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The Australian
Dragon frees Voice Recognition
tiger.
The Australian - 16th November
2004. By Ian Cuthbertson.
THERE is still a great deal of
resistance to the idea that voice recognition works.
Part of this is techno-folklore and
part is the exposure many of us had to early attempts at speech
recognition, which were about as useful as teats on a bull,
generating useless word salads or imaginative but mindless hip-hop
lyrics.
Two years ago, I tried Dragon Naturally
Speaking 7.0 when a 40,000-word document threatened.
Perhaps because of the folklore, I had
low expectations, but after enrolling (reading a few paragraphs so
the program could build a voice profile), I was amazed when the
thing instantly recognised my name and typed it accurately.
If only greengrocers, car-hire
representatives and publicity types could manage this so well.
Then things got better.
After a bit of training I was hurling
words on to the screen, accurately and faster than ever before and
in the end, I swam through my 40,000 words like Grant Hackett in the
Olympic 1500m.
Now version 8.0 is here, and if the
demo by an executive at the launch is any guide, the program is more
accurate than ever.
Voice Perfect is the master distributor
of ScanSoft's Dragon speech recognition packages in Australia and
Voice Perfect's global market development manager Greg Findlay
created a user profile from scratch.
After a breezier and more entertaining
enrolment than anything I remember in DNS7, Findlay took total
control of the presentation machine, opening and closing programs,
dictating flawlessly, and even hurtling through an email, which he
then sent, without once touching the computer.
The version demonstrated was Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8.0 Preferred, which retails for $399, but the
same engine is available in the standard edition, at $199, without:
- Text-to-speech.
- Dictation playback.
- Array microphone models.
- Ability to dictate into a
handheld digital recorder.
- Ability to dictate into
Pocket PC and PalmOne Tungsten handhelds.
- Ability to save audio with
text dictation.
Findlay displayed the
specifications of his presentation laptop, which were modest by
contemporary standards, with the exception of 768MB of RAM.
ScanSoft says 256MB of RAM is the
minimum requirement, but prospective users should probably have at
least 512MB.
A professional version with network
deployment facilities is available, at $1589.
Although all editions use the same core
engine, the facility to create multiple custom vocabularies in
Professional increases accuracy by about 5 per cent over the other
packages.
The world's most awarded
speech-recognition program, DNS is the only suite to contain an
Australian vocabulary and accent model.
To watch it bang down Oodnadatta,
Katoomba and Goondiwindi without hesitation is to know you are using
the right program for the times.
The Australian IT
 
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