Posted by BB on June 10, 1999 at 07:59:16:
Only 10 minutes of training required !!!
Read this:
http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,11179,00.html
Voice Xpress 4 Eases
Training
L&H's latest package dramatically speeds startup
and offers better accuracy.
by Stan Miastkowski, special to PC World
May 28, 1999, 9:21 a.m. PT
There's no fiercer competition than in voice recognition
software. The four big guys--Dragon Systems, IBM,
Lernout & Hauspie, and Philips--update their software
every few months. And each update brings truly easy
and useful voice recognition software a bit closer.
This week Lernout & Hauspie upped the ante by
shipping Voice Xpress 4. The program comes in three
versions: Standard ($50) offers basic voice recognition
abilities, Advanced ($80) adds Microsoft Word control,
and Professional ($150) comes with full Microsoft Office
support, including Office 2000.
Although L&H has added a raft of new features to Voice
Xpress 4, the company's biggest claims are drastically
reduced enrollment time (the time required to train the
program to your voice) and increased accuracy.
I tested the release version of Voice Xpress
Professional, and found the claims well founded,
although there were a few speed bumps along the way.
Hefty Requirements
Voice recognition pushes most PCs to the wall. You'll
want at least a Pentium II, but memory is really the
key. L&H requires at least 48MB of memory for Voice
Xpress 4 Professional with Windows 95/98, 64MB with
Windows NT. And if your PC has 96MB or above, the
program loads additional software that's designed to
make recognition even faster and more accurate.
My test system was a Pentium II-333 with 128MB of
memory. You'll also need an approved sound card; my
PC had a Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold.
A Truly Quick Start
Getting Voice Xpress 4 up and running was a
revelation.
Most voice recognition software requires at least an
hour--often longer-- before you can start working.
Enrolling your voice takes a tedious 25-40 minutes of
reading text, followed by 30-45 minutes while the
program analyzes your voice.
But Voice Xpress 4 has taken a radical approach with a
new core technology that only requires you to read
about 5 minutes of text.
Voice Xpress 4 comes with a new Telex headset that's
light, comfortable, and has an easy to adjust
microphone. After hooking it up and installing the
software, the first steps involve having the software
"listen" for background noise and tune itself for the
volume of your voice. As I found out, this is an
extremely crucial step.
Then you enroll your voice, making your choice from a
variety of texts ranging from semitechnical to light. I
chose an excerpt from The Wizard of Oz, and was
done about five minutes later. Then Voice Xpress 4
took about 3 minutes to process my voice profile. After
that, I was ready to roll.
Total time since slipping the CD-ROM into my drive:
About 12 minutes.
L&H does point out that running the enrollment a
couple more times will improve things, and also
suggests that non-native English speakers enroll at
least six times.
Do You Hear Me?
Although Voice Xpress 4 allows you to dictate into
virtually any Windows application that accepts text, I
started out with XpressPad, a basic word processor for
voice. But I found that something was very wrong. What
appeared on the screen bore virtually no relation to
what I dictated, with the program getting about 40 per
cent of the words wrong.
And since Voice Xpress 4 is a "modeless" system, it's
supposed to allow you to say commands ("move to top
of document," "open Microsoft Word," and so on) as
well as dictate. (Dictation is continuous; commands
are said with a pause before and after.) But the
program refused to recognize commands and
continued to misinterpret what I said.
Things looked bad, but a little help from the company
got me back on track. I had the microphone too far
from my mouth and hadn't tuned it correctly. A little
repositioning and a retuning made all the difference in
the world. Recognition shot up to well over 95 percent.
In fact, L&H has made a major improvements in
accuracy in Voice Xpress 4. My experience with prior
versions showed recognition accuracy to be mediocre
at best, but that's no longer the case.
The program's modeless approach has also improved.
Although it takes some practice, it's relatively easy, for
example, to navigate among applications, control
menus, or choose components like buttons, all by
voice. The program is pretty clever at figuring out what
you mean. It's also flexible: For example, both "bold
the preceding sentence," and "make the last sentence
bold" worked. And if you get really confused, saying
"Command Browser" brings up a long list of available
commands.
It's Getting Better Every Day
Like any voice recognition package, Voice Xpress 4
gets better the more you use it. The process of
correcting errors, like with prior versions, is a
straightforward matter of saying "correct" and the
misinterpreted word. Up pops a screen with close
matches. And if none are correct, you enter the correct
word. It is important to correct errors as soon as
possible when they occur, which can get tiring initially.
Obviously, everyone has a raft of words specific to their
job, and you can't expect the program to recognize
everything, even though it has a basic vocabulary of
over 230,000 words.
Another option to increase recognition accuracy is to
have the program analyze documents. I improved its
recognition of computer-related terms simply by having
it analyze a number of my PC World Online stories.
And four plug-in vocabulary extenders come with the
package, including Business & Finance and
Technology.
Office Improvements
Voice Xpress 4 Professional includes special features
that work with Microsoft Office 2000. (It also works with
Office 98, although the list of available options isn't as
large.) I tested it with the Gold version of Office 2000.
Special commands exploit the new features of Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint. I could, for example, control
the new extended Clipboard functions, preview text as
HTML, and save a document as a Web page, all by
voice control. And saying "e-mail this document"
brought me directly to Outlook, which I could also
control by voice. I had no problems getting it to work.
Utility Player
Voice Xpress 4 also packs a new suite of utilities
designed for voice. First is Voice WebFinder, a
voice-controlled search engine interface. Voice
Calculator overcomes the limitations of Windows'
built-in calculator, which doesn't work very well with
voice control. It allows free-form voice entry, such as,
"what is 23.3 times 56.9"? Voice Clock lets you ask
what time it is in various world locations. And Voice
Address Book interfaces with Windows address books
(including the one in Outlook) to enable voice control.
Finally, although I didn't test this, Voice Xpress 4 has
the ability to take WAV files and translate them directly
to text. You could, for example, record dictation on
your laptop and upload it to your desktop PC for
processing. And according to L&H, it also supports
dictation from the latest generation of digital recorders,
such as the new Olympus DS-150.
Say It Again, Sam
Overall, Voice Xpress 4 Professional is a vastly
improved package. It not only does a better job at the
basic chores of recognizing voice, but also adds
enough bells and whistles--especially its Office 2000
abilities--to give it a current edge over its competitors.
Remember, though, that dictating instead of typing is
something of an acquired taste. Some of us love it,
some don't. It is a different experience.
And voice recognition still isn't a perfected technology.
Even though Voice Xpress 4 gets up and running fast, it
still takes a while for it to get used to the way you
speak and your particular vocabulary.
At times, I got the eerie feeling that it was training me.
Go get a look at http://www.lhs.com/voicexpress/