Great Buy on 1 Terabyte Hard Drive at Buy.com

Last week I mentioned my plan to pick up a 1 terabyte Western Digital MyBook external hard drive.

Well they are on special right now at Buy.com.

I’m still holding out for the device that I can connect to my network through the ethernet and then connect to 1 terabyte of space via my wireless router from anywhere in the house or login from the internet while traveling.

The drive I’m referring to is the World Edition MyBook.

That said, paying $199 for a 1 terabyte Western Digital MyBook is a steal compared to the rates I’ve seen at office stores and even online.  I think that price is good until Friday, the 16th if I understand Buy.com’s weekly specials correctly.

Voice Transcription with MP3 Player Voice Recorders

Next up, I’m also going to be testing out Creative Zen MP3 players and their ability to record voice notes which can be transcribed with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.  I’ve been working with a Creative Zen V this evening, trying to figure out the file conversions first.  It records in 32 bit WAV and it needs to be 16 bit WAV I believe, but there’s something else that I’m not getting quite right.  I think maybe I need to also convert Stereo to Mono and something else.

Then this weekend I will be test driving a regular Creative Zen (the video, picture and MP3 player).  This is a 4gb and newer than the Creative Zen V.  I looked originally at Wally World where they were $120 in the store ($10 cheaper online) but only $90.99 at Buy.com plus they give you a $10 rebate that was not available at Wal-mart, so you can get a 4GB Video MP3 Player Creative Zen at Buy.com (technically better than a 4gb IPod if you follow CEA reviews and awards) for about half the price of an IPod and $40 less than you would pay at Wally world.

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I have a Sony IC Recorder ICD-UX70.  It is not sold to work with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, but works just fine.  It cost me $100.  For $200 you can buy a Sony Recorder that comes with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 software, and I consider that a great bargain.

I bought my software, Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred, over a year ago and bought the recorder later.  In total I spent $150 for the software and $100 for the recorder.  Total $250.

Since the Sony IC recorder doesn’t come made for DNS 9, I had to do some trial and error testing to figure out the best settings on my recorder for Automatic computer transcription.  (I recorded something on my sony recorder by speaking into it.  Then ran the mp3 file it generated through Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, which transcribed my voice into text.  You can see the results below for each of the recording quality settings on my Sony IC Recorder.

This is the original Text that I read aloud:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 is the most accurate speech recognition product Nuance has ever developed - delivering up to 99% accuracy! Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on the job.

Here are 4 quick tips to duplicate my results or just get good results for every day voice transcription. 

1. If you run a file through transcription and it seems to get it dead wrong, or if the first few words are incorrect, try running the file from the beginning all over again.  Sometimes your machine just needs a fresh start at a transcription. 
2. Hold your MP3 recorder a couple inches to the side of your mouth.  I hold mine with my right hand to the right side of my mouth so that it doesn’t pick up my breathing too much.
3. Plus, when creating a voice file that should be transcribed, I try to allow 5 seconds of silence at the beginning of the recording to give my computer time to start the transcription process.
4. Set your microphone sensitivity to low

This is the Transcription results at 5 different quality settings. 

Note. I have not trained the software to work with my digital recorder.  I did not make any effort to correct the transcription.  If I had subsequent transcriptions would have substituted the word ‘nine’ for the number 9 for example.

ST - 192 kbps - Very Accurate, bit rate might consume too much memory, but fine if you will sync up file on rapid basis (37 seconds 887 kilobyte file size)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate speech recognition product nuances ever developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy!  Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on-the-job.

 

STSP - 128 kbps  - Very Accurate, Recommended, also good for Podcast quality (37 seconds 589 kb)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate speech recognition product nuance has ever developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy!  Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on the job.

STLP - 48 kbps - Decent and definitely workable (36 seconds 218 kb)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate recognition product new one is ever developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy!  Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who once worked faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome on the job.

SP - 32 kbps - Not Optimal, but could be better (35 seconds 141 kb)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate beach recognition product and once is never developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy!  Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on-the-job.

LP - 8 kbps - Not Recommended - Barely Functional (34 seconds 34.7 kb)

Him in an in him or over and and and and or allowing for which you will will work for your or should look to the work of the to him or her on.

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The more work I do with audio and video these days the more tedious I find it to work with individual files, one at a time.

Often I need to convert video or audio files in batch processes or let them run in batch when I’m not on my machine.  TotalAudioConverter from Softplicity provides this capability.   TotalAudioConverter (TAC) can perform batch conversions on multiple audio file types.  Running Batch Audio conversions can definitely speed up production time and make the overall process much less tedious.

This batch conversion software works fairly easily.  Just select your file(s) and right click to launch the conversion.  It supports the following file types:

1. WAV,
2. MP3,
3. OGG,
4. WMA,
5. APE,
6. FLAC,
7. MP4,
8. AAC,
9. MPC

If you have a file in one of those file types, you can convert it one file at a time or in a batch process.

The Price is right!

You can download the software for free for use during the first 30 days.  That is pleanty of time to determine whether or not the software will work well for you.  If it does, you only have to pay about $20 to keep it permanently after that.

Twenty dollars for a audio file converter that supports batch processing with just a couple clicks is pretty cheap!  TotalAudioConverter is definitely worth a try if you work audio files regularly.

Dragon Naturally Speaking Dictation Potential

I plan on testing it out soon with the Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation tools.  I’m curious how well DNS9 will work when I convert an MP3 file or some other file into a .wav file and run it through the transcription tool.

The price of this software utility is free for the first 30 days.  After that it only costs about $20.  Thirty days is pleanty of time to determine if you will use it or not.  If so, then $20 is not too much to pay for the time you can save by picking up TotalAudioConverter, especially for batch jobs.

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Several Millenia ago people began to make noises, and the noises sounded cool. They learned to repeat them, and make rythim and many types of sounds and even some melodies. Then they may have begun to click and humm to these sounds. Soon they were singing and making instruments, simple things made with their own hands.

Music was free!

Then the people making the instruments started to specialize and started demanding barters and then money for the instruments. The people making the cool noises and music and songs, started to pan handle while they were performing and earned a few odds and ends to pay for their instruments.

Then the musicians got better and started to perform as a service to various lords and wealthy individuals that would sponsor them to ‘produce’ more music. One thing led to another and before you know it the feudal system was out and musicians were trying to panhandle their music again. Fortunately, sheet music came along and music composers made a small fortune selling sheet music, which was tedious but not impossible to copy by hand.

Then the age of radio came and the actual performers could perform their music for the masses. Radio stations needed musical ‘content’ for their programs and would pay performers to perform. The record player had been created before the advent of radio. With the combination of a recordable media player and a methodology to promote the media, record sales became a big business.

The dawn of the digital age brought forth a new era where music could be copied from records to discs, faster and cheaper. However, the music industry did not pass these savings on to consumers. Technology surged past the music industry and suddenly the music could be technically copied and shared for free. Music was free again!

This upset the balance of things, and a backlash ensued as the record industry and some performers and composers staged attacks against their customers and fans that were listening to music for free. Along came an entrepreneurially, Steve Jobs. He offered up a crazy plan to sell music again in an era when no one was paying for it.

For no apparent reason,

People started to pay for music again!

The price? It was the same price that it had always been!

Now, one of the companies that had helped to spur on the age of free music, and then suffered the consequences of the backlash of music companies, reformed and was purchased by a group in the music industry. The company after finishing its ‘Napster‘ in the courts tried and tried to find a way to lure customers back away from their paying for music ‘Jobs.’

They tried competitive rates. They even tried a subscription service offering an unlimited list of music for $14.95 per month. People signed up but could not get the apple out of their eye-pod.

So now, Napster has gone back to their roots.

Music is Free Again at Napster!

As history has proven, music cannot be free forever, so unless your dead set on paying for music right down to the very last ‘nano’ buck in your bank account. Check it out now!

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