hate is for having it go, "Oops! I forgot, so retrain me or deal with gibberish."

ETA: "It" being Dragon software. I should've made that clear since there's any number of voice-recognition software packages out there.

Old Hack said:

Training v10 takes about fifteen easy minutes: all you have to do is read aloud the text on the screen. It's hardly difficult. The current version is v12, I think, and it can be used straight out of the box if you don't have time for training, but if you do go through training you'll get better accuracy.

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I agree--the training isn't difficult, though I don't see why you can't import your profile when you upgrade the program. I use 12, and it's better than its predecessor, but mine still does some crazy things, like printing all apostrophes in red for no reason. If there's a better voice recognition program out there, I'd love to hear about it. Meanwhile, Dragon's a lot better than nothing.

That apostrophe thing sounds odd, Barbara. I wonder why it's doing that? You might like to visit the KnowBrainer forums, which I've found very helpful for things Dragon-related in the past.

I did. Even they were stumped. They thought it had something to do with the interface between Word and Dragon, but no one had a clue how to fix it.

There are other speech recognition programs out there (ListNote, Windows, Google, a few others), but none of them are as accurate as Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon continues to learn your voice patterns and mannerisms as you go and becomes progressively more accurate over time. I'm currently getting 98%+ accuracy using it to enter items in a database at work.

Training is not difficult, takes maybe 15 minutes, and greatly enhances the program's accuracy. You can also have it analyze your other documents (emails, etc.) which helps. Topping things off, you can read your work to it and the program will learn your voice and mannerisms from that as well.

Overall, Dragon has allowed me to cut certain tasks at work down to trivial amounts of time required. There are certain things Dragon's not very good at and it does tend to interfere with scanning stuff into pdf files if left open, but some of that stuff (certain code words for example) are things I just have to do by hand.

Overall, at $50-60 at Walmart it's money I feel was well spent.

Last I checked, there was a free Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone. I tried it out that way to see what I thought. It could be a paid app now, but I am guessing it was free to allow users to consider purchasing the real program.

It was alright, and I have heard training comments similar to above.

Not sure if this was already addressed in that link to another discussion on this software, but one concern as writers should be the difference between how we write and how we talk. Linguistically there are many differences, and I would carefully consider that when deciding the program's use (eg. using it for an email vs. for a novel).

I would *never* ? depend on it for writing books. Or at least, if I did, I would want to carefully re-visit it "visually" later, in order to be sure that while speaking, my real voice came through (pun not intended, but I'll take it).

Edit: to add that perhaps *never* is too strong a word- I love typing on my iPad, so how could I say for sure that "thumb" typing is not also modifying my voice... But either way, it is worth at least recognizing the difference that may be seen in spoken vs written words...

I'm always intrigued by interesting software, and Dragon is interesting. However, writing a story and speaking a story are, for me, two very different processes. I need the tactile visual connection. Also, I start, stop, back up, move on, so I'd only be adding more work. BUT brain functions differ, and Dragon might do wonders for your writing process.

I've used it to write fiction in addition to technical documents. It needs to be considered as an addition to the process, not the whole process itself imo.

Even in my tech writing I use Dragon as an additional tool to the keyboard and pen/pencil (yeah, I'm still old-fashioned enough to actually use a pencil - there's something considerably satisfying about watching a pencil reduced to a stub while writing a piece).

In fact, Dragon might come in very handy (and has for me in the past) for those who write using a pen or pencil (which some still do). Once you're done, Dragon could be very efficient at typing in the piece by voice rather than by hand simply by reading it in. I'm thinking it could be much faster than reading, typing in, reading again, etc.

I'll have to try this as I often read from hand-written technical documents and logs while Dragon types stuff in at work and it's quite nice, but I've never really applied it to my fiction (I usually just watch the screen and speak to Dragon while writing fiction). I really do like writing with a pencil (I actually got Dragon because I have early-onset arthritis in my hands and sometimes cannot write with a pen or pencil easily).