h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can anyone help me? I am trying to find the best voice recognition software currently available. I want to be able to do as much of my work without a keyboard + mouse - is this possible? I love using computers but cannot work on them for long stretches of time because I experience a lot of pain.

What software/hardware solutions are out there? Let me know if you have any good advice.

Hi there,

Sorry for having been a little absent. You remind me to finish a piece on Speech recognition I'm working on.

At present there are two serious players on the market for speech recognition. There is Dragon NaturallySpeaking by ScanSoft and there is ViaVoice by IBM.
I've never worked with ViaVoice (in a meaningful way) so I'm afraid I can't give you a more complete answer on that one.

I know a little bit more about Dragon NaturallySpeaking and I can tell you that the latest version is the 6 version which is available in English (US English, UK English, Indian English, SEA English and Australian English) and Japanese.
There are other versions available for the international market (Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian - and there must be a Chinese version as well). For completeness' sake I have to add that VoiceXpress, a product by a now-defunct speech technology giant called Lernout&Hauspie, is also available in Swedish.
If you're prepared to train the product so that it is tuned to your voice, and you're a native speaker of the language, you should be able to get very good recognition.
Speech recognition software is a resource intensive application, so do yourself a favour and don't try to run it on a weak machine. Get something decent with a SoundBlaster compatible soundcard.
You can't expect speech recognition to function perfectly (actually, you will never get -perfect- recognition), straight out of the box. It doesn't work that way. You have to allow it to get used to your voice, by correcting recognition mistakes, by having the programme analyse documents you've written and by speaking as clearly as you can (but don't strain your voice, speak naturally). If you allow for some errors in recognition, about the amount of misunderstood words in a regular conversation, you'll be satisfied with the accuracy you get.
I don't know about ViaVoice (and I won't dismiss it out of hand, I just don't have the experience), but Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6 allows you to control your desktop environment almost entirely with your voice. Combine this with some limited use of the keyboard and mouse and you should get serious added value from working that way. It's not quite up to the level where you could chuck your keyboard in the bin, but if you learn how to control your desktop (and applications) by voice, and you use a bit of mouse and keyboard, you'll be chuffed at how great that works.

The instrument you have to take most care of is your voice. Don't strain it by talking in an unnatural way and take a sip of water every now and then. Golden hint : if you find that a certain word is not recognised properly, don't try to shout the word or over-enunciate as you would when you were trying to explain quantum physics to your granny and she's a bit hard of hearing. Speech recognition doesn't work like that. You'll only end up hurting your voice.

I hope to finish a piece I'm doing on speech recognition for The Guide. I'll be subjecting it to peer review and I've got some mighty clever peers, so I can't mess it up lest I permanently damage my reputation (vanity, such a burden it is). Expect it soon.
Watch this space.

Final piece of advice : sometimes the things the programme recognises are nothing short of hilarious. Take every opportunity to guffaw at the extravagant results you may get, see them as added vallue. Never lose your patience or your temper when dictating. Your recognition will most definitely not improve and it'll ruin your happy disposition.
Try this : have your computer listen to the radio and see what recognition results it produces, you'll bust a gut .

Thanks for your posting.

I was wondering - do you know any people you use Voice Recognition software because they have RSI. Have they had much success with it?

Also, can you use it in a busy office environment, or does peripheral sound (radio, loud conversations, etc) interfere with the recognition? If so, do lap tops support voice recog software?

Does your computer HAVE to have a sound card? Do laptops support soundcards?

Sorry to pick your brains like this, I really appreciate it.

Zep

It be no problem, man. All is ivy.

Does your computer need a sound card. You better believe it. Speech recognition needs to have something to process. What is it processing ? Your voice, that's what. So, you need something that will process the signal and that would be your sound card.
Sound cards and speech recognition. It's like a bad marriage and your mother-in-law is living in until her house is refurbished or you go stark raving mad, whichever comes first.

This is the thing : sound cards are really good at putting out sound. You do want to hear the REAL agony of the virtual soldier you just pumped full of virtual lead, right ? Right. The other way around is not so evident. For most applications getting the signal in halfway decent will do the job just fine. Speech recognition is a lot more demanding of the hardware. If the signal in is the only thing (just about anyway) that makes or breaks your application, you want it to be the best signal you can possibly get. As far as desktop computers goes, there's room enough to insert the sound card of your choice. These days, some box movers fit sound cards that are mounted on the motherboard. This is like a punishment of God and being stranded on a deserted island with 15 cases of Harpoon beer all rolled into one.
Onboard sound cards suck big time and then some. Luckily you can just install another sound card in the computer, disable the onboard sound card, in the BIOS if you have to and Bob's your uncle.
Laptops, by their very nature, have an onboard sound card. Now I don't know what circuit baker stamps these things out in what plant in South Korea but let me tell you that for speech recognition purposes I'd rather take my chances with the skin of an african drum than use one of those things.
Ok, they're not all bad. Some of them are decent enough. If you're going to use speech recognition in a serious way you have to be willing to buy the hardware you require. The sound board is the thing you'll put your confidence in, you might as well make it a good one. If the sound card in the laptop is really abysmal you will need a USB headset. These bypass the sound card entirely and the only thing you need to do is to disable the onboard sound card so as not to confuse the software. Make sure you're not running Windows NT4 on the laptop. NT4 does not support USB. Like, it doesn't support it, AT ALL. There's no such thing. Get another OS. Plain and simple.
That answers your laptop question. Can you use speech recognition software on a laptop ? You bet your sweet aunt Nellie you can.

Can you use it in a busy office ? Of course you can. You can use it shoulder to shoulder. you're talking into a headset, the headset is only listening to your voice. I wouldn't use it in a crowded office if I was testing, say the voice calculator in Voice Xpress 5 Pro, but that's just me, what do I know anyway?
Having said that, you don't want to listen to your golden oldies, Ozzy Osbourne's greatest hits on volume 10, or invite the gaggle of truck drivers on their coffee breaks. You need -an acceptable level- of noise. You can retune your mic to some extent, but there's got to be some kind of balance in the signal to noise ratio.
If you use it right it's a perfect tool for controlling your desktop and office application. It's not going to be a totally handsfree experience but it will be useful. Recognition accuracy is getting to be pretty well damn good. If you take the time and trouble to tune it to your voice, you'll certainly get your money's worth. It helps with RSI but also, and isn't that just peachy, when you suffer from dyslexia. You're not doing the writing, the machine is writing for you. You don't have to worry about spelling anymore, there's no spelling errors in speech recognition software (or there shouldn't be after the Beta *chuckle*).
Speech recognition, if you use it with common sense and you have the patience to give it a chance to work for you, is great software.

Wanted to get back to you sooner, but Life reared it's ugly head in a really bad way.

Enjoy.