Speech-to-Text: Dictation Software for OS X

Speech to text software, sometimes known as dictation software, is something that allows you to talk to the team in any way and the computer properly reacts to what you are saying. This is totally different from the text to speech software, which is software can read the text is already in the computer.

In this article you will learn about the different types of text to speech software for Mac OS X, and what are your options if you want to use it to control your computer, dictate text, or both.

Command and Control Software

There are two types of voice to text software available. One type is called "command and control" and that allows you to speak commands to the computer to control it; hence the name. For example, a command that the team understands it could be, "go to the Apple website" or "tell me the time." Each command is pre-programmed and the computer will only recognize the commands that have been scheduled for; you can not use this software to write an email or use iChat for example.

Command and control software for Mac - known as "Speakable Items" (or, sometimes, confused, "voice commands") - is already built into every computer OS X and can be accessed through the Accessibility panel. Although this software is less capable than the dictation software is more useful for people with certain types of disabilities.





The other voice to text software is often called software "dictation". This is the kind that lets you use your voice to write an article like this, the kind of thing your friends on iChat, or write an email.

Not a dictation software built into OS X and is not a program developed by Nuance called Dragon Dictate for Mac. Dictation is the successor to a program called MacSpeech iListen that used to produce.

All-dictation products capable of converting text to speech work very well for some people and very bad for others. If it will work for you depends on many things, including: the amount of effort you are willing to put in their learning, how good your microphone is, age (text to speech usually works so well for children) the amount of your accent matches what the program expects that if your disability affects his speech, and if his voice changes a lot during the day.

These types of programs speech to text dictation have made great improvements in recent years, however, so even if you have used dictation software before and abandoned worth trying again.
Built in OS X Dictation

X Free OS built in dictation requires OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later and can be accessed through the "Dictation and Voice" panel of System Preferences.




Under Mountain Lion and default Mavericks work to listen to 30 seconds of voice and send the speech to Apple's servers for processing - in the same way that the dictation of Siri on the iPhone works because it is essentially the same thing . If you have a stable and reliable connection broadband this is fine, but those with slow connections or measured Internet may have problems. For users who want local speech processing under Mavericks can activate Dictation improved allowing continuous and offline processing speech.

Nuance Dragon Dictate for Mac version 4, the current version requires the hardware requires Intel-based Macintosh and requires Mac OS X 10.8.3 Mountain Lion or higher and a headset microphone with noise cancellation approved by Nuance. It cost about $ 200 plus the cost of a microphone.















Nuance Dragon is more complete than the OS X built in dictation product, allowing you to mix dictation and commands without using the keyboard or mouse. For those who find the keyboard or mouse use extremely difficult or impossible and want to do everything by voice, Dragon remains the only workable solution.

Dragon also allows transcription of recorded files, provided they contain only a single speaker and that person has already established recognition. There's an app for the iPhone / iPad called Dragon Recorder specifically for recording files for later transcription.

The voice recognition engine that powers Nuance Dragon is the same as the power NaturallySpeaking, the voice recognition program for Windows premiere, and is continuously improving. Since 2008, when it was released, Dragon has made huge improvements in speech recognition and is much more forgiving and usable than it was then! I hope the improvements continue as fast in the future - is a great thing for all users.