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Friday, June 24, 2005
Charles Moore Reviews iListen 1.6.8Related categories • Reviews • Utilities Reviews • MooresViews
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I've been a cheerleader for MacSpeech's iListen dictation software since I first heard about it back in 1998. Not that I have anything against IBM's a rival product, ViaVoice, which has its comparative virtues. It's just that iListen is a Mac-only application engineered by a team of developers who are committed to the Mac platform, while IBM has farmed marketing of ViaVoice off to ScanSoft, and the ViaVoice speech development team (for Macs and PCs) was disbanded in April of 2003.
MacSpeech was founded by Andrew Taylor and several other alumni of the Dragon Systems PowerSecretary team. PowerSecretary was the first generation of dictation software for the Mac, RAM-hungry, poky, and very expensive ($395), but better than no dictation software at all, but its discrete speech recognition engine required users to....speak....with....pauses....between....each....word dictated, which slowed things down, interrupted one's train of thought, and the stop-start often proved stressful and fatiguing to the vocal cords as well.
Dragon abandoned the Mac platform in early 1998, leaving the field open to other contenders. One was a port of IBM's PC continuous speech dictation program, ViaVoice, The MacSpeech folks originally started with a clean slate, but eventually adapted the Philips FreeSpeech 2000 speech engine developed by Netherlands-based Philips technology.
MacSpeech's original mission statement back in 1998 was music to a Machead's ears:
"We are Macintosh people, committed to the Macintosh platform. We have
worked with speech in the past and are working with it now. Speech on the Macintosh is our one and only focus! No other company can say this and no other company can offer you our focus, our desire and our will to succeed.
"* We believe in Speech and we believe in Macintosh.
* We believe in the concept of Insanely Great.
* We believe in putting the user first and the computer last, possibly
even behind that potted plant in the corner.
* We believe in getting things done and doing them right.
* We send neither allegiance nor tribute to N47 W122.
"We hope that's enough for you."
A public preview version of iListen was released at MacWorld Expo New York in 2000, and a final release, iListen 1.0.1 followed in the fall of that year. It was RAM hungry, and more than a little buggy, and had no spelling correction module, but it did have one big advantage over ViaVoice Millennium Edition -- you could dictate text into virtually any text field that would accept keyboard input. ViaVoice ME required you to dictate into the program's dedicated SpeakPad word processor, and then to transfer your transcribed text to its final destination via the Clipboard.
iListen 1.1 followed in November, 2001, and versions 1.2 and 1.2.1 coming along in January and April of 2002 respectively, finally adding a spell correction mode and the ability to "learn" from corrections.
iListen with OS X support, version 1.5, arrived in August, 2002 as a Carbon application that would work in both OS 9.2.2 and OS X. It worked a lot better in OS 9.2.2, at least on moderately slow Macs like my 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook, than it did in OS X. When I say "better," I mean faster. While transcription speed in OS 9 was satisfactory, iListen 1.5 lagged horribly in OSX, making you spend time waiting for it to catch up. I found it easier to put up with ViaVoice X's foibles in order to get its all but real time speed, although listen 1.5 was a pleasure to use in OS 9.2.2.
iListen 1.5 also brought a significant productivity enhancement to the Mac platform for the first time - transcription. Using a Digital Voice Recorder to record some audio for later transcription can be a real time saver, and iListen's ability to read audio from AIFF and WAV files and put the recognized text directly into almost any application is very convenient.
iListen 1.6 came along in 2003, and proved a lot faster in OS X, which was a good thing, because iListen 1.6 didn't support the Classic Mac OS. However, Classic users were not abandoned. An upgraded version 1.5.5 of iListen, incorporating some but not all of the version 1.6 enhancements, was bundled with iListen 1.6, Several incremental 1.6.x updates followed at intervals through 1.6.6, each one adding refinements and enhancing speed, culminating in the latest iListen 1.6.8 (version 1.6.7 was not released) release in May, which added support for OS X 10.4 Tiger, a significant speed increase (at least on my G3 iBook), and several other tweaks and bug fixes. It also includes a new User Manual, and a training guide that provides the text of the training stories and reminders about the training process. Indeed, version 1.6.8 is a substantial enough improvement that it might have merited the full version number upgrade.
iListen 1.6.8 also still ships with iListen version 1.5.6 bundled which is compatible with Mac OS 9.2.2. There will be no further development for the Mac OS 9 version of iListen. iListen 1.5.6 does not run under OS X Classic mode.
New in iListen 1.6.8
New Features:
• "Open Spotlight" voice command for Tiger. It is in Dictation Commands so it can be available while in Dictation or Command mode. iListen 1.6.8 users running Tiger can say "Open Spotlight" followed by the word or phrase they want to search for hands-free searching. To use, pause, say "Open Spotlight", pause, say the words you want to search for and they will be entered in the Spotlight search field. If you say nothing after saying "Open Spotlight", then after a couple seconds, the Spotlight window will be opened anyway. iListen also switches back to dictation mode automatically.
• Automatic AppleScript generation for drag & drop of a file, folder or volume on the command AppleScript editing pane. If you drag a file or folder or volume onto the AppleScript editing pane, the AppleScript to open that item is entered, providing a convenient way to open such items by voice, and also to voice enable Automator Scripts in Tiger. Just drag an Automator application you've created to a new command editor window in iListen and give it a name. From then on, speak the name in order to run their workflow task.
• New Help menu - Menu items include:
- opens the Tech Support web page where the Knowledge base is.
- automate creating an email to contact MacSpeech Customer support.
- copy iListen configuration information to clipboard to provide to Technical Support.
- open various iListen documentation files: user manual, tutorial, training guide.
• New AppleEvent that automates Transcription.
The target sound file is specified and then iListen can be directed to start transcription, pause, resume or stop - all by AppleEvent.
- Command Editing window now has a description field to document what the command does. You will see this populated in all new ScriptPaks.
- iListen opens the appropriate System Preferences panel for you to Enable the Assistive Devices (required for iListen to work properly).
- New Show / Hide commands to control iListen's windows - the Feedback, What Can I Say and Commands windows can be made visible or hidden using these verbal commands. These commands are found in the Microphone Commands command set.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed hang/crash in correction. Often the crash occurred when the "Ask Adaptation" window was being initialized or being painted.
- Fixed URLs for registration and web site - some referred to our old web site.
- Changed start up of iListen so that it does not claim your Activation code is wrong on initial launch before you have had a chance to enter an activation code.
- Changed default correction window size so that it does not take over the whole screen.
- iSight microphone no longer causes iListen to crash or become deaf. While we do not recommend it, you can even use iSight with iListen.
iListen's installation process is generally painless, however once the application is installed and started up, if you are a first time user, you still have quite a bit of work to do (typical of all dictation applications). The first time you launch iListen, it will walk you through the steps necessary to set up your microphone and create your first voice profile. After this initial setup, iListen will automatically begin your first training session. You do this by reading to the program aloud some stories so it can learn your vocal characteristics. Multiple users can share iListen on a single machine, but each must create his or her own profile, and must train iListen separately. Initial training will take at least an hour, as you will need to read several of the stories and then let the computer process them. MacSpeech suggests that you read as many stories as you can manage to further improve your recognition accuracy. The more stories you read, the better your accuracy will be.
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of iListen, the program will assimilate your existing voice profile so you will not have to repeat the training process.
If you are updating over an existing installation of iListen and want to keep your existing voice profile, use the Backup feature in iListen before upgrading. Here's how:
1). Run your current version of iListen.
2). Select Profiles... from the File Menu
3). Select the Voice Profile you wish to backup
4). Save it to a unique location.
iListen is a big, RAM and processor power hungry application. I would suggest that a 500 MHz Mac with at least 512 MB of RAM would be the minimum system you would want for reasonable performance. iListen 1.6.8 runs well on my 550 MHz G4 Pismo PowerBook and 700 MHz G3 iBook, both with 640 MB of RAM.
In my estimation, by iListen's best features are:
1. Its comprehensive, no hassle, "dictate anywhere" capability. While the OS X version of ViaVoice has the ability to dictate directly into a certain other programs, it's really only at its best when transcribing speech into its own dedicated SpeakPad word processing application, from which you transfer dictated text to its ultimate destination via the Clipboard or in certain instances with a voice commands to supported applications. With iListen, you can dictate directly into virtually any application or text field that can accept typed text, and this facility makes iListen significantly less cumbersome and more versatile to use than ViaVoice is.
2. iListen is easier to install, and to keep working once it is installed, than ViaVoice. On the other hand, I found that iListen demands more training - reading stories to the application so it can learn your voice - than ViaVoice does. I got pretty good accuracy after reading ViaVoice X just one training story, and never bothered with more than three. You need at least four with iListen for starters, and it doesn't hurt to read a few more than that. However, at least once that task has been completed, you don't have to do it again so long as you're sure to keep your voice profile files backed up.
3. iListen has been a happy camper with a fairly wide variety of mics in my experience, everything from cheap PC - style microphones to old Apple PlainTalk microphones, to the Andrea USB headset that ships with ViaVoice, to the VXI Parrott headset mic that is one of the mics MacSpeech officially recommends (and sells), and the MacMice MicFlex USB desktop microphone system (also officially approved by MacSpeech). MacSpeech suggests that for the best dictation results, you use a quality, noise canceling microphone, and that's good advice, but their program also works well with lesser equipment. ViaVoice X, on the other hand, demands its own dedicated microphone.
4. iListen is also cheaper to purchase them ViaVoice, although it's an apples and oranges comparison, since the IBM product ships with a microphone and iListen doesn't. However, even with of the recommended VXI Parrott headset added, iListen still comes in cheaper than ViaVoice.
Listen has three modes: Dictation, Spelling and Command. Dictation is the function I use most.
You use Command Mode to control your Mac with your voice. In Command Mode,
you can click buttons, control windows, launch applications, and use speech instead of pressing keys on the keyboard. Commands in iListen are written in AppleScript, the scripting language built into Mac OS. Commands can be global, meaning they work everywhere, or application specific, which means they only work in a particular application. With iListen's Command mode you can launch applications, visit web sites, press onscreen buttons,
iListen's CorrectAnywhere technology allows you to apply corrections as you go and teaches iListen to be more accurate in the process. Frankly, I find that while the voice correction function has improved a lot from earlier version of iListen, it is still clunky and annoying to use, and I just don't bother with it much, which is too bad, because that's how the programs "learns" to improve your speech recognition accuracy, but I tend to find it quicker and less frustrating to just correct manually. I would also like to be able to paste text into the correction window from anywhere at any time and be able to correct it. The current system is cumbersome.
No doubt with more practice and careful study and memorization of the user manual (PDF), (and perhaps a faster machine than a 700 MHz iBook) I could get iListen correction working better, but I prefer software to be intuitive and easy to use, and correction mode in this program and its competitor are neither.
Uncommon or misrecognized words can be entered using iListen's Spelling mode. You can use Spelling Mode for mis-recognized words that are used infrequently, such as surnames. iListen has a built-in vocabulary of approximately 30,000 words, with a background lexicon of 300,000 words developed in association with Oxford University Press.
Other features:
iListen's "Learn My Writing Style" feature allows you to drag a text document you have written into a dialog window and select words you want to add to iListen's vocabulary. iListen will add the words you selected to your personal vocabulary file. iListen already knows many rules regarding phonemes, and knows how you pronounce those phonemes from the training you have done, so no additional effort is required to add new words.
You can also create text macros for often repeated text such as signatures and form letters. Your text macros can be up to 32,000 characters in size (about 8 pages).
iListen's Voice Launcher will allow you to open over 150 Macintosh applications simply by saying "Open" followed by the application's name. Voice Launcher commands are can be edited too. For instance, if you would rather say "Open Word" instead of "Open Microsoft Word" simply change the command name in iListen's item editor. iListen's list of Web Favorites will take you to over 150 useful web sites. You can jump to a web site by saying "Jump to" followed by the name of the web site. You can also add your own web sites easily using iListen's item editor.
ilisten's Transcription feature will generate text from WAV and AIFF audio files. Using a Digital Voice Recorder, you can record now, transcribe later.
With version 1.6.8, iListen is a significantly improved program. It's not perfect yet, and still has rough edges, but this release has done more smoothing. Dictation software, even at its present, imperfect stage of development, is a great convenience, especially if you suffer from typing pain or other handicaps that make typing difficult. If that sounds like you, or you just ant to try hands-free typing, iListen is a wonderful tool to have in your software library.
System requirements:
• Mac OS 10.1.5, Mac OS 10.2.x or greater (including 10.3.x "Panther")
• Version 1.5.6 of iListen is also included on the CD or downloadable disk image for the convenience of those still using Mac OS 9. Mac OS 9.2.2 is required to use the Mac OS 9 version of iListen.
• Requires a PowerMacintosh G3, G4, or G5 computer with at least 256MB of RAM, 512MB RAM recommended with Mac OS X.
Suggested Retail Price $99 without headset, $149.00 and up with headset/microphone.
The 1.6.8 update is available now and is free to all existing users of iListen 1.5 or later. Users of previous versions of iListen can upgrade for $39.95.
For more information or to purchase, visit:
http://www.macspeech.com
Charles W. Moore
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