May 14, 2020 Researching what is “the best transcription software” can be a little overwhelming. There are a lot of different answers. A lot of companies promote a “free” software, but free in a very limited capacity. Also speech to text software comes up in search results, like Dragon Naturally Speaking, but that isn’t a transcription software. Pros: I have used Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition software for several years, from version 12 to the current version 15 for PC. Anyone vaguely familiar with this type of software may be used to clunky products that struggle to recognize simple words, let alone sentences and so on. Fret no more.
A seemingly insignificant product cancellation is having a far-reaching impact on a particular community of Mac users.
Reg reader (and contributor) Colin Hughes wrote in to inform us about how Developer Nuance's decision to drop the OS X port of its Dragon Professional for Mac has left some customers with disabilities out in the cold.
A very important niche
Pitched as a productivity tool, Nuance's Dragon software is aimed at everyone from journalists and home users to medical professionals as a way to accurately transcribe spoken words into printed text.
For some users, however, the software is much more than a convenience. Hughes explains that, for him and others whose conditions leave them unable to type with a keyboard, voice dictation software is a line to the outside world.
'I became wholly reliant on voice dictation software for corresponding, whether it is writing a business letter to the bank, a blog post, or a short text to friends and family,' he explains.
'I do not have a plan B for writing anything.'
That is why, when Nuance announced recently that it was cutting support for the Mac version of Dragon Professional for Mac, it left some users in a tough spot.
While the software will continue to function, there will be no future updates or support, meaning Colin and others who have come to depend on Dragon for everyday activities will have to find another way to get things done.
'I have followers on Twitter who are in employment and run businesses and they say this news will hit their productivity hard,' Hughes explains.
'Blind people, people with dyslexia are also likely to be affected adversely along with severely physically disabled people like myself.'
El Reg contacted Nuance for comment on the matter, but a spokesperson had only the PR boilerplate to offer.
![Software Software](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126463387/155581520.jpg)
'Nuance is constantly evaluating its product portfolio to see how we can best meet the needs of our customers and business. After much consideration, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the Dragon Professional Individual for Mac line-up,' the statement reads.
'Customers may still receive telephone support for up to 90 days from date of activating the software in North America and up to 180 days from date of software activation in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions. Customers’ statutory rights are not affected.'
In other words, the clock is ticking for anyone who relies on Dragon for Mac to either find a new app or migrate to Windows. Which leads us to the next part of the story.
Other options don't really stack up
It would be one thing if the other options for Mac users could match Nuance's now-discontinued offering. Unfortunately, Hughes tells us, there isn't anything close to Dragon at the moment.
'Apple’s own voice dictation app.(found in accessibility) is inferior because it doesn’t learn from your mistakes, it can’t cope with work jargon, foreign names, you can’t train it to recognize words so it doesn’t repeat the same recognition mistake, you can’t add to its vocabulary,' said Hughes.
'So if there is an error in recognition when dictating people like me can’t take to the keyboard and simply carry on. So Apple’s own offering is far inferior to Dragon for Mac and is not at all productive for me to use.'
That leaves users with the unenviable choice of either making do with an inferior product or dropping their Macs in favor of Windows, where Nuance still supports Dragon Professional.
'I am a Mac user, I am steeped in the Mac ecosystem with MacBook Pro, iPhone, and Watch with all that seamless integration between devices,' Hughes said.
'It is not a simple decision to switch to a Windows machine and get Dragon for Windows.'
Apple to blame as well
It is no secret that Apple does not play well with others and the strict limits it places with its APIs have prevented developers from making full use of hardware the way they can on other platforms. Many an Android developer, for example, has had to cut features from the iOS version of their app due to Apple simply not granting access to specific components.
Look ma, no hands! The machines are speaking our language
READ MORENuance, it seems, ran into some of the same problems when it made Dragon for Mac.
Back in a 2016 user group presentation, Nuance R&D program manager Jeff Leiman noted how Apple's API restrictions left Nuance unable to implement some of the features it was able to offer for the Windows version.
While wanting to keep control of what happens on their platform is perfectly understandable, Hughes argues that Apple should also take it upon themselves to pick up where Nuance left off and develop a better set of access and dictation tools for disabled users.
Hughes says that, eventually, he does believe someone, be it Apple or Google, will step up and offer better voice controls and dictation. Unfortunately, in the meantime he and other users are tied to the business decisions of the few companies, such as Nuance, who offer a usable product.
Perhaps most frustrating is that the technology to do voice control properly is already here. Apple and others have made a point of working it into their hardware demos, but the involvement ends there, and when it can't be used to showcase a new product, speech recognition seems to get tossed aside.
'For some strange reason Apple keeps pitching voice control in terms of gimmicky things like ordering your coffee from Starbucks while turning your thermostat down on your way out to work,' Hughes says.
'For people like me being able to control my Apple device by voice can make or break my day. Apple just doesn’t seem to get that and it isn’t listening.'
Here's hoping they do, sooner than later. ®
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Speech recognition software is available for many computing platforms, operating systems, use models, and software licenses. Here is a listing of such, grouped in various useful ways.
Acoustic models and speech corpus (compilation)[edit]
The following list presents notable speech recognition software engines with a brief synopsis of characteristics.
Software Like Dragon For Mac Free
Application name | Description | Open-source | License | Operating system | Programming language | Supported language, note | Offline or online |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CMU Sphinx | HMM | Yes | BSD style | Cross-platform | Java | English, German, French, Mandarin, Russian | Offline |
HTK | No | HTK specific | Cross-platform | C | English; version 3.5 released December 2015 | ||
Julius | HMM trigrams | Yes | BSD style, non-commercial | Cross-platform | C | Japanese, English; [2] | Offline |
Kaldi | Neural net | Yes | Apache | Cross-platform | C++ | English | |
RWTH ASR | RWTH Aachen University | No | RWTH ASR, non-commercial use only | Linux, macOS | C++ | English |
Macintosh[edit]
Application name | Description | Open-source | License | Price | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dragon for Mac (discontinued 2018) | macOS; by Nuance | No | Proprietary | ||
Dragon Dictate (discontinued) | macOS; by Nuance | No | Proprietary | ||
MacSpeech Scribe (discontinued) | Transcription from recorded text; acquired by Nuance | ||||
iListen (discontinued) | PowerPC Macintosh; discontinued by MacSpeech; acquired by Nuance | ||||
Speakable items | Included with macOS | ||||
ViaVoice (discontinued) | IBM Product; acquired by Nuance | ||||
Voice Navigator | Original GUI voice control; 1989 |
Cross-platform web apps[edit]
![Dragon dictation software for mac Dragon dictation software for mac](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126463387/878862425.jpg)
Temi.com
Ebby.co
Sonix.ai
Simonsays.ai
Cross-platform web apps based on Chrome[edit]
The following list presents notable speech recognition software that operate in a Chrome browser as web apps. They make use of HTML5 Web-Speech-API.[1]
Application name | Description | Open-source | License | Price | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Speechmatics[2] | Cloud based and on-premise automatic speech recognition | No | Proprietary | From £0.06 per minute of audio |
Mobile devices and smartphones[edit]
Many mobile phone handsets, including feature phones and smartphones such as iPhones and BlackBerrys, have basic dial-by-voice features built in. Many third-party apps have implemented natural-language speech recognition support, including:
Application name | Description | Open-source | License | Price | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Assistant.ai | Assistant for Android, iOS and Windows Phone | No | Proprietary, freeware | Free | Discontinued |
Dragon Dictation | No | Proprietary, freeware | Free | ||
Google Now | Android voice search | No | Proprietary, freeware | Free | |
Google Voice Search | No | Proprietary, freeware | Free | ||
Microsoft Cortana | Microsoft voice search | No | Proprietary, freeware | Free | |
Siri Personal Assistant | Apple's virtual personal assistant | No | Proprietary, freeware | Free | |
Alexa – Amazon Echo | Amazon's personal assistant | No | Proprietary | ||
SILVIA | Android and iOS | No | |||
Vlingo |
Windows[edit]
Windows built-in speech recognition[edit]
The Windows Speech Recognition version 8.0 by Microsoft comes built into Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.Speech Recognition is available only in English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese and only in the corresponding version of Windows; meaning you cannot use the speech recognition engine in one language if you use a version of Windows in another language. Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8 Pro allow you to change the system language, and therefore change which speech engine is available. Windows Speech Recognition evolved into Cortana (software), a personal assistant included in Windows 10.
Add-ons for Windows 7 speech recognition[edit]
- Voice Finger – software for Windows Vista and Windows 7 that improves the Windows speech recognition system by adding several extensions to accelerate and improve the mouse and keyboard control.
Windows 7, 8, 10 third-party speech recognition[edit]
- Braina – Dictate into third party software and websites[3], fill web forms and execute vocal commands.[4]
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance Communications – Successor to the older DragonDictate product. Focus on dictation. 64-bit Windows support since version 10.1.
- SpeechMagic – Nuance Communications acquired Philips owned. Medical industry focus according to Frost & Sullivan. Standalone or embedded.[5]
- Tazti – Create speech command profiles to play PC games and control applications – programs. Create speech commands to open files, folders, webpages, applications. Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 versions.[6]
Windows XP or 2000 only[edit]
- Microsoft Speech API – Speech recognition functionality included as part of Microsoft Office and on Tablet PCs running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. It can also be downloaded as part of the Speech SDK 5.1 for Windows applications, but since that is aimed at developers building speech applications, the pure SDK form lacks any user interface, and thus is unsuitable for end users.
Built-in software[edit]
- Microsoft Kinect includes built-in software which allows speech recognition of commands.
- Older generations of Nokia phones like Nokia N Series (before using Windows 7 mobile technology) used speech-recognition with family names from contact list and a few commands.
- Siri, originally implemented in the iPhone 4S, Apple's personal assistant for iOS, which uses technology from Nuance Communications.
- Cortana (software), Microsoft's personal assistant built into Windows Phone and Windows 10.
Interactive voice response[edit]
The following are interactive voice response (IVR) systems:
- Genesys[7]
- HTK – copyrighted by Microsoft, but allows altering software for licensee's internal use
- LumenVox ASR
- Tellme Networks; acquired by Microsoft
Unix-like x86 and x86-64 speech transcription software[edit]
- Janus Recognition Toolkit (JRTk)[8][9]
Discontinued software[edit]
- IBM ViaVoice – Embedded version still maintained by IBM.[10] No longer supported for versions above Windows Vista.[11] Untested above macOS 10.4 or on Macintoshes with an Intel chipset.[12]
- Quack.com; acquired by AOL; the name has now been reused for an iPad search app.
- SpeechWorks from Nuance Communications.
- Yap Speech Cloud – Speech-to-text platform acquired by Amazon.com.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^'Web Speech API Specification'. dvcs.w3.org. Archived from the original on 2016-06-21.
- ^Orlowski, Andrew. 'Total recog: British AI makes universal speech breakthrough'. The Register. Situation Publishing. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
- ^'Speech Recognition Software for Windows PC – Braina'. www.brainasoft.com. Archived from the original on 2015-04-07.
- ^'Dynamic Faceting-List of Most 57 Speech Recognition SWs and Web Services'. Archived from the original on February 13, 2019. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
- ^'Philips SpeechMagic named European Technology Leader by Frost & Sullivan'. www.frost.com. Archived from the original on 2008-04-15.
- ^O'Neill, Mark (2013-11-06). 'Control your PC with these 5 speech recognition programs'. PC World. Archived from the original on 2014-01-01. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
- ^'Interactive Voice Response'. Genesys. Archived from the original on 2016-10-14.
- ^[1][dead link]
- ^Lavie, A.; Waibel, A.; Levin, L.; Finke, M.; Gates, D.; Gavalda, M.; Zeppenfeld, T.; Zhan, Puming (1 April 1997). 'Janus-III: speech-to-speech translation in multiple languages'. 1997 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. IEEE Xplore. 1. pp. 99–102. CiteSeerX10.1.1.36.6967. doi:10.1109/ICASSP.1997.599557. ISBN978-0-8186-7919-3.
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2010-08-08. Retrieved 2010-06-29.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- ^'Nuance product support for Microsoft Windows 7'. Nuance Communications, Customer Help. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
- ^'ViaVoice for Mac OS X on Intel Chipset'. Nuance Communications, Customer Help. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
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