Andrew Ian Dodge is a 37 year old American expat living and working in London. He is a writer, author, novelist, blogger, political consultant  (his full time work) and the lyricist/frontman for Growing Old Disgracefully.
Website(s): www.andrewiandodge.com www.disgracefulmusic.com Profile: Andrew Ian Dodge on LinkedIn	He has been writing mythos stories for many years and has written an Idiots Guide to the Mythos.

Here are Andrew’s initial impressions of MacDictate along with some Screenshots of the User Interface

I have been asked to review MacDictate and use MacDictate to write my review . Now I bought MacDictate for my father but it is becoming rather useful for me as I am going through chemotherapy and have suffered from painful fingers. This affliction meant that I was unable to type anything longer than a sure I am chat. I was interested to see how easy it would be to use this sort of programme for someone who writes as much as I do.

I have been planning to buy MacDictate for my father who is not as good a typist and is rather sick of his hunt and pecking. I was surprised and pleased that MacDictate was so easy to set up. Now it might be rather unfair of me owing to the fact that I have both radio and podcasting experience. In fact I have been both behind and in front of the microphone many times. One learns very quickly to speak clearly if one is trying to get a point across on radio or television. It also may help that I have a so-called transatlantic accent which has a limited amount of regional dialect.

The package is quite an impressive one including a microphone headset and the software. The programme is rather easy to install and the training mechanism does not take too much effort to get right.

This does not need spending hours and hours training the software and you can get right to work fairly quickly.

My experience with such programmes goes back a few years and I’m impressed at the improvements made in MacDictate for the Macintosh with the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition engine. Now I’ve only had it for a very few days and have yet to fully use all its varied abilities. However initial impressions bowled from installation and initial use a very good indeed. From these initial impressions I would recommend this to anyone in need of a decent piece of dictation software.

….

so there are some initial glimpses of MacDictate.  We hope to have some video capture of the program in action before too long.  We are also chasing down a story about video gamers using dictation to capture their moves, cheats, and conversations for publication when gaming on platforms such as the PS3 and XBox 360.

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I learned a new thing about Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 when I transcribed multiple MP3 files into text this evening. 

I had 6 documents (recordings) that I needed to have transcribed.  I opened up Dragon Pad (the Word Pad like program that comes with Dragon Naturally Speaking).  I then used the Transcribe Recording program to select MP3 sound files of my voice one at a time and have them transcribed into text within the same document.

It was a slightly repetitive process as I do not have a batch transcription capability with my version of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.  (this may come with the mobile version, but I can not attest to that).

The interesting thing that I learned

After completing 6 transcriptions, with the text transcribed onto the same document, I was able to go back and select text from any of the 6 transcriptions and play back the voice file that went with the transcription. 

Plus, I could even correct that text to help train my computer for greater accuracy.

Finally, the original MP3 files did not have to remain on my computer.  I was able to play back the voice with the text, even after I had removed the original MP3 file from my computer.

The MP3 file was actually on my pocket recorder stored in flash.  I disconnected the card from the USB and could still play the file back.  This signified that the transcription process actually copied the sound file into or with the dragon pad document.

How Long does the Sound File stick with the Document?

The sound file and ability to listen to the voice with the play back function remained until I closed the document. I tried saving the document, closing the document and then re-opening the document in Dragon Pad.

Once it was reopened, I could no longer listen to the voice file that went with the transcribed text.

All in all I was impressed with this functionality as I tested it and learned some of the new boundaries.  Its not a deal maker or breaker for this software, but under certain circumstances it is useful to understand.  Its not so great that I’m going to call up my futures broker in the middle of the night and go long on Nuance stock or something.

However, if you ever run into a situation where your computer crashes and a document gets closed down prematurely, it would be my advice to simply run the original voice file through the transcription again and start over again if you need the ability to go back and compare the text to the original voice file.

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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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Here’s my first attempt trying to transcribe a voice file recorded on a Sony IC voice recorder ICD-UX70 with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred.

DNS actually makes a mobile edition, but I just have the Preferred edition. So I’m trying to do this basically using non-standard equipment.

That said, I found this to be relatively easy. I need to make a few minor adjustments to my technique, but all in all it worked pretty good.

The level of accuracy at the beginning of the transcription (first couple sentences) was not as high as DNS normally is when recording straight through a microphone on the computer. But towards the end of the recording, it seemed to rapidly improve.

Plus, after the transcription session, I went through the entire document and made corrections within the Dragon system so that it could learn from the mistakes made with the Sony recorder. I’m going to repeat that a few more times to see if I can continue to get better results.
The audio that goes along with this post is the audio from the recording session.

Below you will find the transribed text (Post Correction):

This is a test for Dragon Naturally Speaking a digital recorder and I’m going to be importing the voice file into my computer after I connect my digital voice recorder to my computer through its USB slot. I then have to run import function with my computer and Dragon NaturallySpeaking pulling in the voice file into Dragon NaturallySpeaking in MP3 format. In the past I’ve tried pulling in MP3 files and converting them into wave files. This time I’m going to be trying to pull it in using an MP3 file and see if Dragon NaturallySpeaking can turn transcribe it better than it can as a WAV format. This Sony recorder comes with a user’s manual that recommends the MP3 format as opposed to the wave file.

So now I will see if this version works better. I’ve tried the WAV format once and it didn’t work so great however at the time I was using the recorder with the mic sensitivity set at an incorrect setting which brought in a great deal of exterior noise.

This time I had the microphone settings correct and I am hoping that the MP3 format as prescribed by Sony will help transcription more correctly.

The other thing that I have to work on is learning how to train Dragon naturally speaking for my voice recorder. I’ve never trained Dragon NaturallySpeaking for a voice recorder before, and so this will be a new experiment for me. Currently, I am driving down the street in my car making this recording. Driving a stick shift, and it makes a voice transcription little bit tricky.

Mobile post sent by brettbum using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Well that’s the end of this proof of concept. I now know that I can take a simple little pocket recorder, keep a voice record, write an email, or even a book, almost anywhere from a plane to an airport to an Outer Banks rentals cottage on the beach and even on my kayak.

This is just one more way to un-tether me from the wires of my computer when I need a little more space or flexibility.

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Today, I was all set to produce a Dictation tutorial video showing people how to use Dragon Naturally Speaking 9  with  Excel.  Murphy’s law came into play and Dragon Naturally Speaking refused to work with Excel.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the dictation or voice recognition to work at all.

I did some searching, going through help and my Dragon Naturally Speaking manuals and books.  Ultimately, I found the answer on a thread talking about the problem at SpeechComputing.com.  A former DNS programmer offered up what seemed to be a good description of the problem and the technical fix.

As regards why you could not dictate into an Excel spreadsheet, the Dragon log indicates that DNS attempted to load the Excel ActiveX control, but Windows fail to load it. Loading ActiveX controls is called a “Remote Procedure Call.” You have seen this in other posts as “RPC_Server Unavailable.” What happens is that the RPC server either has not been started or is inaccessible because Windoze burped and failed to launch it or cannot access it. This server controls the loading of ActiveX controls. If you’re running Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista, you can go always go to the Administrative Tools and look under local services for the RPC server. There are 2 entries. All you have to do is stop them and restart them. However, if you do this be sure to restart them in automatic mode vs. manual mode. Otherwise, they may fail to start the next time around. Regardless, if the RPC server stops functioning or is inaccessible for any reason, you will not be able to load ActiveX controls that load on-the-fly as they do in DNS. On the other side of the coin, don’t go looking for the path that is specified in the error (Exception thrown entries). This is a temporary folder and you will not find it because it is emptied (cleared) once the error reporting is completed. The results are stored in the temporary files folder, but they are stored in a manner that is not viewable. 

How do you enter text into Excel 2003 on XP SP2 using DNS Pro 9?

Too Technical of a Fix for Me - Here’s the Low Tech Fix!

Well, I tried that using my own system which runs on XP Media Center and I couldn’t get this to work.  I did find an alternative workaround.

Reboot your PC!

Yeah, it sucks that you have to revert to this step, but if all else fails this did work for me.

The problem seems to be intrinsic to Windows and Excel, but the reality is that this is the program that many people work in and DNS either will work or it will not.  Fortunately if it does not or stops working, then a reboot, should que things up to work once again. 

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