Voice Recognition

[Steve Oberman]

I spent a couple of hours training my voice recognition
software over the weekend. Now when I try to use it at
the office, all my profile information is lost and I have
to start over again.
Using the voice recognition also seems to either slow
down or completely crash any other programs I'm running.
Any suggestions?

 

[Bob I]

Voice training is tied to user profile AND hardware/software, what did
you change between the "weekend" and "work"

 

[Al Smith]

I spent a couple of hours training my voice recognition

software over the weekend. Now when I try to use it at
the office, all my profile information is lost and I have
to start over again.
Using the voice recognition also seems to either slow
down or completely crash any other programs I'm running.
Any suggestions?

Voice recognition software doesn't work. Period. I found that out
when I bought a copy of Via Voice a while back. Sure, if you fuss
with it for days, you can get it to sort of half work, some of the
time, but it is never dependable, and is always more trouble than
it is worth. Maybe someday, someone will write voice recognition
software that can be used, but that day hasn't arrived yet.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Voice recognition software doesn't work. Period. I found that
out
when I bought a copy of Via Voice a while back.

That's a very strong statement, considering that you have
experience with a single product (and probably not the best one)
on (presumably) a single machine (voice recognition software is
very sensitive to CPU speed and won't do well unless the machine
is a fast one).

I've tried a couple of voice recognition products myself (Via
Voice and Dragon Naturally Speaking) and had poor results with it
myself. But I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest that therefore
"Voice recognition software doesn't work. Period." In fact I know
several people who use it effectively and like it very much.

 

[Al Smith]

Voice recognition software doesn't work. Period. I found that

That's a very strong statement, considering that you have
experience with a single product (and probably not the best one)
on (presumably) a single machine (voice recognition software is
very sensitive to CPU speed and won't do well unless the machine
is a fast one).

It's based on my own experience, coupled with hundreds of group
posts and Web pages saying ... voice recognition software doesn't
work. I didn't really believe it was as bad as I'd read, and
decided to try it myself. You know what? It was worse! It isn't
that it has a few bugs, or that you have to coax it along. It just
flat out doesn't do the job it is supposed to do.

 

[Don Taylor]

It's based on my own experience, coupled with hundreds of group
posts and Web pages saying ... voice recognition software doesn't
work. I didn't really believe it was as bad as I'd read, and
decided to try it myself. You know what? It was worse! It isn't
that it has a few bugs, or that you have to coax it along. It just
flat out doesn't do the job it is supposed to do.

I am NOT defending voice recognition software.
I read some of the web resources for folks who use this for work.
I put in about a hundred hours of training and dictation, to see
how feasible this was and my accuracy wasn't awful after that.

It really seems that this is as much training you to get along with
the software as it is training the software to get along with you.
For many folks that is an unacceptable condition for using this.

The quality of the microphone appears to make a huge difference.
Some of the cheap microphones that are supplied with the cheaper
versions of the software seem to be agreed by folks who are using
this full time as being unlikely to ever give you satisfactory results.

The cheapest microphone supplied with the Dragon software, the Emkay,
has the worst reputation for accuracy. I found one mike that was
provided with a version of Via Voice was better and used it with Dragon
for a while.

Better mikes that have been found to work well with these are about
$70 for the mid-range quality and $200 for the high quality and
are not part of the boxed package off the shelf. If you are serious
then buy one of these that has been found to excel in this application.
Mikes that are fine for telephone use and game use may do very badly
in voice recognition. Ditto for the quality of the sound card.

I hope something in this helps

 

[Al Smith]

The quality of the microphone appears to make a huge difference.

Some of the cheap microphones that are supplied with the cheaper
versions of the software seem to be agreed by folks who are using
this full time as being unlikely to ever give you satisfactory results.

The cheapest microphone supplied with the Dragon software, the Emkay,
has the worst reputation for accuracy. I found one mike that was
provided with a version of Via Voice was better and used it with Dragon
for a while.

My Via Voice came with its own microphone. That was one reason I
bought it. I figured IBM would know what mic to bundle with their
software, that would work with it. Ha! Another reason I bought it
was because it came with a rebate that would have made my purchase
cost zero ... except that my rebate check never arrived!

On top of that, I did the recommended training, positioned the mic
as they said, spoke the way I was told, and got nothing I could
use. I tried speaking the same short sentence several times within
a minute or so in order to insure that all conditions were
identical. Each time I spoke it, I got a different result! This
convinced me pretty quickly that it was hopeless. If the damned
software wasn't even good enough to give me the same mistakes
under identical conditions, it was unusable.