I have every commercially available speech recognition program published
since 1992, and have been a beta tester for every manufacturer (except
Phillips who pulled out of the North Am market ten years ago...). I
have been a product tester, reviewer and Guinea Pig for microphones and
related input devices for several vendors.
My recommendation is to get a headset mic - which moves around with you
as you turn or move your head, and this helps keep the sound volume and
all consistent.
I also recommend you try 1) Dragon NaturallySpeaking as the most
accurate speech recognition engine at cost, but if cost is a barrier,
then 2) Microsoft Speech which comes free within various recent
iterations of the Windows OS and some recent versions of MS Word.
There are valid differences of opinion - different users get different
quality results with various speech engines - but I much prefer Dragon
NatSpeak as I think it is the more accurate speech engine, and it has a
refined UI, whereas MS Speech is still in first beta (has been always -
probably will never become finished...) and lacks the full UI that the
Nuance (Dragon) product has. It just is a more complete experience and
there is more formalized support for it than for the one built into the
OS- which is an "undocumented" feature.
You can purchase some third party add-ons to the Dragon product,
including one called KnowBrainer(R) which is a set of pre-defined
computer program control commands. This makes the programming of
commands (as opposed to just straight dictation of words) easier and is
more robust than the native available command structure that is built
into the program. Such third party add ons are not as plentiful for
the MS Speech recognizer.
Get a better headset (but don't spend a lot of money) on a good
microphone as the one in the box is just OK -- it will do fine, but a
slightly higher expense is warranted. Do not spend a lot of money on a
microphone - many vendors will make you think you need that -just like
there are guys who say you need a $400 gold sputtered large diaphragm
studio condenser mic, with noise gate, compressor, equalizer, and all
the other trimmings for ham radio. In fact, I can explain why having a
studio quality microphone for speech recognition can actually degrade
performance (hint: think sound card sample rates....)
Email me off list Wed - going for surgery later today - if you have
other questions or just want to probe the nuances of these programs.
=================== James -K8JHR ===========================
On 12/6/2010 7:48 AM, John Chance-Read wrote:
> Being deaf, I am trying to locate a 'Speech to Text' software package.
> All my attempts, despite careful choice of route, always lands up with a 'Text
> to Speech'.
> I use CW Skimmer to display the morse code ( I decode it visually) and have
> successfully made many CW contacts. Now I want to try SSB.
> Does anyone know of such software. SPEECH to Text - not text to speech!
> Your help appreciated
> John G4BOU
>
>
>
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