iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance, currently at version 11.5, can use a digital recording of your spoken voice and transcribe that into text (Premium and Professional versions only), this is commonly referred to as deferred transcription. With so many people now owning either a digital voice recorder and/or an iPhone or iPad with a voice recording app the question is often asked “is the recording quality good enough for use with Dragon NaturallySpeaking?“.

Luckily the nice people at Nuance have a quick and easy way for you to check, via the Nuance Hardware Compatibility website. This site shows compatibility for all Nuance software but you can specifically drill down on Dragon NaturallySpeaking and then look through the Recorders (current) or Recorders (legacy) for older digital voice recorders.

The Nuance Hardware Compatibility website is also worth a visit if you are planning to buy a new microphone or mic and headset combo for use with Dragon Naturally Speaking as these too are listed and given a Dragon accuracy score out of six, the more dragons the better the accuracy. We like the Plantronics DSP-400 and have been promoting that for a few years now. The DSP-400 achieved a six dragon accuracy score and is an excellent all round headset/mic combo which is both Mac and Windows compatible, works with Skype also.

Currently the only universal (iPhone and iPad) voice recording app which is listed as compatible is the awesome Andrea Pure Audio Live Recorder app (found in the Recorders (current) dropdown which achieves five out of six dragons. I have this app on my iPhone 4 running iOS5 and it works beautifully, the app also works on the 3GS iPhone.

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.

Hot on the heels of the Windows update to NaturallySpeaking to 11.5 from 11 (released yesterday in Australia) us Mac users also receive a free bump to our favourite voice recognition software, assuming you are a registered Dragon Dictate 2.0 user.

Simply check for updates when you fire up Dragon Dictate and you will be presented with this:

In a press release yesterday Nuance announced and made available a free upgrade for all registered Dragon Dictate 2.0 customer via check for updates. New and of note to most will be the ability to use your iPhone as a wireless remote mic to feed directly into Dragon Dictate (must be connected on the same WiFi network).

You will need the free Dragon Remote Mic app from iTunes, this is the same app which also works as a remote mic into Nuance’s Windows voice recognition offering, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5.

So what is new in Dragon Dictate 2.5

• Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac support.
• Remote mic using your iPhone as just mentioned.
• Easier integration with social media, use voice commands to tweet and update your Facebook status.
• Search engine specific browse commands for Bing, Google and Yahoo
• As well as the usual, faster and more accurate claims.

Click here for a full run down of the new features from the Nuance website.

And a pleasant surprise today when this popped up on my desktop:

Yes, 11.5 is now ready for download and upgrade in Australia for all registered Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 users. The upgrade will open up the use of your iPhone as a remote wireless mic into Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Windows (unless you are a Home user) aswell as some new social tools like tweeting and Facebook updates using Dragon. I am willing to bet 20c that we will see another upgrade soon to include posts to Google+, here’s hoping.

Want to know how to use your iPhone with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5? First you will need to grab the free Dragon Remote Mic app from iTunes here Then watch this official Nuance video … [click here for the video]

##UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST##

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was released worldwide on 20th July, 2011

I have personally upgraded from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) to 10.7 (Lion) 

with Dragon Dictate 2.0.3 installed with no issues.

CLICK HERE for the official status of Mac Dragon products with Lion

Note it says: 

Dragon Dictate 2.5 Customers

Dragon Dictate 2.5 customers may experience irregular software crashes 

when opening or running the software on the new Apple OS X Lion. We are 

currently investigating reports to discover and address the root cause 

of the issue. If you wish to continue using Dragon Dictate most 

effectively, we encourage you to maintain Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

With the launch of OS X version 10.7 better known as Lion about to hit the Apple Mac App Store on 20th July in the US (likely the 21st July in Australia) now the frantic search is on to see what products we already have installed on Snow Leopard (10.6) that will still work when we upgrade. For me and many others the question is shifting to the best voice recognition software for the Mac – Dragon Dictate from Nuance.

So can I upgrade to Lion and still use Dragon Dictate? YES, BUT MAYBE WAIT A LITTLE based on the following:

I have emailed my Australian Nuance contact and was told that there are no incompatibilities that they are aware of. This is a good sign but I am still looking for someone who has managed to install the dev release of Lion and test with Dragon Dictate.

I have emailed the US Nuance Dragon Dictate beta testing co-ordinator and am awaiting a reply.

I have messaged Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Facebook (yes they look after the Mac product also) and was told this:

I have looked on the Nuance Dragon for Mac forum – click here

I have tweeted @DragonTweets and was just given a link to the curent Dragon Dictate specs webpage which showed compatible with Snow Leopard, not the answer I was after people !

I have checked the Mac OS X Lion Application Compatibility chart listed at roaringapps.com and it says “App Has Not Been Tested”

We get alot of hits on our blog from all over the world. Many hits are people searching for answers to specific questions. So we thought we would start a post and update as we go with questions we see pop up from day to day. This post will get longer over time so make good use of your browsers search function (here’s a tip, click Ctrl-f):

Do you have a question you would like answered? Leave a comment and we may include it in the list.

More

Some excitement over the last couple of weeks with rumours abound that Nuance have done a deal with Apple and have signed some kind of agreement to use their voice recognition technology in the up coming iOS5 release for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Since Siri was gobbled up by Apple back in 2010 we have all been waiting to see what Apple will do with the voice controlled concierge and the theory is Dragon will be used to power the new Apple stamped version of Siri when it finally emerges. These are just rumours for now but rumours which are growing in substance.

More

Nuance Australia this week released the Legal vocabulary pack for Australian Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Professional users. The language pack is available as an add-on, you must have Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Professional already installed, or you can buy the language pack with DNS 11 Pro as a bundle.

The legal pack is designed specifically for Australian legal users and is crammed full of Australian centric legal terms, just over 200 million words Nuance claim which will help legal users achieve optimal accuracy out of the box when dictating legal terms. More