Thoughts on Using Speech Recognition Software On a Mac

Way back in the late 1990s, I remember first trying speech recognition software. The first program I used was ViaVoice, by IBM. If my memory is correct, this was the first Mac program that allowed you to speak in phrases and sentences, as opposed to dictating each word one at a time. I used this software with Mac OS 9, probably on an LC 475, and the results were terrible. Given the speed of a computer like that, and the quality of speech recognition algorithms at the time, this was not surprising. While I did own a PC, which I needed for some of the work I did, I didn’t bother to buy Windows speech recognition software, the most popular of which at the time was called Dragon Dictate.

At that time, and in the following years, I did a lot of dictation. Working mostly as a freelance translator, I would dictate into a handheld dictaphone, and my wife would type and correct my translations at the same time. I would have loved to have been able to dictate directly into my Mac back then.

Over the years, I kept following the various speech recognition solutions offered for Mac. In the past few years, I have reviewed several of these programs for Macworld: my latest review of Dragon Dictate for Mac was in November of this year; my review of Dragon express, a “light” version of Dragon Dictate, appeared online today. And I recently wrote an overview of the different types of microphones available for speech recognition software.

I type relatively quickly, and using speech recognition software doesn’t so much save me time as make me more relaxed. As I write this article, I’m leaning back in my chair, my hands comfortably crossed on my stomach, and I’m dictating into a SpeechWare TableMike. This is a desktop microphone with an extendable boom which is, for me, the most comfortable microphone that I’ve used for speech recognition. First of all, I don’t need to wear anything on my head, and I don’t need any wires to connect me to my computer. The microphone sits on my desktop, I tilt the boom down in the direction of my mouth, and I can comfortably dictate with the microphone more than a foot away from me. This means I can easily choose to dictate anything at any time, without worrying about connecting a mic, positioning it correctly, or, if it’s wireless, turning it on and worrying about its battery.

Speech recognition software is not perfect. You will not get 100% recognition; there will be some mistakes, but the more you use this software the more it learns from the way you talk and the way you correct recognition errors. While speech recognition software isn’t for everyone—I wouldn’t want to talk all day, as it can be tiring—I find it very practical to be able to dictate some of the articles I write instead of typing. Unfortunately, speech recognition software is somewhat expensive (though the new Dragon Express, available from the Mac App Store, is only $50), and, while you can get good results with an average microphone, the best results require an investment. But if you write a lot, and you’d like to be more comfortable when you work, or if, simply, you don’t type very quickly, it’s worth looking into this software. Dragon Dictate for Mac is an excellent program that has made a lot of progress in the past couple of years, and one that can make a difference in the way you work.

Update: this is purely a coincidence, but it turns out that Nuance is running a 50% off sale on their products, including Dragon Dictate. I saw this about 12 hours after posting this article. Go to this web page to take advantage of the discount through December 11.

Choosing a Microphone for Speech Recognition

I’ve been using speech recognition tools a lot recently: Dragon Dictate, and the new Dragon Express (my review of which should be up on Macworld in a few days). As part of this, I looked at the different types of microphones you can use with speech recognition software in my latest Macworld article. If you use speech recognition software – on a Mac or with Windows – you should have a read, and see what is available. I found some very good microphones when doing my research.

Logitech Solar Keyboard for Mac: A Tale of Two Fails

About a month ago, I bought a Logitech Solar Keyboard for Mac. This is a wireless keyboard, that works using solar energy. You never, and I mean never, have to recharge it, unless you work in an unlit closet. The amount of light in an ordinary office is enough to keep it charged. I like the idea of not having to worry about batteries – which, in my case, means charging rechargeable batteries, which don’t hold a charge long enough when not in use, so I end up with no charged batteries when the ones I’m using run out.

But there were problems with the keyboard. After about a month, the space bar stopped working reliably. Every 10 or 20 times I’d press it, nothing would happen, which meant I had a lot of words that ran together, and would have to stop and correct them. Logitech was fairly prompt in sending me a replacement, which I received today. I took the new keyboard out of the box, and plugged the “Unifying receiver” into a USB port, then started typing. But nothing happened. I checked to make sure I had turned on the keyboard, which I had. I plugged the Unifying receiver into my laptop, and nothing worked either. I tried different USB ports, until I thought of trying the Unifying receiver that had come with the first keyboard. That worked fine. So they replaced a bad keyboard with one whose adapter doesn’t work. Fortunately, I have the previous adapter; I haven’t sent the first keyboard back. But this, to me, is pretty shoddy. I’m not unfamiliar with computer problems, but having problems with two keyboards in a row – admittedly, one is the keyboard, the other the receiver – is disappointing.

Logitech, you’ve lost my confidence. I’d used a number of your products in the past, but I’m not sure whether I’d trust any in the future. I would have recommended this keyboard, because of the lack of batteries, and the keys, which feel a lot like Apple keyboards, which I like, but I won’t do so now.

Big Screen, Small Screen; What’s the Best Screen Size?

I’m sitting here in front of my 27″ iMac, purchased in June, and just back from repairs. I had a problem with a burning smell coming from the computer, and the repair technician changed the logic board, because he spotted a bit of scotch tape, used to hold down a small wire, touching the processor. He thinks that the tape, or its glue, was burning when the processor got hot.

I was without the iMac for a week; in the interim, I was using my 13″ MacBook Air. There’s quite a difference between the two. The resolution of the iMac is 2560 x 1440, and the Air displays at 1440 x 900. That means the iMac is nearly 3 times the display size of the Air.

I’ve been using a 27″ monitor since the end of last year, when I bought an Apple Cinema Display to use with my previous Mac, a Mac mini. So the size of the monitor is familiar. Switching to the MacBook Air for all of my work was a bit cramped at first. (I do use the MacBook Air regularly, but only for certain tasks.) There are times when I have two or three windows visible on the iMac, and to view the same content on the MacBook Air, I had to switch applications a lot.

But something happened during this past week. My desk was more spacious (I use this great Rain Design laptop stand to raise the Air), and there was no huge luminous panel in front of my eyes all day. So when I got the iMac back and put it on my desk, it was a bit of a shock. I’m suddenly rethinking whether I really want to have such a big screen in front of me. The first thing I did was move it about a foot back from where I used to have it; that makes it seem a bit smaller. (Perhaps I can move it even further…) But the more minimal installation of the MacBook Air, even with a wired keyboard and Magic Trackpad, just seemed a lot more comfortable.

It’s nice to have a big screen; there are many things that are easier to do. My basic layout is to have a Safari window on the left and Mail on the right, each taking up half the screen. That gives me big web pages, and a spacious Mail display. (For other apps, I use different desktops, and arrange them in similar ways.) Right now, I’m typing in , and it only takes up about 1/3 of the screen in width, leaving plenty of room for me to switch to Safari if I need to check a web page.

But it’s also nice to have a small, minimal computer. Not that I’d want my main Mac to be the 13″ MacBook Air; it’s too small for me to work on comfortably, in part because my eyes aren’t great. There was a time when my main Mac was a 14″ iBook on a stand, and I worked fairly well on it. But over the years, I’ve gotten increasingly large displays, and I realize that while there are advantages, the size of the screen is imposing. (And big screens give off a lot of heat. This isn’t a problem all year round, but in the summer it is.)

What sort of compromise could I find? I think the 21.5″ iMac might be too small – my wife has one that size, and it seems tight – and Apple no longer makes their 24″ Cinema Display. I had one on loan from Apple for a while last year, and seeing the quality of that display prompted me to buy the 27″ when it was released. If I didn’t have this new iMac (I know, I could sell it…), I might be tempted to look for a used 24″ display and go back to using a Mac mini. (Or buy a non-Apple display, though I don’t know which vendor makes displays as good as Apple. My experiences in the past haven’t been that great.) A 15″ laptop might be a good size, but I think using a laptop as my main computer is a bit limited. (And it’s as expensive as the iMac, if not even more.)

It’s a tough call. It’s nice to have a big screen, but it takes up too much space. I’m going to think seriously about downsizing. It’s time to look for more comfort instead of more size.

How Much Should You Spend on a Stereo?

If you follow this blog and my articles on Macworld, you know that I’m a serious music buff. My iTunes library is nearing the 80,000 mark, and I listen to music several hours a day. My musical touchstones include The Grateful Dead, Franz Schubert, The Durutti Column, Johann Sebastian Bach, Bill Evans, progressive rock from the 1970s, post-punk bands such as Joy Division and The Cure, Charles Ives, Brian Eno, Bob Dylan and much more.

A recent article I wrote for Macworld, How to find and play high-resolution audio on the Mac, elicited a number of comments and reader e-mails. Many people suggested that my ambivalence regarding these high-quality files was due to my not having an appropriate stereo. I do have decent equipment in my home-office, where I do most of my music listening: a Cambridge Audio Sonata 30 amplifier, a Cambridge Audio DacMagic digital-to-analog converter, and bookshelf speakers from the same company. Overall, I’m very pleased with this system, which offers what I consider to be good sound at an affordable price. The DAC might be overkill for some, but I find the difference between listening to music with and without the DAC to be very obvious. (See my Macworld review of the DacMagic). I don’t have a CD player, because I rip all my CDs, but I’ve actually been thinking of adding one to my system to listen to some music on CD – I have a lot of CDs I haven’t ripped yet, and I review classical CDs for MusicWeb International, and sometimes it’s easier to listen to CDs on their own without ripping them, if I don’t want to add them to my iTunes library. (My iMac’s optical drive is a bit noisy.)

I also listen sometimes with Sennheiser HD580 headphones (which I think have been replaced by the HD595 model. These are good headphones, though they are a bit weak in the high end.

But I’m more interested in music than sound. People have told me that I should spend several thousand dollars for a good stereo system, and, while I appreciate good quality sound – when I added the DacMagic to my system, I was stunned by the difference – I just don’t see the need to spend that much.

It’s difficult for me to shop for stereo equipment: I live in a village in the French Alps, and any city that would have a good store for such equipment is a 3-hour drive. I could buy online, but I don’t plan to spend that kind of money without listening first. I have also been very disappointed by recent changes in stereo amplifiers, at least AV amps. The model I have in the living room – a middle-of-the-line Sony – is becoming quickly obsolete. It doesn’t handle HDMI correctly – I have to plug in audio separately. It doesn’t handle all new audio codecs used on blu-ray discs. And it simply doesn’t have enough connectors. (Even my TV set, which only has three HDMI jacks, has one too few for my needs.)

Audiophiles may want to spend as much as I did for my car on a sound system. And the problem is that often they think that anyone who doesn’t spend that kind of money doesn’t appreciate good sound. As I said above, music is more important to me than sound. Sound counts, but I would never become as obsessed as some people, who end up buying dubious products that improve the quality of their sound systems by minute increments, and very often through a placebo effect.

In addition, a lot of my listening is what I could call passive listening. As I write this article, I’m listening to a string quartet by Franz Schubert. This is not entirely background music; I have the ability to listen and think at the same time. And, when I pause, is search of words, the music often carries me away. But actively listening to music is something I do less often. By this I mean sitting and listening to the music while doing nothing else. When I do this, it’s often outdoors, as I watch the mountains grow, or contemplate the clouds floating in the sky. And, for this type of listening, I use headphones.

There are plenty of reasons to buy a better stereo system, but there’s no guarantee that spending twice as much would lead to any noticeable improvement in sound. In the past, I’ve visited stereo dealers and listened to equipment in rooms designed for listening; I don’t have such a room, and anything I bought would not sound as good as it did in the store. I would consider buying better headphones, however. As I said above, my HD580s sound weak in the high end, and this may be an inherent weakness in this model (though they have been widely praised) or simply something that has happened over time. At least with headphones, what you hear in a store is what you will hear at home. However, as much as I enjoy listening to music on headphones, there’s something artificial about it. When you attend a concert, the music comes from in front of you, not from the sides. Recordings are mastered for listening via speakers, not headphones. If there’s too much separation, the music sounds slightly odd. (In fact, today I was listening to some arias from Bach cantatas from a smart playlist that picks from the many cantata recordings I have, and when I got to one from Helmut Rilling’s set with Hänssler, it was terrible; the lead violin was way off to the left, the continuo to the right, and the sound terribly unbalanced.)

In any case, I’m curious to know how much my readers have spent on their stereos. I’d also welcome recommendations for a better set of headphones. I’d be willing to spend a few hundred dollars for something really good. Any thoughts?

Headphone Review: Audio Technica ATH ANC7B Noise-Canceling Headphones

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I don’t travel much, so I’ve never needed noise-canceling headphones before. But recently I had a need for them: there is construction right next to my home, and it should last for several long months. In addition, there’s a small stream next to my house, and it is, at times, noisy enough that I can’t listen to music outside with normal headphones.

To this end, I looked at what was available, and asked some colleagues (notably my Macworld colleague and headphone specialist Dan Frakes) for some advice. Many people recommend Bose’s QuietComfort headphones, but they’re a pricey $300 (actually much more here in France), roughly twice as much as the Audio Technicas I bought.

So, how do they sound? Pretty good, actually. The noise canceling is efficient and works well even without listening to music. When I just want silence as they backhoe is digging outside, they cover most of the noise. When I listen to music, the soundstage is good, with decent detail, but they are a bit bass-heavy and treble-weak. I don’t like using EQ on an iPod, but when I’ve got them plugged into my stereo, I alter the bass and treble settings.

These headphones come in a practical carry case, have cables that unplug from the headphones using a standard jack, and come with two such cables. They’re light, not too hot to wear, but they’re not very big. I have large ears, and they just barely fit, pushing my earlobes a bit upwards, but not to the point of discomfort.

I’ve not tried any other models, but can compare them with other headphones I have. They don’t have the best possible sound, but they do what they are designed for, and are affordable. So, if you want something that is an alternative to the pricier Bose models, you should try this one out.

Headphone Review: Sennheiser PX 100 II-i

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For the past few years, my headphone of choice for listening to music on my iPods was the Sennheiser PX 100, a lightweight, inexpensive headphone with surprisingly good sound for the money. A month ago, however, the cable just before the jack broke, and it was time to replace them. The PX 100 has had excellent reviews for years, and was well appreciated by users and journalists alike, but is no longer made. I turned to the PX 100 II-i, a third iteration of the model, which is the most recent version of the headphones, released last year.

Like the original PX 100, the PX 100 II-i is a folding headphone, with a small on-ear earcup. It’s light, there’s no pressure on the ears, and they are fully open: you can hear everything around you. This headphone is excellent for listening when you’re outdoors, where it is important to hear sounds, especially if you’re walking in the city. They do not, of course, limit any sounds, so if you want headphones that do this, you will need to look elsewhere. (I’ll be posting a review of a recently purchased noise-canceling headphone soon.)

The sound quality of this headphone is, as I’ve mentioned, excellent for its size and price. New with this model is an inline remote control that works with iPods and other iOS devices (as well as Macs, and, perhaps, other computers). You can change the volume, and pause what you’re listening to, and, with a double-press, skip to the next track. This remote is also a mic, if you have an iPhone (which I don’t).

However, a valid question is whether it is worth some $25 more just for this remote. (The Sennheiser PX 100-II is currently selling for $65 at Amazon; it is the same as the PX 100 II-i, but without the remote. The PX 100 II-i sells for $90.) I find the remote useful when I’m listening to music both outdoors and even when I listen to my iPod in bed. My iPod touch has an external volume control, but my iPod classic does not. In addition, the controls are positioned about 8 inches from the headphones, so they are easily accessible. Nevertheless, it’s a bit of a premium to pay just for a couple of buttons. (Though it’s certainly more useful if you have an iPhone.)

My only gripe is that the cord itself is rather flimsy, and I’ve already gotten it snagged on doorknobs a few times. It comes out of just the left side of the headphones, unlike the PX 100, which had a double cord that met in the center. That is a bit odd, as all my other headphones have a central cord; that may explain, in part, why I’ve been clumsy with it.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with the PX 100 II-i. I use it often – either when listening to my iPod outdoors, on my daily walk, or, at times, when watching a DVD on my laptop. The sound is clean and crisp, though the bass is weak, which is to be expected from such a small headphone. (I don’t listen to a lot of bass-heavy music.) If you want good sound in a light, folding headphone, the Sennheiser’s PX series is great choice. Either the PX 100 II-i with the inline remote, or the PX 100-II without it, will provide you with great sound and comfort.

Note: no review unit was provided; I paid for these out of pocket. For the record, I have another Sennheiser headphone – HD 580 – and I’ve only once been disappointed by Sennheiser’s products.

Why Use VueScan?

I just got a new scanner – a Canon CanoScan LIDE210. I’ve used Canon scanners for many years, and have always been satisfied, but my current (now previous) scanner, an LIDE70, was about six years old, and relatively slow. I want to scan some books, and I wanted something that is faster.

The LIDE210 claims to scan letter-sized documents in 10 seconds; this was born out in my tests using the scanner’s own software. But I wanted to try out VueScan, which is said, by some, to be far superior to general scanning software. When scanning the same type of document, just to save as an image – with roughly the same settings as the Canon software – it took about a minute to scan. The program may have advanced features for scanning photos, but I don’t plan to do that. At most, I’ll be scanning CD liner notes to use as album art.

So, are any of my readers VueScan users? If so, what do you see in the program? Any idea why it is so slow? Am I perhaps missing something?