Software Review
iListen 1.7
Developer: MacSpeech
Price: $179 with headset; $40 (upgrade); Educational discount available.
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9. Mac with G4 or faster. Universal.
Recommended: Mac OS X 10.4, 512 MB of RAM.
Trial: None
I have been interested in voice recognition software for a while but never played with it. When the chance to explore iListen’s new upgrade came up, I jumped at it. I hit some snags, but I’m pleased to say the product itself is good.
There are two pieces to the iListen setup experience: one is the usual software download or CD loading of the software. No problems there. The other part of the game is making sure you have an approved microphone. I did not anticipate this issue, and it delayed my using the software for several days. If you purchase the software directly from MacSpeech, they include an approved microphone. Since my copy was not purchased this way, I had to scramble for a microphone. Do not assume the microphone or headset you already have will work—MacSpeech has only approved a limited number of units that will work well. Their instructions say that it is possible other microphones will work, but they will not promise excellent results, and they will not provide support.
Once you have the software installed and the proper microphone plugged in, you read a story. Yep. You read a story to iListen, so it can hear what you sound like and how you pronounce words. You will go through the document and make corrections, and read another story or two. Or half a dozen. It depends on how good your accuracy rate is. The FAQ page suggests that once that rate is in the 92% neighborhood, you won’t improve things much by reading any more stories.
My first story came in at 88%. I read two training panels and was using an unapproved microphone—but it is a relatively high-end model, the Plantronics GameCom Pro 1. After one more training panel, my accuracy rate was 90%. I tried to shush the cat during training, but then decided he would be commenting other times, so I might as well let iListen include him in its analysis.
I enjoyed some of iListen’s attempts at understanding the test story I was reading, about new North Carolina laws banning cell phone use by young drivers, and requiring rear-seat passengers to wear seat belts. My favorite error was when I read “Also becoming law Dec. 1 is a requirement for all back seat passengers riding in North Carolina to buckle up.” The software said I was requiring folks to “Bob aloft,” which I thought would be more fun, if you had a hot-air balloon.
I followed the suggestion on the FAQ page, and preset the microphone in the Sound pane of System Preferences. I did not look at the screen while dictating, as that messes with your head on the delay. I used SimpleText, but I would have turned off Spelling & Grammar in Microsoft Word. I turn it off when I use it anyway, and I don’t use Word by choice.
The software works by translating your spoken words into text. It starts with a profile based on your gender and the language you speak. I suppose men with high voices and women with low voices might need more tweaking, if the software expects certain inflections. My voice is low for a woman, so that may have influenced some of my misunderstandings. The requirements do say the user should be at least age 14, so possibly the software is not as good at dealing with children’s voices as it will be someday.
After my fourth training story, my accuracy rate on the driving laws story did not improve beyond 90%. Most of us have to read behind ourselves when we write, anyway. I would prefer not to have to make a correction in every paragraph, but until the software learns my voice better, I guess that’s how it works. It is still miles ahead of where we were a few years ago. Half a dozen training stories at a pop is about all I recommend, as your voice tires. Some of the training stories are a good bit longer, so pay attention to your throat. Some of the errors between my third and fourth training stories changed, making me think I had gone too long for the software to understand me.
The microphone is to be positioned very near your mouth, so it is very sensitive to your voice but not to other sounds. I experimented with having someone talk as he walked behind me while I was dictating. The microphone did pick up his voice when he was within two feet, but not much beyond that. iListen only listens to me! I may set up a profile for the other person, though. He set type for many years but his typing is iffy. Maybe it was because he worked upside down and backwards all those years. He might like to speak aloud his e-mails.
I like this program very much. It is fun to see that we are living in the world our science fiction writers dreamed for us decades ago. I will use this product on my next research paper for graduate school. I have already begun it. The course is Philosophy of Mind; I am eager to see if using this tool changes the way I write or think.
If you spend a lot of time writing, you should consider this product. It is a smidge pricy for my taste, but we get what we pay for, and there is a reason some stuff costs a lot. I could see it being helpful for someone writing a sermon or speech, who thinks best aloud rather than in print. Using this software would allow such a thinker to speak an idea rather than trying to construct it in letters. If you are a walk-around thinker, though, you will need a long cord, as iListen does not yet support any Bluetooth microphones.
I am not sure this software would be a great idea in an office or other environment with several people talking. You would need to test it with an approved microphone to know whether the background voices would be a problem.
The folks this software would be best for, though, are those who have typing issues. I have a wonderful friend with occasional finger problems due to a medical condition, and if he does not already have software like this, I will encourage him to explore it.
Copyright © 2006 Ellyn Ritterskamp, eritterskamp@atpm.com. Reviewing
in ATPM is open to anyone. If you’re interested, write to us at
reviews@atpm.com.
Reader Comments (474)
I am using the latest version and I must admit that after maybe 6-7 hours of reading to my Mac I am thinking that someday I will be able to use it productively.
Note: The (unmentionable competing Mac application) from I.B.M. has been orphaned as far as I can see.
This looks like it has plenty of potential.
It's accuracy is worse than ViaVoice [which works well in all OS Xs, but 10.4.7]; and it's worst failing is its inability to place corrections in the proper places. I wind up with orphaned text placed at random in paragraphs.
My advice is to get an Intel Mac [with appropriate software: Bootstrap/Parallels/Crossover] and use the PC version of Dragon Dictate - Naturally Speaking. It's very accurate!!!
Even Dragon NaturallySpeaking fanatic and Mac pundit David Pogue was able to achieve almost 96% accuracy after using iListen for only 30 minutes. If you aren't achieving decent accuracy, our support team is here to help. Please contact them at "questions@macspeech.com" for assistance.
To be useful, voice recognition software has to achieve way better than 90% accuracy. I am a registered user of both ViaVoice and iListen, but abandoned both years ago. I would have been interested to know how much better iListen Version 1.7 is than previous versions - if indeed it is.
We need a voice app for the Mac that is as good as Dragon Naturally Speaking allegedly is for the PC (ref. Pogue D.)
I cannot compare it to ViaVoice or Dragon, because I have never used those products. Possibly my rating was inflated because I am thrilled this kind of software even exists. But this program scored a lot of ease-of-use points with me, which is what most of us expect from Mac apps. My rating was as much based on potential as anything.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Even David Pogue said he got almost 96% accuracy after using iListen for only 30 minutes - he said that in the same review Steve quoted above.
Accuracy levels in iListen can be achieved that are every bit as high as Dragon NaturallySpeaking and we have many users who have stated they have achieved this (we even have one who states he got better recognition out of iListen after 2 weeks than he did from NaturallySpeaking after 5 years!).
All that having been said, please keep in mind that Dragon has been around a lot longer than we have as a company, and they have not been faced with the mandate of rewriting their program completely 3 times just to keep up with changes to the platform. (We had to rewrite to go from 68K to PPC, Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, and now PPC to Intel.)
It is our hope that Apple will leave a lot of the under the hood stuff alone for a while so we can further improve our company by much larger leaps, rather than the baby steps we have been forced to take up until now just so we can maintain compatibility with the platform.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evagelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
You sir are a nice guy and quite affabe. We spoke years ago b4 you left and returned.
First: ViaVoice is more accurate.
Second: Even Power Secretary was more accurate.
Third: Your support team s*cks.
I got "0" help !
They could not even understand my problem.
Let's say iListen did not recognize "problem? [above]
I use correction and it places the correction between "support...team" or any where else it pleases.
I can type faster. And I type poorly...
It does not help your cause when your software misspells: Evangelist!
Nice try.
Terrie
I use iListen primarily for Command and Control, although more recently I have been using it more for dictation because I seem to be developing some RSI issues with my right arm. My response (and misspelling) was typed, not dictated.
If you haven't tried our support lately, which seems to be indicated by your comment, you will be thoroughly surprised. I was put in charge of it when I came back and I will GUARANTEE you we are far better in every aspect at this point than ViaVoice ever was.
Come check us out. If you purchase the upgrade and our support team a). doesn't respond to you within 24 hours; and b). can't get you above 90% accuracy within 1 week and above 95% within 1 month or less, you can have your money back.
One last thing: our growing customer base - including many former ViaVoice AND Dragon NaturallySpeaking customers would certainly disagree with you that our software sucks - it may have at one point (and those who know me know that's why I left). I would not have returned if the software continued to suck. It is that simple.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I will buy a VXI TalkPro Xpress headset [w/Andrea USB pod],
as the combo has the highest recommendation,
and try the upgrade.
You still sound reasonable.
[You did the right thing to leave --
I admire your principles.]
Some people report the output level as being too high when used with the Andrea USB pod on a PC. However, the Andrea USB pod is recommended for use with Mac computers. [Macs like the higher Andrea gain.]
Terrie
I can state that over the past few weeks, the Support staff at MacSpeech has been tremendously helpful and responsive, even to the extent of responding to an emailed support request I made just late this past holiday Sunday afternoon in less than 2 hours, which was most unexpected, and which solved a huge problem for me.
I further find Chuck Rogers (whom I do not know and have never had the pleasure of meeting) to be a breath of fresh air in the business world. I am able to see and notice the palpable, impressive progress the company has already made in their product between version 1.6 and 1.7 - bearing in mind all the Platform/rewriting work and changes that have been required by Apple just to keep pace. Their obvious enthusiasm and determination give me sufficient confidence that they will continue to advance and improve their product and to continue real R&D work on iListen such that I chose to pick iListen as my solution rather than attempting to cobble Dragon through Boot Camp/Parallels, etc. Of course, each person must come to their own decision in that regard.
Just FYI, I have been using the Program on a Dual 2.0Ghz G5 Power Mac with 4.5 GB of ram and, with finishing merely the initial training, was getting around 94% accuracy. However, I am just re-loading the program onto a newly obtained Mac Pro 3.0Ghz, and am hopeful that the extra power, combined with some extra patience and care in training, will pay off in even higher accuracy for the Universal program.
Best regards,
Norm
See the article, Like Having a Secretary in Your PC, July 20, 2006, at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/technology/20pogue.html?ex=1157601600&en=42ba211266db6c46&ei=5070
Relevant excerpts:
"And now they've topped that: NatSpeak 9 requires no training at all.
I gave it a test. After a fresh installation of the software, I opened a random page in a book and read a 1,000-word passage -- without doing any training.
The software got 11 words wrong, which means it got 98.9 percent of the passage correct. Some of those errors were forgivable, like when it heard "typology" instead of "topology."
But Nuance says that you'll get even better accuracy if you do read one of the training scripts, so I tried that, too. I trained the software by reading its "Alice in Wonderland" excerpt. This time, when I read the same 1,000 words from my book, only six errors popped up. That's 99.4 percent correct."
There is no question that you can be more accurate with Dragon NaturallySpeaking more quickly than you can with iListen. We have never suggested otherwise.
But if David Pogue was getting 96% accuracy after only 30 minutes, imagine how accurate he would be after using it for only a week or so. At that point, does it really matter if Dragon is 99.6 percent accurate and iListen is 99.2 percent accurate - a difference of only 4 words per 1000?
The point is that yes - with Dragon you will be more accurate sooner. Over time, however, your accuracy should be about the same.
I would like to correct this statement as it DOES work fine and dictates very well into other applications (Mail, TextEdit, etc.). Accuaracy is quite good...over 90% I would say.
It may be orphaned but it works.
Kim Peacock
iListen works on PPC and Intel Macs. 1.7 works on any G4, G5 or Intel Mac running 10.3.9 or later - and our customers are consistently getting well above 90% accuracy. Most are well above 95%, and, over time, this can be expected to increase to above 99%.
Another advantage of NaturallySpeaking is its multilanguage ability. I work in English, French and Dutch and would need software that accepts dictation in all these languages. Any chance that iListen develops that ability?
For French and Dutch, you will need to stick with Dragon.Wedo have Spanish, German, and Italian versions of iListen, however.
Thanks,
Jim B.
We have many medical professional using iListen for dictation. One of them allowed us to share his comments with others:
"I'm getting 95-99% recognition after only a week using the system for all of my patient notes and correspondence. It is still learning the names of medications, but cycling each day's clinic note through the "Learn My Writing Style" feature has proven very useful. So far, and again after only one week of office use, iListen is saving me 20-30 minutes a day over my use of Dragon (which I have used over the past 5 years). That's a whole lot of heart beats to be spent doing something else besides talking to a computer. It's almost like having a little person typing away inside of my Mac Mini. Thanks for your dedication to this superb product."
-David J. Black MD
-Private Practice of Family Medicine
-Gainesville
You can find more customer testimonials here.
Why is then Dragon Naturally Speaking for PC considered a 'better' speech recognition application than iListen 1.7 for Mac?
Can someone explain simply so that I can show my K12 students? I will acknowledge your explanation.
Is it a PC - Mac thing? Or is the underlying programming very different? Can iListen surpass Dragon now Macs are Intel or has this got nothing to do with the programming or its operation?
Thanks.
For K12 students, neither Dragon NaturallySpeaking will do a very good job. This is because speech recognition programs require more mature voices and speech patterns that are grammatically correct. Most pre-adolescents will have a great deal of trouble with speech recognition programs, no matter who makes them. As far as iListen is concerned, MacSpeech supports anyone 14 or over.
In regards to comparing the two programs, we know from experience that both will provide you with 98-99 percent accuracy over time. Dragon will get to this point more quickly than iListen. There are two main reasons for this:
1). MacSpeech is a much younger company than Dragon. They were already several years old at the time we introduced the first version of iListen.
2). There have been very few changes in the underlying code base or the hardware instructions set for Windows and PCs since 1995. Contrast that with how MacSpeech has been tasked with completely rewriting our software three times: once to go from 68K code to PPC, again to go from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, and again just recently to go from PPC to Intel.
Nonetheless, we do have many customers who claim we are actually more accurate than Dragon - although we would never make that claim ourselves, and openly acknowledge that most people - at least initially - have a different experience.
The bottom line is that all speech recognition programs out there will give you about the same level of accuracy with a fully trained voice profile. At issue here is really that Dragon will get you to that point much quicker than iListen, not that it is more accurate no matter what.
If you have any further questions you may want to visit our online Knowledgebase for more information. Simply point your browser to www.macspeech.com, click the "Support" link at the top of the page, then click the link to our Knowledgebase.
Richard
You can, however, add as many medical terms to iListen as you would like all at one time using iListen's "Learn My Writing Style" feature. This allows you to add the words you use all at once without burdening your profile with thousands of other terms you do not use.
If the program is crashing, you need to contact our technical support team, as that is definitely not the experience the vast majority of our users are experiencing.
You can contact Support by pointing your browser to www.macspeech.com, then clicking the word "Support" at the top of the page. You can then submit a Ticket to get the fastest response.
Please contact our support team at support@macspeech.com and they will assist you in getting iListen up and running. From what I can tell, it sounds like you might have FileVault enabled, which can cause problems with iListen.
You can also contact our support department directly by doing the following:
1). Point your browser to http://www.macspeech.com.
2). Click the word "Support" at the top of the page.
3). Click the "Submit a Ticket" link on the bottom right of the page that loads.
4). Follow the onscreen instructions.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I have enjoyed reading the comments and the review. I have a questions that I need answered that I did not see addressed here. My company has me doing interviews with folks for podcasts. Then we have them transcribed. From what I can tell DNS can handle duel voice transcription, how does iListen handle it? And do I understand you to say that iListen can not work on a Mac that is using FileVault?
Thanks,
Matt
iListen requires only one voice, and that the voice speak all their punctuation. We can't speak directly for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but we have been told by those that use it that it is far less accurate when there is more than one voice on a recording and when the speaker(s) do not speak punctuation.
We have many journalists who use iListen to transcribe interviews, however. What they do is listen to the recording and then re-speak it in their own voice. This has the added benefit of allowing them to edit so the interview is transcribed correctly into written text (voices from an interview or lecture will be more conversational in nature and thus require heavy editing after transcription, negating much of the time savings).
Regarding FileVault, iListen is not compatible with it. This is due to a bug in Apple's Xcode and not iListen itself, however. (1.6.8 worked fine with FileVault, but 1.7 - the first version we have compiled using X-code - does not).
We STRONGLY recommend against using FileVault because it can cause complete loss of everything in your Home folder (this has happened to people at MacSpeech who have attempted to use it on more than one occasion), and it slows down the performance of your machine, which reduces accuracy for speech recognition.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Cauleen
I am severely dyslexic (a friend is writing this for me). I have a PM G4 with dual 1.25GHz CPUs with 1.25 GB of memory running os10.4.8
I was using viavoice however after the last few system updates it no longer works. I am thinking of buying ilisten MX. My concern is the same update problem will happen with ilisten. Can you assure me this will not be the case or must I be a good little sheep buy a PC and run dragon?
iListen 1.0 came out in 2006. The current version, 1.7 is the seventh major release of the program in that timeframe. We are already working on a version that will be compatible with Leopard.
So if you are looking for assurance that iListen will not "go by the wayside" consider yourself assured. Unlike IBM, we live and die by the success or failure of iListen, since all of the products we sell revolve around it.
I am greatly impressed with Chuck Rogers and am glad I placed the order. I will be able to give a good comparison opinion before long, so I'll let you know.
I would like to know if there is a forum for medical or chiropractic users to swap info, or how I could start one with MacSpeech.
Thank you all.
Michael
Thanks for your kind comments.
You can read a comparison of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and iListen in the following article in the MacSpeech online Knowledgebase:
http://macspeech.crmhelp.net/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=51
I don't know of any medical-specific forums specifically dedicated to those using iListen. We do have many doctors using iListen in their practice, however. One was even profiled on Apple's web pages:
http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/cleveland/
(The reference to MacSpeech is on the third page of the article.)
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I transcribe around 4,000 words daily through ilisten as I dictate all of my medical notes and correspondence. In preparation to use the system I ran 3 months of daily notes previously produced on Dragon through the "learn my writing style". The program picked up the medical vocabulary very well. Phrases I frequently use are transcribed flawlessly. After processing prior notes and going through the voice training, I consistently obtained 95% plus recognition. I added repeated phrases (such as segments of physical exams) to the macro's that can be brought up and transcribed on command. The cost of this program, plus a mac mini, was less than the cost of a Dragon alone offering the same capability.
After 5 years of using Dragon, and now watching my colleagues continue to suffer with Dragon, I am pleased that I changed to this product. It offers me better recognition, and therefor greater office efficiency, than I ever acheived with my retired pc and Dragon. I have been using ilisten over a year, dicatating into Appleworks. I have done very little training beyond what I described above, with recongition consistantly greater than 95%. My office notes are cleaner than what I get back from hospital transcription!
Dave Black MD
Gainesville, Fl
All speech recognition programs pretty much require the speaker be able to "write with their voice." This means they must have a certain command of the language that most children do not yet have. For this reason, we can not provide technical support for users under 14 years of age.
This is not a limitation of just iListen, btw. This is a limitation of all speech recognition programs.
Regarding training, we do have people who simply speak the text on the training panel and have the user repeat it to train. Once again, however, we do not recommend nor can we support the use of iListen with anyone under the age of 14.
Thanks, Laurie
Speech recognition does require a certain clarity to get the best results. We do have people with very mild speech impediments who are able to use iListen, but there is really no way to tell how well your father would do outside of him just using it.
Due to the very nature of speech recognition, it isn't possible for us to provide demo versions. For some people it can literally take weeks or even months to achieve satisfactory accuracy - especially if they have issues with their speech.
If your father's speech is not slurred very badly and he has quite a bit of patience to work with the software, iListen may be a very good solution for him. However, there is no way to tell in advance.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evagelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
TYPED BY HAND
I make digital voice recordings at construction sites and type up reports upon my return to the office. Will iListen function effectively if I play back my recordings through a microphone? Alternatively, if I directly connect the recorder to my Mac through the usb port and transfer my notes to the hard drive, can iListen then reproduce my notes?
The only answer I can give you is - it depends! A lot depends on how noisy the surroundings are, and if you are able to use a noise-canceling microphone when you make the recordings. Outside of that, you would also need to make sure you speak your punctuation and that yours was the only voice on the recording.
My gut tells me that the noise level on a construction site would be too unpredictable. Not necessarily always noisy, but sometimes noisy and sometimes not - which is going to cause poor accuracy as the software cannot adjust to different environmental conditions on the fly.
If you feel the noise level is pretty constant in the environment in which you would be using it, it may work OK for you, however.
We give you everything you need when you purchase with a microphone: you get the mic, a USB adapter, and a CD with the iListen software and complete documentation.
Like others, Mr Rogers' comments make me feel assured about dev and backup commitment. I've been an evangelist myself for a couple of products, both PC based. One of these, YeahWrite, I use the heck out of in ways I'm sure the developers never envisaged, and Parallels enables me to paste into my Mac apps. Sure, it's a bind, but not a big one.
So... Dragon could work the same way.
The advantage to me of purchasing iListen over Dragon, would therefore appear to be using it in all my mac apps directly, saving all that pasting. But (assuming accuracy to be about the same after a short while) is that the only benefit? And will it work with all my Mac apps, or only some of them?
Because here's the biter bit, guys: I can buy the standard version of iListen at the UK Apple Store for £129, or the standard version of Dragon for £59. Big difference for me! so.... want to convince me?!
Speech recognition is very subjective, since the user's experience is dependent upon so many factors that are external to the computer itself. With that as a sort of disclaimer, I will tell you this: we have customers who have used Dragon for many years and switched to iListen and swear iListen is better. To be sure, there are also those who use Dragon and tell us they'll come back "when we are as good," (although they do leave us scratching our heads a bit, since we already know we are as good since we have multiple customers who say so).
The short version is that Dragon is initially more accurate than iListen - in other words, iListen requires more time to adjust to your voice. But eventually it can be every bit as accurate as Dragon for most people.
In regards to what you can do with iListen - well, it works virtually anywhere you would normally type. We say "virtually" because it is quite impossible for us to test it with each of the 30,000+ Macintosh applications out there - but we have yet to run into one in which it does not work for dictation.
Our Command and Control capabilities leave Dragon in the dust unless you spring for their most expensive version, and even then - thanks to our implementation of AppleScript in the Mac OS - there are things you can do with iListen you can never do with Dragon.
Oh - one other thing. You mentioned you use Parallels. Did you know you can use iListen to dictate into your Windows applications while using Parallels as well? We haven't had time to completely test this (since obviously, that would not be our primary focus) but we do know you can dictate. You probably can't employ Correction, but as I said, we haven't had the opportunity to test extensively as yet.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I'm considering IListen. My question is if a mistake is made translating my voice through IListen in Word, can I make the correction by highlighting the text and then retyping the incorrect text like I would normally in Word or can you only make corrections by voice command.
The short answer is yes and no. There is nothing to keep you from editing your document either by hand or by voice should iListen make a mistake, or should you just want to change the way something was said. But if you edit by hand, you remove the ability for iListen to perform Corrections and learn from its mistakes.Here's why:
The best way to understand how iListen does its thing is to think of it as a "blind typist." Imagine you had an assistant that was the best typist in the world, but was blind. So you put the cursor where you want your blind typist to start typing, then you start typing and away it goes. That's how iListen works.
When iListen misunderstands a word, you use its Correction mode to correct the mistake. This presents a screen in which iListen DOES know exactly where all the words are, and when you make corrections in the Correction window, iListen then makes the same corrections in your document. It does this by literally counting back the number of characters to where the mistake was made, and then doing the edit.
The reason it has to do it this way is because like our blind typist in the example above, iListen doesn't know anything about the application into which it is typing. That's due to the way the Mac OS works. We can hold down the right arrow key until we get back to a certain point in the document, but we can't randomly go to the word a particular word. That level of interapplication interaction would require specific access individually to each application by its developer.
Another few dumb questions!
Firstly, I note there is a UK version of iListen available for download from your US site, and the price differential is reduced, due to the pound's strength against the dollar presently. Is the UK version geared to work with an English accent/British English usage? Being English, is this the version I should purchase?
Secondly; the download version doesn't come with headphones, naturally. I have a pretty reasonable Logitech headphone mic specifically recommended for Skype, and I find the gain is fine for Logic and Garageband, but they don't have noise reduction tech. How critical is the mic pairing?
If I were to end up ordering a boxed version of iListen replete with approved headphone mic, and i wanted to make sure it was at least better than my present ones, for quality of mic and monitoring in audio software packages (so I can just use one good set for everything, and not feel i'm spending money merely on duplication) which would be your recommedation for the best headphone mic?
The use of iListen into windows via Parallels sounds interesting. I'm an occasional published writer, and use YeahWrite for all my composition and organising - If I get iListen soon, I'll let you know how it works out.
Let's take your questions one at a time:
Yes, there is a UK version available for download from the MacSpeech site, and yes, if you speak with any variant of a UK accent, you should buy the UK version. The UK version of our software is more expensive than the US version because it has more command sets installed per our agreement with our English distributor. But I would encourage you to purchase a version that comes with a microphone from the UK (see below).
Microphone pairing is THE most important thing to getting acceptable accuracy. Your Logitech microphone was made for Windows computers and not designed with Mac OS X in mind, which prefers a signal gain about 10db stronger than Windows. This is why many Skype users on Macs report the people they are talking to have trouble hearing them. This is also why the Logitech microphone is not suitable for speech recognition on Macintosh. Also, if you are not using a MacSpeech certified microphone, then our tech support people would be unable to help you should you have trouble with accuracy.
Any and all of the boxed versions of iListen that come with microphones will work fine and will be better than the Logictech microphone you currently own. The ones we provide will also work better for Skype, Garageband, etc.
The very best microphone we have tested is the TalkPro Xpress from VXi. But the standard microphone we supply in the box works extremely well. The basic advantage of the TalkPro Xpress is that it is more comfortable and is slightly more accurate in noisier environments. Thanks - extensive testing with Parallels and CrossOver are on are extensive "to do" list, but it is not a high priority since our emphasis is on working with Mac apps.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
thank you very much for the helpful discussion. I am really impressed with Mr. Roger's attentiveness and his responses to questions. His answers are honest and free from unnecessary spin. I have a question: I am not a native English speaker. Would I be able to have success with IListen?
Thanks
As to whether you will have success with iListen if you are not a native English speaker depends, but not necessarily on what you might think.
We have several customers for whom English is not their primary language. Almost all of them have reported success with iListen, although in every case of which we are aware, the customer did have to work harder at it than a native English speaker.
A lot depends on your "pain threshold," which is probably a bad way to put it, since there is actually no pain involved. Nonetheless, even native speakers can be frustrated with accuracy with ANY speech recognition program due to a variety of factors, most of which have nothing to do with the computer.
What I can tell you is the following: I know of a physician who is also a customer of ours who had a very thick east Indian accent that seemed to me to also have some distinguishable traces of French. He came up to me at Macworld Expo a couple of years a go and started going on about how difficult it was to train the software. I could barely understand him, between his accent and the noise on the show floor.
Anyway, I was convinced he was going to complain about our software and how inaccurate it was. I was already formulating my response about how his accent just wasn't that well suited to any speech recognition program. But then, he totally shocked me.
In his thick accent, which, in telling this story verbally, I have never been able to even come close to reproducing, he told me that he stuck with the program and after nine months - (yes, nine months!) - he was finally getting 99% accuracy.
So that's what I mean by "pain threshold." We know for a fact from this customer and many other, less extreme cases that iListen continues to adapt the more you use it. So if you have the patience, yes, it will eventually work for you.
How quickly is a matter of variables too numerous to mention here, not the least of which is the "severity" of your accent. Also, keep in mind that the profile for someone who uses the software 4-6 hours a day will adapt much more quickly than that of the person who uses it only 1-2 hours per week.
I do have one final bit of advice for you: don't try to "trick" the software by mimicking a US or UK (or Australian or New Zealand, for our friends down under) accent. It won't work. Just talk the way you normally do and spend the time allowing iListen to adapt to you.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Thanks for answering my previous question. I think I have a pretty good idea of how the software works.
Here's another question: Can I dictate into IListen using Word and then, after awhile, save the work, quit and then go back into Word (now not using IListen) and then edit as I regularly would do, by typing, in Word. Then after saving and quitting Word, jump back into Word, now incorporating IListen, to again dictate. The reason I'd like to do it this way is because if there are some mistakes I think I'll be able to correct them more easily by hand, but still be able to use the dictation feature in your product and the utilization of a hand-held Olympus message recorder. Thanks.
Sure. You use iListen just like you use your keyboard. Once you type into a document, you can save it and come back a day, week, or month later and then decide to type some more, you just do it.
iListen places no restrictions whatsoever on how you use a particular document. Once the text is in the document, it is just text - you can type, or dictate, or a combination of both.
The one caveat is that if you come back to dictate later, iListen won't know anything about the previous text - but you will still be able to employ Correction for what you just dictated (you just won't see the older stuff).
Using iListen couldn't be easier. You just talk and the words appear wherever they would if you had typed them instead - anywhere!
Again, the only thing you have to think about is whether or not you want to employ Correction - but even then, the rules apply only to what you just dictated. As soon as you say "Commit Corrections" it's like starting all over again as far as iListen is concerned.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I'm looking into purchasing iListen to use w/a new MacPro and have a couple of questions:
1) Web Browsing: With Dragon 8, I can click on links on a webpage (non-flash of course) by simply saying the name of that link. Does iListen work similarly, or better yet can iListen right-click links? I browse/read online a lot, and so this is a very important feature. I just don't want to have to keep switching back to Windows in order to use Dragon Naturally Speaking everytime I need to go online.
2) MouseAnywhere: Does MacSpeech have a videocast of this feature to show how it works? I am concerned about the speed/accuracy of such a feature (the back-and-forth of guessing incorrectly the number of pixels to tell the mouse cursor to move). I found I like Dragon Naturally Speaking's Mouse-Grid feature and this seems more like IBM ViaVoice's interface (which is less intuitive).
3) Dictating Code: I hope? This would be so awesome!!! I am hoping that between the tight integration with the OS and the text macros that this would be doable.
Thanks!
PS: Any chance your roadshow's coming to Denver, CO? Or if not, do you have any recommendations on reps or places that I can go see the product being used in person? I've tried looking for user groups but haven't had a lot of success so far.
First, Happy New Year to everyone!
Yes, you can browse web pages and choose links with iListen, but you can't choose the link by saying its name. Instead, you move through the links on the page by saying "Next Link" or "Previous Link." This is because iListen can't easily gather the names of the links. Dragon can because it has been especially programmed to do so (and I don't believe it works with any browser, but I could be wrong about that since I don't use NaturallySpeaking). We do hope to add that feature at some point, but due to hardware and software changes from Apple, we have had to completely rewrite iListen 3 times since it came out (once to go from 68K code to PPC, again to go from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, and then again this year to go from PPC to Intel).
We don't have a video of MouseAnywhere, but we do have several people who are familiar with Dragon's grid system who say they like our system better.
We also have several programmers, including some who work for Apple, who use iListen to write code on a daily basis.
We do have a road show tentatively scheduled for Denver in May. We do not have exact dates yet, however. We should be scheduling those dates in March. I don't know of anywhere else you can go in the Denver area to see iListen, but I am working on editing a video taken in Chicago this past fall. I hope to have a series of clips from that presentation on YouTube by the end of January.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
1) Web Browsing: Hm. That's a big deal IMO. I can't imagine having to say "Next Link" 50 times to get to a link on a web page (like a link in a blog comment for example). Dragon's solution is IE-only, but I've found a decent workaround in a FireFox plugin (see below). All that is required is that the voice recognition software be able to parse speech into number as if they were typed using the numeric keypad. Would iListen be able to do that?
The add-on is called Mouseless Browsing. For some reason this site is not letting me post the url so you'll have to google for it.
2) MouseAnywhere: Would you be able to point me somewhere to get more info on this? Is very difficult to get a sense of how well something does/doesn't work with "I like this better" and the likes.
3) Dictating Code: Sweet!! Are they using the BBEdit ScriptPak? or something else?
Thx Again.
In your answer to my question (#59) you said. "you just won't be able to see the older stuff), does that mean that I can't keep adding to a novel and have to start a new document each time I use IListen. What I'm getting at is that I just want to be sure I can keep jumping back and forth from Word, with and without the use of IListen, when I want to and see all the text I've worked on in the order I've worked on it in Word, with and without IListen. When you said I wouldn't be able to see the older stuff I'm thinking it's in a separate document and no longer visible in the novel I'm working on. If I can't see it, to me that means that it isn't in my novel. I don't really want to keep jumping from document to document copying and pasting. Have I misunderstood you? Thank you for being so patient with all of us. I can tell you want to be honest and forthright in your answers. I hope you had a great holiday and a fun New Year.
Mark
Yes, you should be able to use iListen to navigate links that way - but it will require a little bit of work on your part to create commands, but that is actually quite easy and our support team can help you out if you need help.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
This is going to sound a bit abrupt, and I don't mean it to be, but text is very sterile - so I apologize in advance if this comes off a bit harsh:
iListen allows you to enter text EXACTLY the same way you would enter it in an application. Let's say you start a new document and you dictate 5 pages and Correct it. Next week you open that same document and you put your cursor at the end of the first 5 pages you dictated the previous week and you JUST START TALKING! iListen will start typing at the place you put your cursor, in that exact same document in which you dictated last week. No new document is necessary.
When you employ CORRECTION in that document for the SECOND dictation session, only the words for that dictation session will appear in the CORRECTION WINDOW. This does not impact your Word document at all (other than to replace the text you dictated in the SECOND DICTATION SESSION ONLY with the corrected text).
I cannot over-stress this: you use iListen EXACTLY the way you would use the keyboard - anywhere, anytime, in ANY DOCUMENT WHATSOEVER. You can open the same document 1000 times and dictate into it 1000 different, separate times, and your dictation will appear in the ONE document, not 1000 different documents.
In order to understand how Correction works in iListen, you really need to use it - or, if you want to see some screen shots and read about it, you can download the User Guide and Tutorial PDFs from the downloads section of our support site (http://support.macspeech.com).
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Listening back, I'm not surprised. There is some huge electrical hum coming from the headset (Plantronics .85 Audio), over which my voice is barely audible. I've just checked the headphones on playback from iTunes, and they're functioning fine, so it would seem to be the microphone itself. Any suggestions? Have I missed something? Or did I just get a duff set? It's a real bummer, as I have a few days away from town, and was really looking forward to getting into this, but if it's all got to go back to the Applestore, this could take a while.
As I am sure you realize, a defective microphone is out of our control. We do not manufacture them and are prohibited by law from testing them before shipping, since components of the headset come in contact with the user's body.
It does sound like you received a defective microphone. You should return it to the place of purchase for a refund.
In the future, issues like this would be better sent directly to our support department rather than clutter the comments section of a public forum - especially since this is an isolated incident and not the typical experience of our new users.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
MacMall is selling the ilisten with a "free speech 2000" headset by phillips. Is that on the approved list...how does it stack up to others. what would you recommend for me with my mac mini (1gig ram memory and 1.42 speed running 10.3.9)
There is no such thing as a "free speech 2000 headset" from Philips. What MacMall is selling is the exact same package we sell for $149 from our web site. What comes in the box is a MacSpeech-certified microphone.
iListen will work great on your Mac Mini.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I am having trouble training iListen to "get" my dictation of C1, C2...T1...T12...L4/5, etc. for my chiropractic notes, even after using Learn My Writing Style. Do you have a suggestion? I wanted to try to fix it with phonetics, but have no idea how to spell phonetically.
Thanks,
Michael
Thanks for responding. Another question: Comp usa is selling the ilisten for $99 without the headset. Can you recommend a headset for me that comp usa is likely to carry. My credit is with them.
Thanks Again
Julian
Michael:
For requests like this, your best bet is to contact our support department by going to http://support.macspeech.com and submitting a ticket. Our technical support manager is very familiar with using the Phonetic Editor (I am not) and he should be able to help you.
Julian (and everyone else):
I have no idea what microphones CompUSA carries, but I doubt they have any that we have certified. You can find a list of those we have certified on our web site or by contacting our support team.
Here are a couple of brands to stay away from, btw: Labtec and Logitech.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Again thank you for responding to my message. I will be buying the ilisten....but can you fill me in on this issue; will Macspeech be updating the ilisten anymore for the "NOT INTEL" older mac system? Or will this be it? As I stated earlier, I have a non-intel mac mini.
Thank
JS
Version 1.7 of iListen is "Universal Binary" which means it works natively on both PPC and Intel computers. At the present time, our intention is to continue to produce Universal Binary versions of our software.
At some point in the future, you can assume we will discontinue to do this, but we have no intention of doing this any time soon. For the foreseeable future, upgrades to iListen will continue to work on pre-Intel Macs with a G4 or better processor.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Well I finally bought ilisten..the version that "Micro Center" had was 1.6.8 only. They told me that this version would run faster on my mac than the "Universal Binary" version. Have not used it yet..won't until next week..but were they right about this version for me? I have the pre-intel mac mini. I will buy the upgrade if it is worth it for me or better in some significant way of course.
Thanks Again
Thanks for your email.
What you were told by MicroCenter is absolutely NOT true. Version 1.7 is native on BOTH PPC and Intel Macs, and has many enhancements, including faster training and enhanced accuracy. It will, in fact, run faster on PPC Macs than 1.6.8 because it is a newer version.
The good news is that all you need to do is fax us your purchase receipt and we will get you a free upgrade. For instructions on doing this, please go to http://www.macspeech.com/support and click the link to submit a ticket. Follow the on-screen instructions to contact our sales team.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
We just came out with version 1.7 last June. Typically we go a year or two between major releases. We do anticipate a minor upgrade in the near future (I literally can't say when, since I don't know), but this will be a free upgrade to all registered 1.7 users.
Best Regards,
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I checked our support system and every request you have made was responded to within hours of when you submitted it. We have been getting reports recently from some customer who have told us they are not getting the automatic or human-generated replies from our support system. We are looking into the problem, but we don't have the answer yet.
I am going through all the open tickets in our system and personally emailing people today with instructions on how to check the status of their requests, so you should be getting something from me soon.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I have started using ilisten 1.7 again recently after becoming disillusioned with 1.6.
I must admit it is better than before and on an intel mac there is much less latency. I suspect I will keep on using it.
That's great news!
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I am considering iListen for the dictation of a non-fiction book. As I will be using both my desktop machine at home as well as an Ibook to 'write', my question is, how easy is it to keep the two systems synched so I don't have to teach both machines many of the jargon words not likely to be in your dictionary, as well as for dealing with my ridiculous Pittsburgh accent :)
thanks much!
k
It is extremely easy to keep your profile synced between two or more computers. All voice files are kept in something we call a "Voice Package File," which, by default, lives in the Documents folder of your Home folder. Simply copy this file to any external drive, such as a USB thumb drive, and move it into the Documents folder in your Home folder on the second computer and you are done!
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Came across this forum after a VERY disappointing start with ilisten. After reading through about half of the training dictations, I am getting laughable results - but, of course, I am not laughing. I cannot even get it to recognize the simplest of words, such as "can" and "can't".
Notably, even though I live in the US, I speak with a mostly English accent. From this forum, I've learned that there are differing US and UK versions of the software - there was no indication of such on the boxed program I bought from the apple store, and it is certainly not obvious from ilisten's home page.
It sounds from comments above that I should be using a UK version instead of the US version? If so, it would have been nice to have learned this before spending a couple hundred dollars on the program and headset. Is it likely to make much difference?
YES! To a speech recognition program, the UK language model is as different from the US language model as Spanish is from German. So you will get DRAMATICALLY better results by switching to the UK version. All you need to do is contact our support team and we will provide you with the UK version for free (as long as you can provide proof of purchase for the US version).To contact support, point your browser to http://www.macspeech.com/support and click the "Submit Ticket" link.
You also mentioned a headset. We require the use of a MacSpeech-certified microphone in order for you to qualify to receive technical support. The reason is simple: all speech recognition programs are designed to translate every noise they hear to words. Most microphones either are not noise-canceling, or they are designed with only Windows computers in mind - so they produce poor results when used on Mac OS X. (This is not iListen's fault - it is more of a Garbage In-Garbage Out problem.) So you really need a microphone we have certified to get the best - or in some cases, even acceptable - results.
BTW, if you look on our home page, the first menu item on the left side of the screen is "Products." If you click on that, you will see the second menu from the top is "UK Software."
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
I started off using the mic bundled with the program, but, thinking that might be some of the problem, I went out and bought a plantronics .audio 510. How can I find if this is "certified" even if not sold through your website?
BTW, regarding the mic, ilisten's "Set up my microphone" clearly prefers the plantronics .audio 510 over the bundled mic, for what thay may be worth...
I need to buy voice recognition software due to RSI and have couple of questions.
Will iListen definitely not work on my G3 iBook?
Can you use iListen for UNIX commands in Terminal?
Can you use iListen to replace the mouse (i.e. open and shut programs, switch panes, save documents etc?)
Many thanks,
Edmund
Version 1.6.8 (which is included on the version 1.7 CD or disk image), will work on a MAc with a G3 processor, but version 1.7 will not. We would also like to point out that we can't provide much technical support if you are running on a G3, since you will get much better accuracy with a faster processor.
Yes, you can use iListen for UNIX commands in Terminal. We have many customers who use iListen for that.
You don't need to "replace the mouse" in order to open and shut programs, switch panes, save documents - all those commands are built-in to iListen. If you actually want to control the movement of the mouse, you would need our optional "MouseAnywhere" ScriptPak, which adds movement commands for the mouse. (Most people get a long fine without this. My advice would be to try iListen first, and if you decide you want to be able to move the mouse around, then add MouseAnywhere later.)
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
have been talking to support but thought I would open it up. In UK. Want to use iListen on MacBook Pro to control a CAD app. More specificaly we have extensive Quickeys shortcuts. Since Quickeys supports voice activated triggers I figure maybe we can turn off Apple speech recognition and use iListen instead. Since Quickeys prefs has facility to use a speech prefix (that alerts Quickeys that what is coming is a trigger) and since the actual voice trigger can be a natural word, e.g. "select line tool" it seems to me that iListen can be set up to accept voice input "select line tool" that will trigger Quickeys. Or am I making a lot of work for myself? In short have any readers had any experience of using iListen to control Quickeys?
What is the very best microphone to use regardless of cost. Two criteria are speed of execution of commands and obviously voice recognition.
Great forum thanks to Chuck Rogers who sets a great tone. Many thanks.
It is extremely easy to add commands to iListen. You can certainly do a command where you say "Select Line Tool" and have the same thing happen as happens now in QuickKeys. You can also have commands to operate any menu command, as long as the target application conforms to Apple's programming guidelines.
The very best microphone for use with iListen is the VXi TalkPro Xpress.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Currently I still use a portable microcassette recorder, and I dictate primarily in my exam room (which has a Powerbook G4), but sometimes I dictate in my back office (which has an intel Mac), and my assistant transcribes the tapes at her desk (also has an intel Mac). I am running a Mac-based electronic medical record.
Firstly, if I purchase iListen, can I install it on all 3 computers, or do I have to buy 3 separate licenses?
If I would have to buy separate licenses, would it then make more sense to use a digital recorder to dictate into, and install iListen only on my assistant's computer?
Finally, can iListen transcribe directly into my patient's medical record? Or will it transcribe into Word or Appleworks and then my assistant would have to cut and paste into the EMR. The EMR program is NetMedical from Practice Solutions Software.
Thanks!
From Quickeys support:
if iListen can do an AppleScript like this taken from Appendix A of the QuicKeys manual then it should work. I'm saying it should work because I have never seen iListen.
tell application "QuicKeys"
play shortcut named "Open TextEdit"
end tell
You would have to create a iListen script or whatever they call them with whatever voice trigger you want and then have it execute the above AppleScript to open the QuicKey shortcut named "Open TextEdit".
So it looks like I can use iListen to act as trigger for Quickeys. I assume I can use a natural language command to trigger an applescript, if so time to play.
Only thing is download screwed up and cannot see a way of logging in and attempting to download again.
I am about to buy ilisten v1.7 (with microphone) when I came across this comment on the web:
...Unfortunately, not listed among all these changes until after all the initial flurry of "update" emails, and buried in the list of changes now on the iListen 1.7 page, is the fact that MacSpeech REMOVED A CORE ABILITY FROM 1.6.8.
...Transcription, a core ability for years, is now an additional $75 add-on pack...The removal of Transcription as a core function in the iListen product makes it much less worthy of their base price...
Would you please comment.
Sayon
Now, about iListen -- if Chuck or anyone who has used the product can answer these questions, I will thank you:
1. Can I dictate into my video iPod, convert it to an AIFF file and will iListen be able to handle that?
2. If I can dictate into the iPod, does the quality of the microphone come into play?
3. If the iPod "sounds different" to iListen, can I create a different user/account to train iListen to understand "the other guy" on the iPod?
4. I assume it will work okay with vehicle noise, but how about radio in the background? Are other industrial noises particularly problematic?
Thanks!
Chronic RA has forced me to look into learning how to use voice recognition SW or give up what I love to do. I do own an intel based MacBook Pro and run parallels only when I have to use Apple OS 9 programs that we still rely on for teaching purposes.
These reviews have convinced me to try iListen, and I am counting on that great support staff as mentioned above.
It is pricy, but it if works it will be my salvation. It just means I will have to save up longer for my iPhone!
Thanks to all who took the time to write the comments that encouraged me to go forward.
I was so impressed with your responses and other users comments, I visited the Apple store in London. I noticed they only had the US version in stock. Following your comments on the differences between shall we say US and UK English, I explained to an Apple rep that, in London, the UK version might be more appropriate. He was unaware of the differences and promised to look into matters, as their policy is apparently to stock regional products wherever possible.
In the meantime, I ordered direct from your site in the US. Hope to get delivery tomorrow, and will let you know how I get on.
Kind regards, and keep up the good work.
Thanks
Michael
It seems atpm has stopped notifying me of new entries on this page - sorry about that. I am going to make several entries, addressing each of the comments above, one at a time.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
" if I purchase iListen, can I install it on all 3 computers, or do I have to buy 3 separate licenses?"
You can install iListen on as many computers as you would like, as long as only one of them are used at a time. If you use more than one copy at a time, separate licenses should be purchased.
KT further said...
"If I would have to buy separate licenses, would it then make more sense to use a digital recorder to dictate into, and install iListen only on my assistant's computer?"
Whether or not it would make more sense to use a digital recorder would be more conditional to your individual needs than the licensing requirement.
KT then said...
"Finally, can iListen transcribe directly into my patient's medical record? Or will it transcribe into Word or Appleworks and then my assistant would have to cut and paste into the EMR. The EMR program is NetMedical from Practice Solutions Software."
The answer is "probably." We know iListen dictates directly into AppleWorks and Word and thousands of other applications. We have no one that has ever reported that it would not dictate into NetMedical, so we have no reason to believe that it would not - but since we haven't tested it ourselves, we would not be able to guarantee that.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
While you can use QuickKeys to do things like open TextEdit, this would be redundant, since iListen already knows how to open TextEdit and many other applications just by saying "Open TextEdit." Again, I we would recommend simply using iListen whenever you can instead of using QuickKeys to do what iListen already does. While we don't have any reports of conflicts, we can easily see how a conflict could arise should you program iListen to type keystrokes that are already assigned a macro in QuickKeys.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Graham, I don't know exactly why the first tickets you submitted did not reach the team, but I see the one that did get to them got a favorable response. While I can't respond directly to most support issues, I am happy to look into things should anyone not be getting a timely response from our support or sales teams.
As you can see from my posts here, I also can't guarantee I will get notified by atpm when there is a new post, so let's all please be tolerant of the technology and forgiving of the people on both sides of it should it not perform up to our expectations.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Savon (and everyone else):
First, transcription is hardly a "core" functionality of iListen. Less than 10% of those who purchase actually use that feature. We did make it an optional product starting with 1.7 rather than increase the price of iListen. This allows us to pursue different development strategies for the "core" set of functionality in iListen, without taxing everyone - including the 90% of our customers who don't use transcription - for it's continued development.
Making this split allowed us to keep the price of iListen the same as it has been since the day it was introduced in 2000, AND allows us to collect additional revenue from those who use Transcription to pay for things like support for Video iPods and Nanos (2nd gen.)
I hope this makes sense for most people.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
George (and everyone else):
I don't know about a program called "iVoice." MacSpeech makes software called iListen. There is only one version of iListen. Our bundles refer to different combinations of microphones and functionality, in the form of transcription or command sets for different applications.
All of the differences are described on the individual product pages on our web site (www.macspeech.com).
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
"I was considering this software for radiology dictation. In that case, I would be looking at images in a foreground application while wanting the transcription to occur in a word processor in the background. Is this possible, i.e., can you choose the application into which transcription will occur, or does it have to to be the foreground application?"
iListen does its thing by fooling the Mac OS into thinking there is another input device (such as a keyboard) sending in keystrokes. As such, those keystrokes will always be sent to the front-most application.
The only way you could create notes while looking at images would be to have a small window using TextEdit either along side or at the bottom or top of the image. This would allow you to dictate without obscuring the image.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
"1. Can I dictate into my video iPod, convert it to an AIFF file and will iListen be able to handle that?"
Yes. We include complete instructions for how to do this in the documentation included with the TranscriptionPak.
"2. If I can dictate into the iPod, does the quality of the microphone come into play?"
The quality of the microphone ALWAYS comes into play. If at all possible, we recommend using one of the microphones we have certified with the iPod and a certified iPod microphone attachment (all of them have a jack for plugging in an external microphone). If this is impractical, we recommend the XtremeMac MicroMemo because it has a "boom" style microphone that allows the iPod to be held in a more natural position in relation to your mouth.
"3. If the iPod "sounds different" to iListen, can I create a different user/account to train iListen to understand "the other guy" on the iPod?"
Every sound source you use to create text from speech has the potential of effecting accuracy. We strongly recommend you create a separate profile for transcription vs. dictation.
"4. I assume it will work okay with vehicle noise, but how about radio in the background? Are other industrial noises particularly problematic?"
Doing transcription from an iPod does not allow any forgiveness of the rules that apply to normal "live" dictation. If anything, those rules are more in play because you are not speaking live. The more "in tune" your profile is with the environment in which you are speaking, the better accuracy you will achieve.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
First, thanks for your kind comments.
Regarding the price of iListen, I'd just like to point out that we haven't increased the price of iListen since it came out in 2000. In terms of the features it offers, it compares favorably with programs costing as much as $800 on the PC!
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
"I was so impressed with your responses and other users comments, I visited the Apple store in London. I noticed they only had the US version in stock. Following your comments on the differences between shall we say US and UK English, I explained to an Apple rep that, in London, the UK version might be more appropriate. He was unaware of the differences and promised to look into matters, as their policy is apparently to stock regional products wherever possible."
In the meantime, I ordered direct from your site in the US. Hope to get delivery tomorrow, and will let you know how I get on."
Yikes! I really wish I had seen this 2 days ago.
First, the Apple stores in London ONLY stock the UK version. They have never received - and never will receive - the US version (nor will anyone else in the UK).
Second, shipping and customs fees are really high when shipping from the US. Unfortunately we have no control over this as shippers charge what they charge us, and the UK imposes additional fees for importing goods.
I am sorry you were misinformed by an Apple employee in the UK. Please let them know they do NOT have the US version.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Michael (and everyone else):
We have tested the DSP-400 and it did not meet our certification standards, which are admittedly very conservative to insure the majority of our customers will not have problems with the microphones we have certified.
We do have customers who use the DSP-400 and are happy with its performance. All I can tell you is that if you already have one, try it and see what kind of accuracy you get. But if you have any problems, the first thing our support team will tell you will be to acquire a MacSpeech-certified microphone.
Regarding the DSP-200, it just barely pased our certification process, but it did pass. Plantronics insists that the two use virtually identical electronics, but despite that, our tests produced slightly better results - which were just above the threshold for certification - with the DSP-200. (That word "virtually" may be the issue.)
As I said above, our certification process is VERY conservative to insure the best possible experience using iListen with as wide a variety of microphones possible. Even those that "barely" passed certification will provide extremely good results for the vast majority of our customers. Naturally, this would mean that those microphones that barely missed certification would also work well for most people (and there is a small fraction of people for whom those that were "barely" certified would not work well).
The biggest thing to keep in mind here is that every person's voice is going to react differently to different microphones. When we test, 3 out of the 5 people who test must find it acceptable, and of those 3, one must be female (we have 3 male testers and 2 females). So just because something is not certified to work well with iListen, doesn't mean it absolutely will not work for you - it means if you complain about accuracy, we are going to tell you to get a certified microphone, that's all.
As an FYI, I have a voice that carries well (as those of you who have heard me speak will attest), so if a microphone can't be used by me, it doesn't even go to the other testers - experience has shown if I can't get it to work, neither will they.
(Yes, I was probably a bit redundant in all that, but better to over-explain than to be misunderstood on this particular topic.)
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Unfortunately after using ViaVoice on a PC for several years, I have found the current iListen correction system to be absymal. I am not the only one who does not like the system. In an otherwise positive June 2006 iListen 1.7 review Charles Moore at AppleLinks notes: "Frankly, I find that while the voice correction function has improved a lot from earlier versions of iListen, it is still clunky and annoying to use, and I just don't bother with it much."
I'll be honest. I really have no clue why the correction system is so bad. I have a bit of a linguistics background. I know about phonemes (minimal sound unit of speech), etc. I know that VR is better at phrases than short words, which is why someone above noted problems with "can" and "can't". There is not a lot of phonemic difference between these two short words. I also know from experience, no matter what IBM would have said on the issue, that ViaVoice clearly used a Variable Control Voice Actuator (VCVA) type process (threshold volume recording activation) since the beginning and ends of my phrases would often be clipped. For example, "the" at the beginning of a sentence was rarely transcribed by ViaVoice.
If you are still with me, here is my main point. Each ViaVoice VCVA segment could be corrected individually by voice for future recognition improvement or keyboard for speed. Each segment was effectively treated independently by ViaVoice. I have no clue why iListen cannot do the same thing while in Dictation mode, which would surely allow a better correction system. (In the current state of technology my suggestion would probably require giving up total voice control of my Mac while in Dictation mode, but I would gladly give up total voice control for better dictation results.) Unfortunately until the iListen correction system improves, I will be dictating in Dragon under Windows. :(
I have a very simple answer for you.
1). iListen actually does exactly that in the Correction window.
2). The Correction window is necessary because we dictate anywhere.
Let me elaborate:
In ViaVoice, you have something called the "SpeakPad." It is basically a version of TextEdit that has been modified to work intimately and directly with ViaVoice. So the changes "in dictation mode" in Via Voice are only available to you IF you use the SpeakPad - those same features are unavailable to you if you dictate directly into a different application's document window using ViaVoice.
In order to preserve the ability to dictate into virtually any application, iListen keeps track of what you say in a file that contains audio for everything you said, and it also keeps track of everything it types. Most of the time it keeps this information in sync. The catch is iListen cannot directly manipulate text in a document other than one that it owns, just like ViaVoice.
Dragon has the same issue on Windows, except that they have written support for SOME (but certainly not all) Windows applications so they can work directly within those apps. (We'd love to have the time to do that as well, but we keep having to rewrite major portions of the application to maintain compatibility with Mac OS X.)
OK - so when you are in the Correction window, you see everything you typed since the last time you said "Commit Corrections." If you change something (such as changing "can" to "can't") you just change it in the Correction window. Typically, no manipulation of the phonemes using the phoneme editor is necessary. It just works - just like ViaVoice's feature. In fact, it does exactly the same thing. It applies the correction, then examines the words on either side of where the correction was made, and makes adjustments to your profile to increase the odds of the correct word or phrase will be typed next time you say the same (or similar) phrase.
The other thing I can tell you is that the Correction window is one of the more polarizing features in iListen. You either love it or you hate it. Believe it or not, for each person who has complained about it, there are an equal number of people who tell us to improve it, but not remove it - since it lets them concentrate on the Corrections in much the same way the Story Editor in QuarkXPress or InDesign allows you to concentrate on content outside of the layout. (One of the improvements we have introduced in iListen, btw is the ability to use Copy and Paste to apply Corrections. This feature makes the Correction feature work lightening fast, but requires you not use the "Commit Corrections" command until you have finished correcting the entire document - again, a restriction placed on us by Mac OS X.)
Making a useful speech recognition product that works in Mac OS X is very challenging. Keep in mind that Dragon abandoned the effort before they ever got to a beta release. So if *THEY* found it too difficult, with all of the resources of Nuance behind them, imagine how difficult it must be for us - a much smaller company who must rely on the sales of one flagship product and its add ons and accessories.
As I have mentioned before (although I can't remember if I have mentioned it here), we have had to completely rewrite iListen three times from the ground up due to changes in Mac OS X and Apple Hardware. You might think introducing new features during one of those rewrites would have been a good thing. Well, a). we did that to some extent, and b). we have to be very careful. If we take what we know works and rewrite it, and then it doesn't work - we know where to look. If we introduce new things, then we don't know if it was the new hardware or software, or something about the new feature that is the problem. I am sure you can imagine how frustrating that is for us.
With all that having been said, while I can't give you specifics, I can tell you that we have had major improvements either "blueprinted" or even partially written for some time. Last year we were able stripped out Transcription from version 1.7 (see my other comment above), which was our first Universal Binary version of iListen. This allowed us to split the development path and introduce support for Video iPods without having to do a major revision of iListen at the same time. (I mention that just so you can see we do take these things into account, and we are making progress - just not as much as you - or we - would like).
Right now we are rewriting major portions of iListen so it will be compatible with Leopard. Hopefully, once Leopard comes out, we can once again switch our focus to implementing some of the new features we have been trying to implement for so long. I can tell you there will be improvements to Correction. The exact nature and extent of those improvements will depend a lot on what Apple has in store for us post-Leopard.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech. Inc.
Regarding your points:
1). "iListen actually does exactly that in the Correction window." I wondered about that, which I kind of alluded to in my last paragraph of my previous post.
2). "The Correction window is necessary because we dictate anywhere." and its related quotes: "The other thing I can tell you is that the Correction window is one of the more polarizing features in iListen. You either love it or you hate it." I fall in the latter camp.
So, we agree on many things, including some of which I guessed correctly about. :)
My iListen suggestion is really very simple then. I want "iListenPad." It is that simple. I cannot type worth a lick, but fortunately I do not have RSI or quadraplegia. I can mouse around a little as needed. Maybe your marketing research shows that there are not enough people like me, but I bet there really are a lot of people like me. BTW, I ALWAYS used SpeakPad in ViaVoice, just as I will most likely always use "DragonPad" in Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
PS I knew about the aborted port of full-blown DNS to Macintosh. I thought it occurred before the product was owned by Nuance. Hasn't DNS been owned by a few companies? BTW, I actually considered mentioning the aborted port in my original post, because I thought it was relevant. However, I did not know the details, and I did not feel like Googling (TM) the issue.
PSS You may have actually inspired me to consider trying iListen again, but I want iListenPad. :)
I can't say whether or not (or when) we might do an "iListenPad," but I can tell you that one of the reasons we didn't go down that path in the first place was to differentiate ourselves from ViaVoice - the first version of which required the user to use the SpeakPad. With ViaVoice no longer a factor, all I can tell you for sure is that we no longer have to differentiate in that particular way, so who knows?
The "whether or not" in the above paragraph really has a lot more to do with how difficult or easy Apple makes it to keep up with changes in the OS (I can tell you keeping up with the Intel switchover was not easy, and Leopard compatibility is proving to be only slightly less problematic than the original transition to Mac OS X). There are a lot of other things to consider as well. I think anyone who used iListen in the past and then tried 1.7 would agree we made some major strides in initial accuracy. But if faced with a choice between a dedicated text editor and better accuracy, I think most people would probably favor accuracy.
Regarding Dragon, I won't go into their entire history here, but I think they were actually just "Dragon" when they originally considered a Mac product, then they were acquired by Scansoft, which later changed its name to Nuance when they merged with a company of the same name. Scansoft was actually the bigger company, but they took Nuance's name.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.
Again, thank you for the polite exchange. I wish you and your company well.
PS I really do understand your company's issues with Apple changing hardware and software. However, it is what makes a Mac a Mac. The Windows landscape is littered with previous generation programs and hardware that kind of work, while the Apple landscape is filled with products that simply work or don't. There is much less of the annoying Windows quasi-work.
Correction adjusts the profile after the fact. What you are talking about is a change to its interface. Introducing a SpeakPad-like feature would only change how Correction is performed, not reduce having to do it.
While I do understand that a contextual menu or something similar would be sexier, and I really do understand there is quite a bit we can do to improve the look of the existing Correction window (given the time to do so), I still don't understand why people think the existing Correction window is somehow less functional. If anything, it is more functional, allowing access to not only all the text, but both the choice list and the Phonetic Editor.
This is why I have always been more of a fan of the Correction window than a dedicated notepad that requires the (presumably) corrected text be copied and pasted where you really want it. For my money (OK, admittedly - YOUR money), I find the existing Correction window metaphor a lot more useful:
1). Dictate your text - it is already where you want it.
2). Correct it. All the text that needs to be Corrected appears in a window where you can concentrate just on the task at hand, without any other interface or formatting to interfere.
3). Finish corrections and POOF! Your original is corrected as well!
I certainly don't see this as any less convenient then the alternative:
1). Dictate your text in the dedicated notepad.
2). Make the corrections.
3). Copy the text from the dedicated notepad.
4). Paste it where you want it in the first place.
It has always seemed that a dedicated notepad adds an unnecessary step.
Just my opinion, FWIW.
Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech. Inc.
I know that touching the mouse or keyboard bef