TweetFollow Us on Twitter

Kool Tools: MacSpeech Dictate

Volume Number: 25
Issue Number: 03
Column Tag: Kool Tools

Kool Tools: MacSpeech Dictate

by Dennis Sellers & Neil Ticktin


MacSpeech, a provider of speech recognition solutions for the Mac, and Nuance Communications, developers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, teamed up to offer the MacSpeech Dictate speech recognition solution, which replaced their previous product called iListen.

The very first version of Dictate had some limitations which MacSpeech was very open about, but now, the technology is coming into its own.

For years, Dragon NaturallySpeaking has been the king of recognition ... on the PC. When MacSpeech licensed the underlying dictation technology from Nuance Communications for Dictate, those in the know were more than thrilled.

With the software, Mac users can begin dictating straight into their applications with surprisingly little time spent training the software to recognize their voice. The folks at MacSpeech say that training MacSpeech Dictate for up to a 99 percent accuracy level generally takes less than five minutes. That's maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but if you spend a bit of time on it, you can quickly get up an accuracy which is more than acceptable (and far better than iListen at its best).

Installing Dictate is a no-brainer. You drag the application from the CD to the application folder, load the English language data from another CD and follow the instructions on the set-up screens. (You have to enter your serial number, and enable access for assistive devices in the Universal Access control panel of Mac OS X first.)

There's a wide range of headsets that you can use, but you can't use just any headset. It's very important that the headset you choose has been qualified by MacSpeech for use with Dictate. You see, the quality is truly important to the accuracy of the speech recognition. This is not just with MacSpeech's product, but with any speech-recognition product.

For the purpose of this article, we looked at two headsets: one wired and one wireless. In either case, it was very important to make sure that the microphone was positioned properly in front of the mouth. To give you an idea how precise you should position the microphone, most people should place the microphone "1-2 fingertips from the corner of the mouth." Specifically, it should be out of the breath stream from your mouth as well as your nostrils.

And, it may come as some surprise that you can only use a mic that connects via USB. Specifically, you cannot plug a mic into the audio ports of your Mac.

Once you have your headset connected, you begin by making a profile. These profiles are dependent on your voice, and the microphone type. If you have a heavy accent (such as Dennis' Southern one), you'll need to spend more time "training" Dictate. In fact, you should go through all three of the different training stories. While you can get started in just five minutes, the more vocal training you give Dictate, the more accurate your results.

What's more, the training is tied to the headset used. This means that if you replace the headset, you'll need to create a new profile if it's a different model. That's a bit of a pain, but there's good reason for it. On the plus side, Dictate also supports multiple profiles so different people can use the software. In fact, that's exactly how we tested multiple microphones when reviewing the software. (It should come as no surprise that we used Dictate to write this article.)

Once you've got everything set up, you can use Dictate pretty much anywhere with any app in which you can type on your Mac. Dictate also includes its own notepad (try typing in it for some entertainment value). There's also a "command" mode that lets you control various features of your Mac, such as opening applications, switching apps, taking screenshots, etc. You can get as creative as you want in controlling things, but that goes beyond the scope of this article.

Using MacSpeech Dictate, user-spoken commands are recognized separately from dictation, which means you don't have to tell the software to change modes. With the recently released version 1.2, Dictate customers can dictate any specific word, no matter how obscure, by spelling it letter-by-letter with the new Spelling mode.

The new version also introduces Phrase Training, which helps increase accuracy even more as you use MacSpeech Dictate. The MacSpeech Dictate 1.2 update is also a maintenance release that fixes reported issues and introduces a new "Move" command for easier verbal editing of a document. The MacSpeech Dictate 1.2 update is free of charge and now available for registered customers, using the "Check for Updates" feature.

Why you should be in awe

You should be in awe that this works at all ... let alone as well as it does. Most people have no idea how hard speech-recognition actually is. Humans are so adept at listening to other people speak in interpreting what they have to say, it's amazing. People can pick a voice out of a loud room. Computers, on the other hand, have a much more difficult time picking out just speech from the surrounding noise.

In addition, people use their understanding of what is being said to fill in the gaps of what they don't hear, or even what the speaker didn't utter. Computers don't have it so easy; they cannot understand language as easily as you do. So, the computer takes a different path and calculates the probability of upcoming word to make its "guess."

Think of it this way. Remember to the last time you heard someone speaking a foreign language... one that you didn't know at all? If you remember, it kind of sounded like gibberish. But, you would hear breaks from time to time in the speakers speech. That was the end of a paragraph, not a sentence or word, but a paragraph. Imagine how difficult it is to break the words apart.

Now, imagine you are the poor computer. Not only do you have a hard time hearing through all the noise, not only can you not read hand gestures, but you don't understand the language.

Furthermore, if you were to look at a sonogram (a printout of what the sound waves look like), you would be very hard to tell apart similar sets of words. For example, "I screen" is extremely similar to "ice creme" when you look at it on a sonogram. Especially, when you realize how fast someone says these words.

Or take another example. Imagine "an aim" versus "a name" presents a similar kind of problem. See each to yourself now at a normal pace and see for yourself.

Now imagine that you have a mumbler. That makes things even more difficult. All the words get merged together and it becomes that much more difficult for the computer to tell them apart. Posture, your throat being dry, enunciation, volume, background noise, talking speed and more all can have an effect on the accuracy of speech recognition.

These are only a few of the challenges that speech recognition software has to deal with. And, that's why you should be in awe

What we would like to see work better

The speech recognition itself works quite well, especially if you are doing dictation of letters, or article like this. If you speak at a normal pace, and you enunciate, the recognition accuracy is quite good. Anyone that has a desire for dictation abilities should look at the product.

What doesn't work as well, are shorter burst of text like what you might use in iChat. Presumably, this is because you tend to not use natural language when IMing, and tend to use more fragmented speech. But, that's being picky.

More importantly, it would be nice to make for easier corrections and trainings. For example, we struggled a bit when trying to train new phrases that may not be part of everyone's speech. And, we have a desire to click in the recognition choices window and make a correction there. But, these are minor when compared to how well this all works (especially if we're not mumbling).

And of course, we'll always be in search of even better accuracy. Then again, this is a 1.x product, so we expect it will get better, even though it's quite good already.

Microphone choices


Samson AirLine 77 Wireless USB microphone

MacSpeech has already qualified a selection of microphones at a wide range of pricing. If you are heavy dictation user, you should seriously look at the Samson AirLine 77 Wireless USB microphone (see below). While a pricey $349, it worked exceptionally well... in fact even better for us than wired mics. Designed to go around the back your head, it's a bit cumbersome to wear at first, but you get used to it.

Availability

MacSpeech Dictate requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher, and requires Intel-based Macs. New MacSpeech Dictate solutions with a choice of headsets, is priced starting at US$199 (including an entry level microphone). Registered customers of iListen can purchase MacSpeech Dictate at a special crossgrade price of $99.

For more info, go to http://www.macspeech.com


Dennis is Editor of MacsimumNews, and regular MacTech contributor. Neil has a degree in Linguistics/Computer Science with a specialty in Acoustic Phonetics. In other words, he not only got to "geek" on this product from a Mac point of view, but from a Linguistics point of view. Scary.

 

Community Search:
MacTech Search:

Software Updates via MacUpdate

Tor Browser 12.5.5 - Anonymize Web brows...
Using Tor Browser you can protect yourself against tracking, surveillance, and censorship. Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion-routing project of the U.... Read more
Malwarebytes 4.21.9.5141 - Adware remova...
Malwarebytes (was AdwareMedic) helps you get your Mac experience back. Malwarebytes scans for and removes code that degrades system performance or attacks your system. Making your Mac once again your... Read more
TinkerTool 9.5 - Expanded preference set...
TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the... Read more
Paragon NTFS 15.11.839 - Provides full r...
Paragon NTFS breaks down the barriers between Windows and macOS. Paragon NTFS effectively solves the communication problems between the Mac system and NTFS. Write, edit, copy, move, delete files on... Read more
Apple Safari 17 - Apple's Web brows...
Apple Safari is Apple's web browser that comes bundled with the most recent macOS. Safari is faster and more energy efficient than other browsers, so sites are more responsive and your notebook... Read more
Firefox 118.0 - Fast, safe Web browser.
Firefox offers a fast, safe Web browsing experience. Browse quickly, securely, and effortlessly. With its industry-leading features, Firefox is the choice of Web development professionals and casual... Read more
ClamXAV 3.6.1 - Virus checker based on C...
ClamXAV is a popular virus checker for OS X. Time to take control ClamXAV keeps threats at bay and puts you firmly in charge of your Mac’s security. Scan a specific file or your entire hard drive.... Read more
SuperDuper! 3.8 - Advanced disk cloning/...
SuperDuper! is an advanced, yet easy to use disk copying program. It can, of course, make a straight copy, or "clone" - useful when you want to move all your data from one machine to another, or do a... Read more
Alfred 5.1.3 - Quick launcher for apps a...
Alfred is an award-winning productivity application for OS X. Alfred saves you time when you search for files online or on your Mac. Be more productive with hotkeys, keywords, and file actions at... Read more
Sketch 98.3 - Design app for UX/UI for i...
Sketch is an innovative and fresh look at vector drawing. Its intentionally minimalist design is based upon a drawing space of unlimited size and layers, free of palettes, panels, menus, windows, and... Read more

Latest Forum Discussions

See All

Listener Emails and the iPhone 15! – The...
In this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show we finally get to a backlog of emails that have been hanging out in our inbox for, oh, about a month or so. We love getting emails as they always lead to interesting discussion about a variety of topics... | Read more »
TouchArcade Game of the Week: ‘Cypher 00...
This doesn’t happen too often, but occasionally there will be an Apple Arcade game that I adore so much I just have to pick it as the Game of the Week. Well, here we are, and Cypher 007 is one of those games. The big key point here is that Cypher... | Read more »
SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘EA Sports FC 24’...
Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for September 29th, 2023. In today’s article, we’ve got a ton of news to go over. Just a lot going on today, I suppose. After that, there are quite a few new releases to look at... | Read more »
‘Storyteller’ Mobile Review – Perfect fo...
I first played Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller (Free) through its Nintendo Switch and Steam releases. Read my original review of it here. Since then, a lot of friends who played the game enjoyed it, but thought it was overpriced given the short... | Read more »
An Interview with the Legendary Yu Suzuk...
One of the cool things about my job is that every once in a while, I get to talk to the people behind the games. It’s always a pleasure. Well, today we have a really special one for you, dear friends. Mr. Yu Suzuki of Ys Net, the force behind such... | Read more »
New ‘Marvel Snap’ Update Has Balance Adj...
As we wait for the information on the new season to drop, we shall have to content ourselves with looking at the latest update to Marvel Snap (Free). It’s just a balance update, but it makes some very big changes that combined with the arrival of... | Read more »
‘Honkai Star Rail’ Version 1.4 Update Re...
At Sony’s recently-aired presentation, HoYoverse announced the Honkai Star Rail (Free) PS5 release date. Most people speculated that the next major update would arrive alongside the PS5 release. | Read more »
‘Omniheroes’ Major Update “Tide’s Cadenc...
What secrets do the depths of the sea hold? Omniheroes is revealing the mysteries of the deep with its latest “Tide’s Cadence" update, where you can look forward to scoring a free Valkyrie and limited skin among other login rewards like the 2nd... | Read more »
Recruit yourself some run-and-gun royalt...
It is always nice to see the return of a series that has lost a bit of its global staying power, and thanks to Lilith Games' latest collaboration, Warpath will be playing host the the run-and-gun legend that is Metal Slug 3. [Read more] | Read more »
‘The Elder Scrolls: Castles’ Is Availabl...
Back when Fallout Shelter (Free) released on mobile, and eventually hit consoles and PC, I didn’t think it would lead to something similar for The Elder Scrolls, but here we are. The Elder Scrolls: Castles is a new simulation game from Bethesda... | Read more »

Price Scanner via MacPrices.net

Clearance M1 Max Mac Studio available today a...
Apple has clearance M1 Max Mac Studios available in their Certified Refurbished store for $270 off original MSRP. Each Mac Studio comes with Apple’s one-year warranty, and shipping is free: – Mac... Read more
Apple continues to offer 24-inch iMacs for up...
Apple has a full range of 24-inch M1 iMacs available today in their Certified Refurbished store. Models are available starting at only $1099 and range up to $260 off original MSRP. Each iMac is in... Read more
Final weekend for Apple’s 2023 Back to School...
This is the final weekend for Apple’s Back to School Promotion 2023. It remains active until Monday, October 2nd. Education customers receive a free $150 Apple Gift Card with the purchase of a new... Read more
Apple drops prices on refurbished 13-inch M2...
Apple has dropped prices on standard-configuration 13″ M2 MacBook Pros, Certified Refurbished, to as low as $1099 and ranging up to $230 off MSRP. These are the cheapest 13″ M2 MacBook Pros for sale... Read more
14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro on sale for $300 o...
B&H Photo has the Space Gray 14″ 30-Core GPU M2 Max MacBook Pro in stock and on sale today for $2799 including free 1-2 day shipping. Their price is $300 off Apple’s MSRP, and it’s the lowest... Read more
Apple is now selling Certified Refurbished M2...
Apple has added a full line of standard-configuration M2 Max and M2 Ultra Mac Studios available in their Certified Refurbished section starting at only $1699 and ranging up to $600 off MSRP. Each Mac... Read more
New sale: 13-inch M2 MacBook Airs starting at...
B&H Photo has 13″ MacBook Airs with M2 CPUs in stock today and on sale for $200 off Apple’s MSRP with prices available starting at only $899. Free 1-2 day delivery is available to most US... Read more
Apple has all 15-inch M2 MacBook Airs in stoc...
Apple has Certified Refurbished 15″ M2 MacBook Airs in stock today starting at only $1099 and ranging up to $230 off MSRP. These are the cheapest M2-powered 15″ MacBook Airs for sale today at Apple.... Read more
In stock: Clearance M1 Ultra Mac Studios for...
Apple has clearance M1 Ultra Mac Studios available in their Certified Refurbished store for $540 off original MSRP. Each Mac Studio comes with Apple’s one-year warranty, and shipping is free: – Mac... Read more
Back on sale: Apple’s M2 Mac minis for $100 o...
B&H Photo has Apple’s M2-powered Mac minis back in stock and on sale today for $100 off MSRP. Free 1-2 day shipping is available for most US addresses: – Mac mini M2/256GB SSD: $499, save $100 –... Read more

Jobs Board

Licensed Dental Hygienist - *Apple* River -...
Park Dental Apple River in Somerset, WI is seeking a compassionate, professional Dental Hygienist to join our team-oriented practice. COMPETITIVE PAY AND SIGN-ON Read more
Sublease Associate Optometrist- *Apple* Val...
Sublease Associate Optometrist- Apple Valley, CA- Target Optical Date: Sep 30, 2023 Brand: Target Optical Location: Apple Valley, CA, US, 92307 **Requisition Read more
*Apple* / Mac Administrator - JAMF - Amentum...
Amentum is seeking an ** Apple / Mac Administrator - JAMF** to provide support with the Apple Ecosystem to include hardware and software to join our team and Read more
Child Care Teacher - Glenda Drive/ *Apple* V...
Child Care Teacher - Glenda Drive/ Apple ValleyTeacher Share by Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Twitter Read more
Cashier - *Apple* Blossom Mall - JCPenney (...
Cashier - Apple Blossom Mall Location:Winchester, VA, United States (https://jobs.jcp.com/jobs/location/191170/winchester-va-united-states) - Apple Blossom Mall Read more
All contents are Copyright 1984-2011 by Xplain Corporation. All rights reserved. Theme designed by Icreon.