No, is the short answer. Voice or speech recognition software will only successfully work with one spoken voice and that spoken voice, for best results, needs to have trained the software to understand their voice and style of speaking known as creating a voice profile. Most people who use voice recognition software typically pop on a headset and mic and chat away to their Windows PC or Mac and watch as their voice is magically (or using the Dragon voice recognition engine if you don’t believe in magic) converted to text.

Voice recognition is currently going through a spike in popularity, especially since the release of the iPhone 4S running iOS5 with Siri, which has raised awareness of just how good voice recognition technology has evolved over the last couple of years, Nuance being the company leading the way in this technology on Mac, Windows and now inside iOS5 working closely with Apple.

Because of this everyone now has an iPhone which is capable of recording audio and most who need to capture important meetings or interviews also have a high quality digital voice recorder. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium and Professional edition on Windows and MacSpeech Scribe on the Mac can take recorded audio and transcribe it, that is only for that single trained person who is speaking. So it is understandable that the leap is often made that if it can transcribe one voice it can transcribe many, not so. The technology is not there yet and in my opinion won’t be for quite some time.

Nuance on their website cleverly have a couple of pages dedicated to Transcribing Interviews or Transcribing Lectures using a technique called voice writing or parroting. The idea is simple, you record your interview, meeting, lecture or whatever it is that has multiple voices or a single voice that you can not get trained in Dragon (possibly the voice of someone making a speech or presenting at a conference). Then when you are sitting in front of your Windows PC or Mac (in this case running Dragon Dictate, not MacSpeech Scribe) you listen to your recorded audio and you speak what you hear. Therefore it is your trained voice that Dragon hears as you are repeatings other peoples words from your recording. Sounds simple doesn’t it – it isn’t, I have tried it a few times and have become extremely frustrated. You may find that the voice you are listening to is too fast for you to remember and repeat back which means you are constantly stopping and rewinding the audio, which on an iPhone app or basic digital voice recorder is not always that easy. You will likely often have to stop the audio to correct mistakes made by Dragon, maybe when unfamiliar names or terms are used which have not been trained into your user profile. It will work but it does take a lot of concentration and a large amount of practice, you can give it a try just search YouTube for a boardroom meeting and see if you can repeat what you hear while wearing a headset and mic.

So what are your practical options for transcribing audio or video of meetings and interviews or in fact any audio that you need turned from voice to text?

Option 1 – Type The Audio Yourself

You could transcribe the audio yourself using some specialised transcription software to help you, transcription is the process of typing what you hear. When I say help it won’t actually do the work of typing it for you but it will assist greatly with the audio playback. For example if you are a slow typist you could slow the speed of audio playback down to match your typing speed or conversly also speed up the audio if your fingers are a blur when you type. Using transcription software you can also easily rewind the audio, again set up to match your typing ability so you could either rewind back half a second or if you are a poor typist like me rewind the audio back up to 5 seconds. The biggest benefit of using transcription software is that audio can be controlled from inside the word processor that you are typing in. By that I mean using a USB connected foot pedal or pre-defined keys on your keyboard you can stop/play/rewind the audio without leaving the document that you are typing. This is a huge time saver, often people try to transcribe using Windows Media Player or Quicktime for their audio playback and they have to constantly switch between they document to the audio player to stop/rewind/play and then back to the document which adds a considerable amount of time to the whole transcribing process.

Pros Of Doing It Yourself

• Cost, from the point of view that you are not paying someone else to do the work.
• Cost, from the point of view that transcription software is free or relatively cheap depending on what you buy.

Cons Of Doing It Yourself

• It is hard work and not as easy as it sounds.
• Transcription typing does take a long time even if you are experienced.

Just as an indication of how long transcription takes, a good quality one hour audio file of an interview between two people would take an experienced transcription typist around 2-3 hours to transcribe. If you are not experienced expect that to rise to 4-5 hours and without the help of transcription software even longer.

Transcription Software

• Express Scribe from NCH Software – $FREE
• Express Scribe Pro from NCH Software – approx. AU$40 – Click Here To Buy Express Scribe PRO – Plays .dss .ds2 .dct .dvf .avi .mov .wmv audio and video files.
• Olympus AS-2400 Digital Transcription Kit – Includes software, headset and USB foot pedal – RRP AU$425 but usually it sells online for less. Windows & Mac compatible.

Option 2 – Outsource To A Professional Transcription Service

If you need your audio transcribed quickly and accurately then this option is for you. Just Google transcription service and see how many businesses are listed both organically and in the paid Google ads. Transcription has become a boom business over the last few years and that makes total sense. With the availability and high quality of digital voice recorders and iPhone apps just about everyone is recording their meetings, interviews, podcasts, vodcasts, focus groups, lectures, letters, assessments the list goes on. It is great to have a record of your meeting and the like stored digitally which can be easily shared within your business on your intranet or with the world on the internet but more often than not a written transcript is also required for offline reading, compliance or for public record. There are all kinds of reasons audio and video is transcribed into text these days.

This is where a professional transcription service can come in to help you. Simply send them your digital audio or video via the internet and they can set to work using their team of experienced transcription typists to convert your voice to text. Here is a security tip, always make sure that the transcription service you use has their own secure file server and that the data you send them is encrypted either using FTPS (not FTP) or HTTPS (not HTTP) – this is important for two reasons. 1. your audio/video is encrypted as it travels across the internet from you to their servers. 2. by ensuring they run their own secure server they will have full control and access over what happens on that server. Many transcription services use third party providers like SendThisFile.com and they nor you have any control over your data on that third parties servers. Ask any transcription service that you approach about their security and file transfer mechanisms. Many still use FTP and not FTPS, transferring files across FTP alone does not encrypt the file contents, be it audio, video or worse still your transcribed documents.

Any good professional transcription service will turn your audio around quickly and the final transcript will very accurate. Typically there are two phases to the transcription process; phase 1 is the transcription typist who listens and types your audio/video to text. Phase 2 is a quality assurance phase, a proofreader will listen to your audio and proof against what has been transcribed. This double verifies the typists work and the document can be formatted to your specific requirements. Obviously we recommend The Transcription People, not just because this is our sister company but because they are leaders in the transcription industry in Australia who service clients not only from Australia but also the US and Europe

As audio and video for transcription is mainly digital you can utilise the services of a transcription company anywhere in the world, you may want to do this for cost benefit reasons but more often than not to take advantage of time zones. Many UK and US businesses will use the services of Australian based transcription companies for just this reason as Australia tends to work their business day as Europe and the US sleep.

Pros

• Speed, this is a transcription services core business. Reputable companies will turn around audio and video very quickly.
• Accuracy, again as a core business this is how transcription services are rated from a customers point of view. A good transcription firm will always produce high quality accurate transcriptions because of the two phase approach.
• Ability to adapt, regardless of how much audio or video you send you should always expect the same fast, accurate turn around of transcripts.
• You don’t have to do it so you can focus your time on more productive work.

Cons

• Cost is the only con, you are paying for a service so compared to you doing it yourself there will be a cost involved. Obviously the larger more reputable transcription companies will have different rates from the work from home type of micro transcription service.

So there you have it ! Reasons why Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows or MacSpeech Scribe for Apple Mac are not good for transcribing meetings or interviews and the options you have open to you to convert recorded audio or video into text.

With all the flurry of activity over the last week with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) being released along with an upgrade to Dragon Dictate from 2.0 to 2.5 we have had a few calls into our office regarding compatibility of MacSpeech Scribe with Lion.

Nuance have recently posted an update on their website (click here) which is important to read if you are one of these customers:

• Dragon Dictate 2.0 – upgrade to Lion YES
• MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 – upgrade to Lion YES
• MacSpeech Scribe – upgrade to Lion NO

Upgrading to Lion on your Mac should be fine if you are running Dragon Dictate 2.0, I have personally done this and my Dragon Dictate is working without issue. Updating to Lion if you have MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 Nuance also claims should be fine, I have not tried this.

But, if you are a MacSpeech Scribe customer the advice is to not upgrade to Lion from 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

MacSpeech Scribe is the legacy MacSpeech product now maintained by Nuance which allows voice to text from recorded audio only. Personally I am surprised that with Dragon Dictate 2.5 the ability to transcribe from spoken voice AND recorded voice was not included, I am sure this has to have been high on the Nuance Mac teams priority list for some time but as yet is still not there.

Keep an eye on my blog and the official Nuance Dragon for Mac website for any updates.

Beautiful Lion Tamer picture (without the MacSpeech Scribe box) oil painting by Jennifer Li, click here to see Jennifer’s amazing artwork.

Nuance has quickly forged their authority on the Dictate brand of voice recognition software for Mac and with their first release Dragon Dictate 2.0 they have done an excellent job. But what now for the Legal and Medical edition still stuck at MacSpeech Dictate version 1.5 and the fairly new offshoot product MacSpeech Scribe currently at version 1.1, all of which are using the older Dragon speech recognition engine and not the new one included with Dragon Dictate.

I have some theories for these products which may or may not be correct so please don’t hold me to them. These are my best guesses and have not been confirmed or denied by Nuance, just my two cents worth.

MacSpeech Scribe in my view can go in ne of two directions. It can either be discontinued and the voice to text functionality built into a later Dragon Dictate update, much like Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium or Professional for Windows. Or Nuance will embrace this as a separate product and continue to push it as a stand alone offering for transcribing only recorded audio. I have always been torn on MacSpeech Scribe, I have never understood why you would create a separate product for transcription of digitally recorded audio but that maybe because I have been so used to the functionality from the Windows side of the fence. As MacSpeech Scribe is still fairly new I have a feeling Nuance will continue with it and we will likely see a Dragon Scribe product appear in the very near future.

So what about the Medical and Legal version of MacSpeech Dictate, are we going to see an equivalent in Dragon Dictate? My personal view is that we are likely to see a Legal version for Dragon Dictate but maybe not the Medical version. From my understanding the Legal dictionary of terms is fairly standard and so can be quite easily built into a speech recognition dictionary. Wheres Medical with its large number of specialised area of understanding would be an unwieldily dictionary to maintain and build. For the Medical side of things I think we will see a third party put their hand up and claim an exclusive partnership with Nuance to provide and support that medical crowd.

So when can we see what I have theorised about above. Dragon Scribe I would think would be very close, if it is coming, and we would likely see this before the end of the year. Dragon Dictate Legal I would also see on the same time line, especially as we now have Dragon Dictate in the wild adding a more comprehensive legal dictionary can’t be that far behind.

Of course as soon as we get wind of any new voice recognition products from Nuance for the Mac or Windows we will post the info.

Two of the Olympus digital voice recorders certified for use with MacSpeech Scribe are the Olympus DS-3400 and DS-5000, both from the Professional series of digital dictaphones from Olympus, these are serious digital dictaphones. They both come with DSS Player Version 7 Plus for Mac which simplifies the task of getting the audio off the recorder. The software lets you also setup users on the recorder, set noise cancelation levels, playback and edit your recorded dictation and direct record using your digital dictaphone as a high quality mic.

Out of the box both the DS-3400 and DS-5000 will record in DSS Pro digital audio format, these files have a suffix of .ds2 – files of this format can not be loaded into MacSpeech Scribe so some file conversion needs to take place, this is where DSS Player Version 7 Plus can help. On a Mac it is not possible to set the DS-3400/DS-5000 to record in .aif format by default.

For file conversion you have two options. 1. you can manually convert each file 2. you can set DSS Player Plus to automatically convert audio every time your DS-3400/DS-5000 is connected. Both are very simple:

Manually Convert DS-3400/DS-5000 Audio To .aif Format

To manually convert .ds2 audio files to .aif on a Mac using DSS Player Version 7 Plus simply right-click on the .ds2 file you want to convert and select Convert to AIFF File, your converted file will be placed in the same download folder tray as the original file. If you want to save the .aif file to an alternative location simply highlight the audio file to be converted and click the Convert to AIFF File icon .

Automatically Convert DS-3400/DS-5000 Audio When The Recorder Is Docked

If you prefer to convert every audio file during download to your Mac when your digital dictaphone is connected then open the DSS Player Preferences and click the Download tab. Here you can tick “Convert to AIFF file during download” which will have the desired affect. Your .aif files will appear in the download tray folder configured and are then ready to be loaded into MacSpeech Scribe.

At the recent MacWorld 2010 Expo in San Francisco, the place for companies developing technologies for the Apple Mac and iPhone to show off their ideas, MacSpeech announced the launch of their new software product MacSpeech Scribe.

MacSpeech Scribe will do what alot of existing MacSpeech Dictate customers have been asking for, transcribe from a digital recording of their voice. Now you no longer have to be in front of your MacBook or iMac to dictate audio to be transcribed. Using one of the certified MacSpeech Scribe digital voice recorders you can record your thoughts anywhere. Then at a time convenient to you have MacSpeech Scribe transcribe the audio for you.

This is similar concept to the Philips LFH0667 (formerly LFH0660/10) which was a cut down version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 for Windows which would only take audio from a digital recording.

MacSpeech Scribe is a stand alone product and is not an add-on to MacSpeech Dictate. If you already own MacSpeech Dictate and have created and trained a profile for your voice that profile can not be imported into MacSpeech Scribe, you will have to start from scratch with a new MacSpeech Scribe profile.

Only a small number of digital voice recorders have been certified by MacSpeech to work with MacSpeech Scribe. These are the iPhone, iPod Touch (2nd Gen up with a mic) and a few Olympus digital voice recorders. Of the Olympus recorders on the certified list only the DS-3400 and DS-5000 are currently available in Australia. MacSpeech Scribe can take audio in .aif, .aiff, .mp4, .m4a, .m4v and .wav format so in theory a huge number of other voice recorders will be compatible (although not certified). Remember, its all about the audio quality, so just because the $20 USB recorder you bought off eBay records in one of the supported audio formats the quality of that recording may leave you disappointed – stick with Olympus and you won’t go wrong.

MacSpeech Scribe is available now in Australia for RRP $199 incl. GST from Dictate Australia.