Nuance Updates Dragon Dictation for Mac With 24% Accuracy Boost, New Batch Mode

[kiwipeso1]

Voice dictation company Nuance today announced a collection of new software upgrades, including Dragon Professional Individual (version 15), Dragon Legal Individual (version 15), and Dragon Professional Individual for Mac (version 6). As with all versions of Nuance's software, the new updates are said to feature "powerful dictation, transcription and customization capabilities" to allow users helpful and responsive dictation features with an emphasis on workflow.

The Dragon software lets its users precisely dictate reports, spreadsheets, emails, and other documentation using only their voice. Specifically on the new Mac release, the software has had its accuracy boosted up to 24 percent over previous iterations of Dragon. Helpful tips will get new users "up to speed quickly," while further educating existing Dragon fans into the complexities of Nuance's product.
In the new update, Nuance has introduced a "Batch Mode" to allow users to transcribe multiple audio files at once, as well as introducing full text control to empower "users to work even more quickly and accurately by voice." Using Apple's accessibility API, Dragon Professional Individual for Mac supports Apple Pages, Apple Keynote, Apple Numbers, Microsoft Outlook 2016, Scrivener, and other document creation programs.

The release on the Mac -- as well as Dragon on the PC -- uses Nuance's new "Deep Learning Technology" to learn each of its users' voice patterns and accents. This allows Dragon to recognize and adapt to the environment, be it in a quiet office or outside, which is a possibility thanks to the company's Dragon Anywhere mobile app that launched late last year. Over time, this speech data is accrued to improve Dragon's voice dictation features and result in a more naturalistic readout of transcribed speech.

The English version of Dragon Professional Individual for Mac will go on sale for $300 on September 1 (digital) and September 14 (retail) in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Nuance is also holding a special upgrade pricing scheme, selling Dragon for $150 for users who own registered versions of Dragon Dictate for Mac, versions 4 and higher. Those interested in the other Dragon software bundles can find out more about Dragon Professional Individual for PC and Dragon Legal Individual on Nuance's official website.

Article Link: Nuance Updates Dragon Dictation for Mac With 24% Accuracy Boost, New Batch Mode

I'd be interested if it can handle drunken aussie accents, then I might recommend it to my cousins.
If it can handle the slurred accent of the Kiwi Prime Minister, 'shon key' then it can handle anyone.

 

[Phoenixx]

You're ignoring that 95% accuracy, IIRC, is considered unusable.

To make a concrete example, let's imagine that they are going from 99% to 99.9% accuracy. It is "only" a 10% improvement (assuming that it makes sense to count it that way! ;P), but for "the average user" it's a HUGE difference. It's the difference between failing one word per 100, or one per 1000.

Consider that "conversational speech speed" is about 120 words per minute, and that means that at 99% you're having to correct more than one word per minute. So you'll have to be as conscious about the dictation as about checking the transcription for pretty much every sentence - because every handful of sentences there WILL be a problem. It's a rather big mental effort, and not easy to pull out for long periods.

At 99.9%, you can dictate for minutes without having to correct anything.

Now, from 99.9% to 99.99% it's an even smaller difference, and yet that means 1 failure per 10000 words. You would have to fix less than one word per hour!

In summary: percentages can be misleading if you don't stop to think .

The microphone that is supplied with any edition of Dragon is so bad that using it you will not get anywhere near the level of accuracy the software is capable of producing. Increasing the quality of the mike has a massive result and I would recommend that far ahead of bothering with upgrading the software to the latest version. I use Dragon 13 on Windows regularly for journal entries with a Sennheiser ME 3 (ranked as the best dictation microphone for many years), and I get far better results than 99% (with a trained profile). This has lead me to believe that the numbers Nuance give are actually quite conservative on the accuracy. What they don't tell you is that you will need to spend a considerable amount extra on a decent microphone to get those results.

 

[Scrivener]

If it was already very accurate, sure. I don't find voice to text all that helpful for anything other than short/simple phrases with average American vocabulary. Even then...

Is there such a thing as the AVERAGE American vocabulary - or for that matter, an average American accent?

I still reckon that a 24% improvement in accuracy is an UPDATE NOT an upgrade to a new version. These guys bend your arms up behind your back and open your wallet every time they tickle up their app the tiniest little bit. Rip off merchants. Robbers.

 

[Marx55]

Bring TRUE natural speech recognition. As humans do.

 

[Gasu E.]

You're ignoring that 95% accuracy, IIRC, is considered unusable.

To make a concrete example, let's imagine that they are going from 99% to 99.9% accuracy. It is "only" a 10% improvement (assuming that it makes sense to count it that way! ;P), but for "the average user" it's a HUGE difference. It's the difference between failing one word per 100, or one per 1000.

Consider that "conversational speech speed" is about 120 words per minute, and that means that at 99% you're having to correct more than one word per minute. So you'll have to be as conscious about the dictation as about checking the transcription for pretty much every sentence - because every handful of sentences there WILL be a problem. It's a rather big mental effort, and not easy to pull out for long periods.

At 99.9%, you can dictate for minutes without having to correct anything.

Now, from 99.9% to 99.99% it's an even smaller difference, and yet that means 1 failure per 10000 words. You would have to fix less than one word per hour!

In summary: percentages can be misleading if you don't stop to think .

If a "24% improvement " means what you think it means, the product could not have been more than 81% accurate in the previous version . I don't think so.

 

[mijail]

If a "24% improvement " means what you think it means, the product could not have been more than 81% accurate in the previous version . I don't think so.

Maybe that's the reason why I wrote "(assuming that it makes sense to count it that way! ;P)".
Did you read before answering?

 

[usacannon]

It doesn't really reference what has been the core problem for me which is that it does not work properly (at all) with Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac. It crashes every couple of minutes and that is being confirmed by multiple users. I hope that it has been addressed in Dragon Professional as it is almost unusable for me in its current form. Anyone else have similar problems?

 

[Scrivener]

Those old accuracy estimates were, shall we say, very generous (i.e., not accurate). I've heard from a family member who has used dictation software regularly since the 1990s that major gains in accuracy have happened in the past couple years, however. It's recently been good enough to use for general writing (but still not more than 95% accurate).

How the math works for improved accuracy (assuming 95% accurate before) is probably like this: ((1-0.95)*0.24)+0.95 = 0.962. So a jump from 95% to 96.2% accuracy can be marketed as 24% better.

[doublepost=1472742112][/doublepost]Mmm! I thought 24% of 97/100 approximately equalled 23. Or 97 + 23 = 120%. WOW! It is bigger than it is big - that's REALLY BIG!

 

[Supertaff]

Okay, so I decided to buy Dragon dictate to get advantage of the upgrade. I have written (dictated) this response using Dragon through the microphone on my MacBook. Apart from a very simple two paragraph training to get the level of your voice and microphone it doesn't require any further training that I have seen so far

The speech recognition seems to be working much better than the original or last vision I had which was version 4.

The one issue I am having is the insertion of a random character at the end of the dictation, while am dictating this is a letter F.

It also asked me to install the Safari extension. But failed on installing, this could be as I am running a beta version of OS X Sierra.

I'm off to try some other applications like Microsoft Word, pages, scrivener and others.

Initial impression is it's much much better than the previous versions, oh and the window where you select the microphone on and off is much better in this version.

Will post a better review later on.
[doublepost=1472751146][/doublepost]ok, just dictated the following, from the Mac Rumours announcement of dragon dictate. I've highlighted the errors, i was reading a a good speed, probably faster than i would dictate from my head and didn't watch dragon during this time to try to correct it. Note, i've got quite a strong Welsh accent so was keen to see how it coped.

The words it didn't get were individual = in, let = that, up to = up, educating = educated, to allow power = twin power, voice = VICE!!!, Scrivener = scribner, accents = accidents, outside = website, for $150 = $450

The other thing i tried was Scrivener which is one of the main tools i use for writing, at present though it was awful, it was running the dictation at about 10% of the speed it did in word, with much more errors, don't know if this is a fault with dragon or an issue with scrivener (i have the latest mac store version).


Voice dictation company Nuance today announced a collection of new software upgrades, including Dragon professional in (version 15), Dragon legal in (version 15), and Dragon professional in for Mac (version 6). As with all versions of nuances software, the new updates are said to feature "powerful dictation, transcription and customisation capabilities" to allow users helpful and responsive dictation features with an emphasis on workflow.


The Dragon software that its users precisely dictate reports, spreadsheets, emails and other documentation using only the vice. Specifically on the new Mac release, the software has had its accuracy boosted up to 24% over previous iterations of Dragon. Helpful tips will get new users "to speed quickly," while further educated existing Dragon fans into the complexities of nuances product.


In the new update, Nuance has introduced a "batch mode" to allow users to transcribe multiple audio files at once, as well as introducing fulltext control twin power "users to work even more quickly and accurately by vice." Using Apple's accessibility API, Dragon Professional Individual for Mac support Apple pages, Apple Keynote, Apple numbers, Microsoft outlook 2016, Scribner, and other document creation programs.


The release on the Mac--as well as Dragon on the PC--uses nuances new "deep learning technology" to learn each of its users voice patterns and accidents. This allows Dragon to recognise and adapt to the environment, be it in a quiet office website, which is a possibility thanks to the companies Dragon Anywhere mobile app that launched late last year. Over time the speech data is accrued to improve Dragon's voice dictation features result in a more naturalistic readout of transcribed speech.


The English version of Dragon professional in for Mac will go on sale for $300 on September 1 (digital) and September 14 (retail) in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Nuance is also holding a special upgrade pricing scheme, selling Dragon $450 for users who own registered versions of Dragon dictate for Mac, versions four or higher. Those interested in the other Dragon software bundles find out more about Dragon Professional Individual for PC and Dragon legal in the nuances official website.

 

[Dr.Greg]

This software (Mac V. 6) is good but it is full of bugs and keeps crashing and introducing strange characters )see: http://nuance-community.custhelp.com/posts/040ada05f3). It's completely unreliable. It's also very expensive even the upgrade given the problems that it creates for the user. I just wish they could fix the bugs in this software which have not been addressed from the previous version, otherwise it would be great. I think I will not upgrade (5.5 to 6.0) but will use the built-in Apple software instead. it's just too risky
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