| ||||||||
Cool Mac Gear• iPod Video • iPod nano • iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Garageband |
Charles Moore Reviews iListen 1.5
Fans of MacSpeech’s iListen dictation software who have been impatiently waiting for an OS X version, need wait no longer. iListen 1.5 is here. I’ve been trying out the new iListen release since last weekend, and I can say without qualification that it’s the best iListen yet, at least when running in OS X, which seems especially well-suited to running dictation applications, and the OS X version of the program has eliminated most of the issues I found annoying and frustrating with iListen 1.01 through 1.2.1 for the classic Mac OS. MacSpeech is and all-Mac developer, founded in the late 90s by Andrew Taylor and several other alumni of the Dragon Systems PowerSecretary team. PowerSecretary was the first generation of dictation software for the Mac, better than no dictation software at all, but its discrete speech recognition engine required users to pause briefly 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 1988, leaving the field open to other contenders. One was a port of IBM’s PC continuous speech dictation program, ViaVoice, which has now been released in three different versions -- the most recent for OS X. The MacSpeech folks originally started with a clean slate, but eventually adapted the Philips FreeSpeech 2000 speech engine developed by the giant, multinational, Netherlands-based Philips technology firm. The first public version of iListen was released as a preview 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 the 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 this year respectively, finally adding a spell correction mode and the ability to “learn” from corrections. I’ve used every version of iListen and have installed it on an assortment of computers, including my (officially unsupported) 200 MHz 604e UMAX S-900, my 233 MHz WallStreet PowerBook, my G4 Cube, and my 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook. It is very slow but marginally usable on the UMAX, somewhat faster on the WallStreet (especially version 1.2.1), and nearly real-time responsive on the Cube and the Pismo. Processor speed seems to be key to good dictation software performance. With iListen 1.5, MacSpeech is bringing a productivity enhancement to the platform for the first time - Transcription. “Using a Digital Voice Recorder to record some audio for later transcription is an incredible time saver”, said MacSpeech’s Donald MacCormick. “iListen’s ability to read audio from AIFF and WAV files and put the recognized text directly into almost any application is remarkable”. Other iListen 1.5 i enhancements: • Shared Profiles - If you switch between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, you can share your Profiles - no need to train twice. • Transcription Support - Digital Voice Recorders now become even more beneficial through iListen’s ability to read audio from AIFF and WAV files and put the recognized text directly into almost any application. Brings support for Digital Recording Devices to the Mac, record on the move, then let iListen translate your AIFF, AIFC or WAV files into text - a Productivity first on the Mac. • Playback. Playback in Correction, lets your hear what you need to correct - in your own Voice. • Dock Menu - Better use of screen real estate on Mac OS X, the iListen Dock Menu lets access your voice functions immediately and lets you see audio feedback. • Voice Navigation - Improved Voice Navigation in Dictation Mode Returning features form previous versions: • Continuous Speech Recognition — Dictation in normal tone of voice and at a normal pace using the Philips FreeSpeech 2000 speech engine • Direct Dictation — Dictate, edit and format text directly in any Application • Correction — Correct and Update you Voice Model in almost any Application • Correction Playback — Hear what you said - in your own Voice • Transcription — Use a Digital Voice Recorder such as the Olympus DS-2000 with your Mac! Let iListen read and transcribe your AIFF, AIFC or WAV audio files into text. Unfortunately. I was not able to test this feature because I had no suitable AIFF, AIFC or WAV files on hand or means of producing them, but it sounds cool. • Text Macro Capabilities — If you find you are repeating yourself a lot, create a text macro with those words. Then you can “type” those words with a single phrase or single word. You can insert (up to 32,000 character) standardized or predetermined phrases and text - with a single spoken phrase • Speech Navigation — Open, close and control applications and navigate the desktop by speech. You can also press buttons and control the mouse by voice. • Large Vocabulary — Active vocabulary of greater than 30,000 words. Backup vocabulary of 300,000 words developed in cooperation with Oxford University Press provides more words • Command and Control — Speech control of the computer through built-in normal language and individually created commands • Constant Feedback — The iListen Floating Palette provides you with constant feedback. 
• Easy to use — You can even use the Dock to access iListen functions on Mac OS X. • AppleScript Compatible — Ability to take advantage of Apple’s built-in scripting language • Internet Ready — Surf the web with your voice • Multiple User Support — Multiple users create their own speech profiles on the same computer As I noted in my first impressions report posted last Sunday, MacSpeech’s David MacCormick provided me with a copy of iListen 1.5 last weekend, and I installed it Sunday morning I did a clean installation in OS X 10.1.4 (note that the specified minimum system version is OS X 10.1.5, but I wasn’t up for upgrading my system first, and it works great in 10.1.4 on my computer) and it went as smooth as silk. 
Like all dictation programs, you need to “train” iListen to recognize your voice before you can do anything useful with it. The training process involves reading the program some stories, and it processes the data into personal voice profile files. I decided to create a new voice profile rather than importing my existing one from iListen 1.2 in OS 9. That meant reading the familiar training stories, which I know now nearly by heart, over again, and I did five of them. That went smoothly too. The program looks great in OS X, and it works well too. With the five story voice profile, accuracy was impressive. Transcription speed on my 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook is not quite real time, but the delay is very short. iListen 1.5 was a lot less of a pain to install than ViaVoice X was, and it offers much more comprehensive (dictate anywhere) functionality. It also happily works with both standard PlainTalk and USB microphones, which ViaVoice doesn’t. One area where I anticipated that there might be problems was in the correction mode, which I found pretty buggy in iListen 1.2, but I was happily surprised to discover that correction worked smoothly with version 1.5. The only thing was that on my first encounter I found it extremely slow, with about a five second time lag between making a correction choice and it being applied in the document. However, after logging out and rebooting OS X for an unrelated reason, I found that the hesitation was gone, and it now responds instantly. Some transient glitch, I guess, possibly with OS X. To use Correction Mode Based on several days' use, my assessment of iListen 1.5 is that for use with OS X, there’s no reason to hold back buying this version of iListen. A purchase of iListen 1.5 also includes a free upgrade to the next version. Another advantage iListen 1.5 for OS X has over ViaVoice X is that the latter, at least on my machine and those of some readers who have corresponded, must be shut down before putting the PowerBook to sleep, or it will break and require a force quit using the Process Viewer. This is not a super big deal, since the program starts up fairly smartly, but it is an aggravation if you forget to quit ViaVoice before putting the computer to sleep. iListen seems to be quite happy being left open through sleep/wake-up cycles. When I installed iListen 1.5 in OS 9.2.2, things did not go quite so smoothly. I’m not sure whether you can set things up to use the same disk install of iListen 1.5 in both OS X and OS 9 (although MacSpeech says you can share voice profiles across the two OS platforms). I took the cautious route and did a complete second installation on the hard drive partition where my copy of OS 9.2.2 lives. The install itself proceeded well enough, and the program assimilated the voice profile from my existing iListen installation with no problem, so I didn’t have to read the training stories yet again. However, when I began dictating an article, the program locked up after a few paragraphs. It wouldn’t respond to the quit command, so I had to kill it with MacsBug, which allowed me to save my dictated text in Tex Edit Plus. I restarted the program and finished dictating the column without further drama. The correction feature even worked better than it had for me in iListen 1.2.1. That job finished, I had to reboot the PowerBook for a reason unrelated to iListen, but again, the program refused to quit. When I employed MacsBug again, the debugger screen locked up, requiring the use the Command + Control + Powerkey for a quit and reset. When the machine tried to reboot, the Disk First Aid utility indicated that it was repairing disk directory damage, and then the startup sequence froze after a few extensions had loaded, requiring another three finger salute, after which Disk First Aid again reported that it was repairing directory damage. This time I held down the Shift key to start up with extensions off on the restart, and then ran Norton Disk Doctor. No problems were discovered, and I was then able to boot OS 9.2.2 with extensions enabled again with no problem. I was naturally not enchanted with this incident. The previous versions of iListen have not exactly been paragons of stability, but I’ve ever had directory damage from them crashing before. Aside from that, so to speak, iListen’s actual dictation performance in OS 9.2.2 was actually pretty good. Fast and accurate even using the old voice, profile I had originally created in iListen 1.1. I didn’t notice enough difference in speed between running in OS X and OS 9.2.2 to venture which, if any, is more responsive. Both were very satisfactory, although with just a bit more lag transcribing dictated text than with ViaVoice for OS X. ViaVoice also has a slight edge in accuracy, especially since I’ve only read it installation three training stories, and never bothered with the correction function to improve accuracy. So which is the best Mac dictation application to have, if you’re only having one? That depends. If you’re using OS X, both iListen 1.5 and ViaVoice for OS X are very good in my experience, although there’s still lots of room for improvement in both. Based on less than a week’s use, I’m inclined to think that I will probably use iListen 1.5 more often in OS X, especially when I switch to X for production work. The combination of less hassle (especially compared with the ViaVoice sleep bug), the ability to dictate anywhere, and the greater microphone flexibility so I’m not stuck using the Andrea USB headset that comes with ViaVoice, (and which hogs the sound out function when plugged in) combine to make iListen 1.5 the more versatile and user-friendly choice. iListen is also substantially cheaper than ViaVoice, especially if you already have a microphone. On the other hand, if I have a lot of pages of dictation to enter, I will probably still start up ViaVoice and use it because of its superior speed and accuracy. However, it would be no hardship to use iListen for everything. For classic Mac OS users, if my stability problems with iListen 1.5 in Mac OS 9.2.2 are indicative of typical performance, I really can’t recommend this version. I would say that iListen 1.2,1 is still best all around dictation performer if you’re running OS 9.0.4 or OS 9.2.x. OS 9.1 is not supported. If you’re using OS 9.1, which still gets my vote as the best Classic Mac OS version ever, ViaVoice Millennium Edition 1.2 works reasonably well, although you are still stuck dictating into ViaVoice SpeakPad and transferring text with the clipboard. I’m going to give iListen 1.5 two Applelinks ratings depending on which OS you are using.
Under Mac OS X 
Under Mac OS 9.2.2 
System requirements: Suggested Retail Price $99 without headset. iListen is available at the Applelinks store: http://www.applelinks.com/store The upgrade is available immediately to registered users on the company’s web site for $39.95. Purchasers of previous versions of iListen, since June 1st, 2002 will receive the upgrade for free. iListen 1.5 is available for sale from the company’s online store and most fine Resellers. If you upgrade to iListen 1.5 now, MacSpeech will also include the next update for free. Donald MacCormick also notes that anyone buying 1.1 or 1.2 now that version 1.5 is out just needs to send an email to questions@macspeech.com and they will receive the 1.5 updater for free. They just need to let MacSpeech know when they bought the product, from whom and their Activation Code. The International English version of iListen 1.5 is also available immediately through MacSpeech in the UK. More information can be found at the company’s European web site at http://www.macspeech.co.uk News about MacSpeech, Inc. can be found at http://www.macspeech.com News about MacSpeech, Ltd. can be found at http://www.macspeech.co.uk
Page: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
|
Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
| ||||||
|
| ||||||||
