DNS/recorder piece in The Washington Post

Submitted by Dan Lufkin on Wed, 10/10/2007 - 21:22.

Here's a brief item in today's Washington Post about using a Sony recorder for meetings, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR200710...

Dan L

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You have to take Nuance's

Submitted by KnowBrainer on Thu, 10/11/2007 - 06:12.

You have to take Nuance's recommendation for the grain of salt. Of course they are going to give high marks to the Sony recorder. They bundle it with NaturallySpeaking. They also give high marks to the Andrea Electronics NC-91 microphone which they include with their professional NaturallySpeaking product line but interestingly enough, Andrea Electronics gives the NC-91 microphone their lowest rating. Who do you suppose knows more about microphones; Nuance or the manufacturer who actually created the microphone?

Quote:

The transcriptions of those recordings were 85 to 95 percent accurate. Transcriptions of recordings made in my car were about 80 to 90 percent accurate

This is no surprise. He's getting just the quality he paid for and that is why we don't offer this recorder on our website. We typically get 97% accuracy with the Philips 9600 digital recorder in the office and in our Jeep Wrangler.

Quote:

NaturallySpeaking transcribed what I said with about 75 percent accuracy, but it was only about 10 percent accurate in transcribing what others said

This is no surprise. All James Martin had to do was search any of the major speech recognition forums and he would've found thousands of answers to this question. The short version is, NaturallySpeaking is incapable of transcribing a meeting or telephone conversation.

Quote:

Recordings I made of landline telephone conversations were mostly gibberish. About 20 percent of what I said was transcribed accurately, but the other party's words rarely made sense when converted into text. For example, NaturallySpeaking transcribed what one woman said on the phone to me as "and I in as as as as as as as as as as as as as as as him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him.

Again, this isn't news but the reason why the accuracy dropped even lower is because landline telephones are only 8 bit. It is unfortunate that reviewers don't do half of their homework. If Jim had consulted with the speech recognition expert or browsed one of the popular speech recognition forums, he could've saved a good deal of time.

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KnowBrainer wrote:

Submitted by crivon1 on Thu, 10/11/2007 - 11:01.

KnowBrainer wrote:

....typically get 97% accuracy with the digital recorder …… in our Jeep Wrangler

Not while you're driving I hope Smiling that's against the law you know Smiling It may be worse than using your cellphone while driving!
Quentin
P.S. quoting your post would be a lot easier without your your logo appearing in your messages Sad