Archive for April, 2009
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
Philips Dictation Australia continue there surge forward in 2009, hot on the heals of their awesome new DVT (Digital Voice Tracer) range of digital notetakers (did I mention that they are now finally Mac compatible, only several times) they have just announced out of their Worldwide headquarters in Vienna – Dragon NatutrallySpeaking 10 – Voice Recorder Edition. I know, makes you want to say “wow” loudly.
Philips Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 DVR Edition - LFH0660/10
It is fantastic to see some more innovation from Philips, taking the initiative to work globally with Nuance, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking people to provide an affordable package for people looking to get into the voice recognition. We have seen huge growth in the voice recognition software, both Mac and Windows over the past year as professionals, students, authors etc give up on the need to type for hours. Most people talk around the 120 words per minute mark, way faster than most can type so why not let your computer do it for you.
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Posted in Digital Voice Tracer, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Philips, Voice Recognition Software | No Comments »
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the quickest way to get single speaker audio transcribed into a document. The software is really quite amazing and it recognition characteristics are phenomenal. However, some things outside Dragon NaturallySpeaking can slow it slightly, especially on older lower spec PCs.
Here is a tip for you, if you are finding that your dictation using Dragon NaturallySpeaking is lagging slightly when you dictate into Microsoft Word this is generally caused by the overhead of Word trying to spell and/or grammar check your dictation as it is written. If you have a well trained NaturallySpeaking profile you might want to try dictating straight into Notepad or even Wordpad, you will find that NaturallySpeaking dumps out your text alot quicker and smoother allowing you to talk even faster.
Once you have verbosed yourself into Notepad simply copy and paste into Word and let it do its thing with the spell and/or grammar check.
Posted in Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Voice Recognition Software | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
There is sometimes confusion in the digital voice recorder world and a very common question I hear is “what is the difference between a digital dictaphone and a digital notetaker?” Often people buy a voice recorder without calling first for advice or without fully researching a product only to find that the recorder they buy does not have the functions they thought they wanted or needed.
Slider Switch On The Olympus DS-5000 Digital Dictaphone
So here I will try to clear up some of the confusion between the two digital voice recorder types and will attempt to explain what each is commonly used for. Generally speaking the functionality of the recorders includes:
Digital Notetaker
- Typically used to record multiple speaker audio: lectures, interviews, meetings, focus groups etc.
- Audio is usually recorded in one take or with few interruptions.
- High quality mic is required to pickup all the speakers.
Digital Voice Recorder
- Typically for single speaker audio – just one person dictating.
- Typically used for recording letters or short notes.
- For people who are interupted alot during their dictation session.
- Includes rewind/review functionality emulating the old analogue tape dictaphones.
Above are just a few generalisations about to two recorder types. Here at Dictate Australia we tend to find that the digital dictaphones usually go to people who are converting from analogue tape dictaphones and are usually in the medical or legal industry. Digital dictaphones have a rewind/review function, this allows the recorder to emualte the old analogue tape systems. The rewind/review function is typically activated using a slider switch, the image to the left is the slider on the Olympus DS-5000 digital dictaphone. The user can stop and start recording at will and the key point here is that when recording is re-started they are able to “rewind” the digital audio a little, hear what was said last and then continue recording from that point onward, much like a tape. When they have completed their dictation they press a button and one distinct audio file is created. Digital dictaphones tend to utilise the DSS (Digital Speech Standard) audio format which results in very small digital audio files, making them easy to transfer across the internet via email.
With a digital notetaker, these are generally used to record an audio session, typically lectures, interviews, meetings and focus groups. Although alot of people do use these for single speaker notes also. These types of voice recorders are very simple to use, press a button to start recording, press another button to stop recording. This then produces a single digital audio file. It is possible with most notetaker models to pause/resume recording. Some people find this concept a little hard to follow and often worry if they stop and start recording that they will end up with multiple audio files. Although this is the case it really is not a big deal. Digital audio files can quickly and easily be loaded for audio playback, regarless of whether the audio spans a single file or multiple. Digital notetakers tend to record in more proprietry audio formats like .WMA (Windows Media Audio) in the case of Olympus and .MP3 (MPEG-3 layer) in the case of Philips.
Digital notetakers tend to have excellent all round audio pickup as they are designed for multi speaker recording. Conversly, the digital dictaphones tend to be poor when used in meetings situations. We have seen that in the past with the Olympus DS-4000 dictaphone, when used in a one on one interview the audio pickup was very poor. Olympus have rectified this in the newer DS-5000 model which as a top of the range professional recorder can easily cope with a large number of multiple speakers aswell as being probably the best digital dictaphone around for single speaker notes and letters.
Posted in Digital Voice Recorders | No Comments »
Friday, April 10th, 2009
I love my job. One of the main reasons for that statement is that I get to speak to broad range of people from all walks of life all across Australia daily. One minute it might be a family member in the bush who wants to record a grandparent telling stories of their life for future family generations to hear and for them to transcibe into a family history record. Next minute it might be a journalist in Melbourne looking for the best voice recorder to grab quick, clear soundbites of someone in the news ready for them to quote in a story later that day.
One thing most people who buy a digital voice recorder have in common is the need to listen to the audio while typing up notes or a verbatum account of the audio. For those who are not in the know, this usually involves playing the audio back through Windows Media Player or QuickTime flicking quickly to Word to type a few words then flicking back to the audio player to stop and rewind so you can hear the last sentence or two again. This in itself will very quickly become tedious and a truely painful experience.
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Posted in Digital Dictation & Transcription, Software | No Comments »
