Best speech recognition program?

[BMoran5055]

Hello,

Once I am passed figuring out how to buy and install Hal, I want to add voice recognition to him. I tried the integrated speech recognition software that Hal comes with and it did not work well at all. I took a look at the speech recognition plug-in page and noticed that the Dragon Naturally Speaking 7 Preferred received the most stars. Is this really the best overall decision with regard to recognizing my voice? Finally, do I have to use version 7 of Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred or can I use their newest version 8?

Thank You,
BMoran5055


Brendan

[Bill819]

8 works great!
Bill

[BMoran5055]

Thats what I figured, Thanks Bill

BMoran5055

[Will and Mr Data :) :]]

Hi from Will.
i use dragon 8 it is ok, but how have you overcome hal hearing
his own voice and responding to it [?]

[Art]

Will,

For some reason this seems to be an issue where I really didn't recall it being so that much in the past.

Personally, I usually set the volume of my speakers as if someone was sleeping in the next room (quiet enough as not to disturb them and still loud enough that I can easily hear the voice).

The use of a good quality noise cancelling mic is also helpful.

As a side note, I rarely use VR due to the fact that VR is still prone to errors and since my real desire is to teach my bot, I want what it learns to be as error free as possible.

VR has come a long way but still has a way to go before it's 99% effective.

Whatever your method of training, good luck!

[Bill819]

One more thing about voice recognition and that is that it usually take a long time to effectively train the voice. I have spent several hours sometime rereading the same text over and over again. The more you do such a thing the better Hal gets to understanding what you say. In the begining I would read for about 20 or 30 minutes and then try to talk to Hal with the results that it only understood about 30% of what I was saying. With LOTS of training it gets much better. Beware of background noises while training as these only make it harder to be understood.
Good luck
Bill

[Carl2]

BMoran5055,
 I've been using Dragon for quite a few years, started with ver 3 and I'm now using ver 7.3, it needs an upgrade from ver 7. I've heard ver 8 is better but I'll probably wait before upgrading. I ran into the problem of Hal automaticly inputing the text, sometimes before I finished and I like to check for errors.  To solve this I turned off the mic in the Hal display, while still using dragon I can dictate into the input box, this allows me to check the sentence before inputing it into Hal.  
 Something I've found very helpful to help train dragon is a set of documents. I've created a list of documents by doing some dictation in the morning to help plan my day, it includes relatives, places I go ect, this is entered into the vocabulary builder, a great help to get dragon going. Also I'm using a Sennheiser Headset from Newegg.com.
Carl2