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Topic: Speech Recognition s/w

16th Jan 2014, 8:15 PM
	Juke Jules SUBS Tell me he's lazy, tell me he's slow Member since Jan 2011 4138 Points Moderator	Contributors to 45worlds will be well aware of the difficulty of entering accurately all the details of a record, and especially of a 12" album, where you must repeatedly alternate between looking at the record and the screen. I was discussing this with an old friend who has been using speech recognition software to transcribe technical papers for many years, and he persuaded me to invest in Dragon Naturally Speaking, Home Edition. The sophistication of this s/w is quite amazing; first you train DNS to understand your voice, then it progressively learns the sort of work you are using it for, which in my case is disjointed and unrelated words, with many unusual names, rather than flowing sentences. The default vocabulary is immense, with a comprehensive understanding of Proper Nouns, place names and cultural references, and you can teach it new words and expressions whenever you need. Names like Serge Koussevitzky or Narada Michael Walden will be no problem, and you can spell if it gets anything wrong. It responds to all punctuation and many editing commands, and it understands to save or open documents. You need to use the help menus while you are learning how to use DNS, and you will quickly appreciate the power of the program. Dragon Naturally Speaking is a product of Nuance.com, who have offices in the UK and in Europe, as well as the USA, and although the products may appear a little expensive for the home user, they have frequent discount offers, making the package quite irresistible. For example, they are offering, until 20 Jan. DNS Home for PC or Mac at £39.99 - see Nuance Winter Sale or in the USA http://shop.nuance.com/store/nuanceus/DisplayHomePage They are very helpful if you order over the phone, and there is technical support just a phone call away if you need it. If someone else wants to use the s/w you create a new user profile and it learns to recognise their speech. I bought two copies in a 2-for-1 deal so that my partner can have a separate installation on her machine. If this sounds like something that might interest you, take a look at the demonstration video on their website.