Nuance Debuts Dragon Dictate 4 for Mac With Transcription Capabilities

[MacRumors]

Nuance, known for its speech recognition software, today unveiled version 4 of its Dragon Dictate software. The speech recognition software is designed to allow users to dictate text and control desktop and web applications via speech.

Version 4 of the software brings better accuracy with improved speech recognition technology and reduced latency due to better memory management capabilities. It also includes Nuance MacSpeech Scribe features, offering users the ability to transcribe text from a pre-recorded audio file, combining both voice recognition and transcription.

Dragon Dictate for Mac also now includes powerful features from Nuance MacSpeech Scribe - creating a single voice offering that can not only transcribe your own voice, but can transcribe text from pre-recorded, single-speaker audio files in many different formats, such as .mp3, .mp4 and .wav.

This new transcription capability is fast, accurate and easy and is ideal for writers, students, educators, field workers, business executives or any user who needs to access content from a single speaker's voice such as a podcast or other distinct audio formats. For instance, teaching assistants and students can record lectures at close range and turn them into text, and field workers can now transcribe recordings of their interviews directly from their digital recorder or smartphone.

Along with dictation speeds that are up to three times faster than typing, the software also provides full text control in Gmail, Apple Pages 4.3, and other software.

Dragon Dictate for Mac, version 4 is available from the Nuance website for $199.99.

Article Link: Nuance Debuts Dragon Dictate 4 for Mac With Transcription Capabilities

 

[cymad]

I'd buy it if it weren't so expensive. I've had DD a few years back but never used it as it was still very imprecise. Student Pricing at $129 isn't too bad though.

 

[jayducharme]

the software also provides full text control in Gmail, Apple Pages 4.3, and other software.

But why not Pages 5? Maybe they didn't have time enough to test that version before DD4 was released. (I know it says "other software"; I'm just curious why they listed the discontinued version of Pages.)

 

[guzhogi]

I'd buy it if it weren't so expensive. I've had DD a few years back but never used it as it was still very imprecise. Student Pricing at $129 isn't too bad though.

I agree, it's very expensive. I personally don't have a need for it, but I work in a school and a few kids might benefit from it. But for $199, I think my district could just use the dictation system built into Mac OS X

 

[wlossw]

But why not Pages 5? Maybe they didn't have time enough to test that version before DD4 was released. (I know it says "other software"; I'm just curious why they listed the discontinued version of Pages.)

Probably didn't know it was updated...

 

[2457282]

I thought that the nuance software was licensed by Apple for its current offering both on the Mac and within Siri? In any case, I would like to see how different this is that what comes with Apple. I can already dictate to my phone and computer, so spending $200 for what is an overlap, means that it would have to be a significant improvement to justify, IMO.

 

[Nunyabinez]

I dictator this posed with drag gin dick tape fir fir Mac.

JK.

 

[chirpie]

I dictator this posed with drag gin dick tape fir fir Mac.

JK.

Every time I dictate to my phone, it's a friendly reminder that I don't enunciate certain words very well. ;-)

 

[Switchfoot]

If the transcription feature works as well as they advertise, I can think of a million uses for this. Not the least of which is transcription for hire- that stuff is expensive!!

 

[keysofanxiety]

I thought that the nuance software was licensed by Apple for its current offering both on the Mac and within Siri? In any case, I would like to see how different this is that what comes with Apple. I can already dictate to my phone and computer, so spending $200 for what is an overlap, means that it would have to be a significant improvement to justify, IMO.

Dragon Dictate, at its absolute basic, is dictation software. It's mainly used to open other programs and near enough control/write on a computer in its entirety without having to do anything. It's leaps and bounds beyond anything Apple currently offer.

It's much better on Windows but it's good to see the Mac version's catching up.

 

[cmpedicini-13]

Looking forward to this.

I've been using this software for quite a while...every version of Dictate going back to v1 and iListen all the way back to v1.6 (2003-04). I have a mobility issue that limits my typing to one hand so voice dictation has been a boon to my productivity.

I thought v3 was a step back from 2.5 in terms of speed...hoping the code optimization in v4 is an improvement.

 

[DrKarl]

The transcription feature already exists in version 3. Apparently, the new feature is that you don't have to train transcription separately from training a particular microphone? (For what it's worth even with training, transcription of wav files in version 3 is pretty bad. Trained dictation in version 3 is amazingly fast and accurate.)

My biggest complaint against Dragon dictation 3 has been that it will not recognize the microphones built into Apple LED monitors. It will, however, recognize the internal microphone of a MacBook or an iMac. Given that it does recognize USB microphones, anyone using a mac pro will be very frustrated that they have to train a separate headset rather than using the microphone built into one of their monitors. If this is fixed in version 4, I might pay for an upgrade. Otherwise, I'm done with Dragon.

I'm dictating this with the voice recognition built into Mavericks because I'm recovering from a hand injury. That's caused me to revisit the quality of OS X offline dictation and Dragon 3 for Mac. In general, I would prefer to use Dragon because I can speak about four times faster than I speak for Mac dictation and I can train Dragon to recognize particular words resulting in almost no corrections. The plus of Mac dictation is that it is so simple and it is ubiquitous. Any place you have the blinking text cursor, just press fn fn and start speaking. Dragon lacks this universal ability.

 

[Snowy_River]

I want to know why these dictation softwares don't handle punctuation interpolation. I don't want to have to say "period" at the end of every sentence when I'm dictating a long piece. I'd rather go back and edit mistakes made by the software.

I know that there is software out there that does this. I get text versions of my home voicemail, and it has punctuation, despite the fact that the people leaving the messages certainly didn't dictate their punctuation in the message.

So, why doesn't DD do this? Or does it and not advertise it? In the video above, the one place a sentence was dictated the period at the end had to be dictated, and there was clearly some other punctuation that was missing, so it didn't do it there...

 

[crispinbates]

Successful Upgrade (after hiccup)

I purchased the upgrade from the UK the day it was released. The download took quite a while, but it is a big file. Unfortunately the serial number supplied at the time of purchase did not work. Nuance tech support USA patiently talked me through uninstalling all previous software. Still no joy. The next day I received a different serial number by email. At the same time an update was released specifically to address problems encountered in registering by UK users. So there were some difficulties but these were all very quickly and efficiently resolved by Nuance. As for the software, I can report that it is at least as accurate and definitely much quicker than Dragon 3.0. Latency issues are gone - probably due to the 'better memory management' described by Nuance. It now positively zips along in on my two-year old Mac mini, without delays or hanging, so I am very pleased with this upgrade.

 

[lancdoc]

Dragon for Medical Transcription

I have used Dragon for several years for medical transcription (the PC version) through Parallels on my Macbook Pro, which has worked perfectly. Ideally, I would like to be able to transition to the Mac side for my work. The medical and legal versions (larger and specific dictionary) are much more expensive than consumer versions, and I would want to be sure that it worked at least as well as the PC version. Previous medical Mac versions have not been as well performing as the PC versions. I'd be interested if there has been an update to their medical Mac version and whether it compares favorably to the PC version.

MWW

 

[WICaniac]

I purchased the upgrade from the UK the day it was released. The download took quite a while, but it is a big file. Unfortunately the serial number supplied at the time of purchase did not work. Nuance tech support USA patiently talked me through uninstalling all previous software. Still no joy. The next day I received a different serial number by email. At the same time an update was released specifically to address problems encountered in registering by UK users. So there were some difficulties but these were all very quickly and efficiently resolved by Nuance. As for the software, I can report that it is at least as accurate and definitely much quicker than Dragon 3.0. Latency issues are gone - probably due to the 'better memory management' described by Nuance. It now positively zips along in on my two-year old Mac mini, without delays or hanging, so I am very pleased with this upgrade.

Did you have problems with 3 that appear to have been solved by 4 (specifically with regards to correcting mis-transcriptions)? I am among the legion of dissatisfied 3 customers who have been waiting for un upgrade that would solve its bugs. Of course Nuance won't market the new version by saying it has at last fixed all of the problems it should have addressed via an update to 3. Accuracy and speed were never really an issue, however, so I'm hoping "more efficient memory management" means it works properly without replacing the wrong text before crashing.

 

[The Mercurian]

Anyone else having download issues ? I keep getting to about 50 - 60% then it freezes and when I try to get it going again it starts from the beginning all over again

 

[The Mercurian]

Finally got this working after about 6 tries!

Did you have problems with 3 that appear to have been solved by 4 (specifically with regards to correcting mis-transcriptions)? I am among the legion of dissatisfied 3 customers who have been waiting for un upgrade that would solve its bugs. Of course Nuance won't market the new version by saying it has at last fixed all of the problems it should have addressed via an update to 3. Accuracy and speed were never really an issue, however, so I'm hoping "more efficient memory management" means it works properly without replacing the wrong text before crashing.

Hey WICaniac - it is improved from version 3 - however I would not say solved. If I had to put a figure on it I would say it is 50% less annoying. It doesn't beachball as often and in general is a little bit quicker, but sometimes it does get a bit mixed up in the correct menu. And if you try to replay your own voice more than once it beachballs as it did in version 3. Overall I think accuracy is improved however.

I've not tried the transcription yet - partly because I have not yet got a voice recording app on my phone!

Edit:
Found a good app for Android for this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrwq.recorder

Transcription from files is AWESOME.

Also I think that Dragon learns more quickly when you teach it vocabulary. I found this just didnt' seem to work in DD3 - works well in DD4

 

[Dickison]

Nuance interface generally sucks

I just got the latest Dragon Dictate 4 with the hope of an improved interface. The Nuance interface design team needs to get their heads out of the '80s Windows environment and get into the 21st century. Hire some people from Apple on how to design a good user interface. I use both their OCR and dictation/transcription software, or rather I BOUGHT them but ultimately went to use other company's software that has a 21st century design. First of all, after installing Dragon Dictate 4.0 on my Mac, the first notice I got was there was an update, so I immediately downloaded/installed that. I restarted DD and it again notified there was an update. Downloaded/installed again, using quit/relaunch the first time and then install on quit the second time. Still didn't take. I went through this cycle about 5 times before giving up. Then it said I needed to register, which I'd already done. Then reinstalled, reregistered again. Still no go, still need to register, still need to install update. I gave up and cancelled registration and update tried transcribing a file. I tried training with the file to be transcribed, corrected all the errors, accepted the edits, but when I loaded the file again, it said I needed to train it. So I did it again, and again, and again. After about an hour I finally got it to transcribe. Poor results. Nuance really needs to fire their software interface people and hire new developers, perhaps with some training in interface design, and charge appropriately for the software, like not more than $10. They'd sell a lot more at $10 each and then learn more on what's wrong with their software. They should look at the design of ABBYY FineReader for OCR, though not perfect, is still decades ahead of what Nuance is doing. They have potential, but should be exhibiting much more advanced capabilities for as long as they've been in business. If their CEO was born in the early 1940s, that might explain their lack of progress. Perhaps a CEO with vision might be more appropriate. Give him/her some of the books about Steve Jobs to get some ideas on vision.

 

[hamishb]

Cursor jumps in Word using Dragon Dictate 4

I upgraded to 4 hoping the bug whereby the cursors jumps forward and backwards when dictating. I can be dictating a sentence and then suddenly find the cursor jumps back and started typing halfway inside another word. It seems as bug has been going on for quite a while with no hope of identifying the cause or fix.
What gives?

 

[Symmetryman]

I have used Dragon for several years for medical transcription (the PC version) through Parallels on my Macbook Pro, which has worked perfectly. Ideally, I would like to be able to transition to the Mac side for my work. The medical and legal versions (larger and specific dictionary) are much more expensive than consumer versions, and I would want to be sure that it worked at least as well as the PC version. Previous medical Mac versions have not been as well performing as the PC versions. I'd be interested if there has been an update to their medical Mac version and whether it compares favorably to the PC version.

MWW

Have been trying to dictate into medical EMR
W/ various dragon versions , still not happy w/ accuracy
What version of dragon( medical or other?), parallels and Windows are u using?
I have Used medical 9.5 w/ XP and was OK, not great.
Now looking to change / no XP, hate to pay 1600.00 for medical for vocab, but will if accuracy better than non medical.
Would of course prefer straight Mac, but previous non medical versions pathetic and bad reviews for medical mac . Thoughts ?

 

[jland]

What I'm looking for is a program that will import audio files and create transcriptions. I'm not seeing this function on any option I've checked out but I see that DD4 now has this feature. Has anyone used this with decent results?

Nuance seems to own the only two OS X programs that will do this, along with MacSpeech Scribe. Probably the same engine?

I'm aware this leaves out the training of the recognition and would be happy if I ended up with a good, basic transcription that I can correct.


Thanks!