Review by Harold G. Meeks Jr.

I have not used a speech to text product in some time, the last being Dragon Dictate for Windows from a few years back. This is the first version of Dictate for the Mac that I have used, but the products are similar in how they work.

My goal is to have a way of transcribing voice memos I record with my iPhone. I went through the set up procedure, skipping over the part where it asks you to create a nuance account as part of registration (I guess I will be prompted to do this again later). For training the software I used a voice recording I made of something I had previously written. It requires 90 seconds of audio to work; I gave it a 2 minute piece. The first pass during the training had a lot of errors which I corrected. The software then translated the voice recording and it still had quite a few errors. I tried again where I made a concerted effort to speak slower and more clearly. This second effort rewarded me with a better translation, but still with errors that I had to edit. I then tried a third time, with a different text, and this further improved, but still with errors.

I then switched gears and tried the voice transcription from a live recording. First I used the included USB microphone. Surprisingly, it worked a bit better, still with errors but fewer. I then tried recording with a bluetooth headset and it worked about as well, so it is the way I will go from now on.

My conclusion is that it is probably unrealistic for me to expect 100% accuracy. If I am focused on good diction and pacing, I can improve accuracy. Using a good audio source with minimal background noise is likely a necessity. The microphone in the iPhone may not be of high enough quality, although I am going to continue to try this route, since it is primarily what I am interested in using the software for. I see potential here, as I have continued to see improvement. I would like for the software to be able to take multiple sample audio files with corrections and use that to improve accuracy. But I think it will continue to improve with time.