MacSpeech Scribe is speech recognition software for Mac OS X designed specifically for transcription of recorded voice dictation. It runs on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The software transcribes dictation recorded by an individual speaker. Typically the speaker will record their dictation using a digital recording device such as a handheld digital recorder, mobile smartphone (e.g.
The built-in Mavericks OS X speech recognition is a good piece of Voice recognition software to give you a taste of what speech recognition is like, but not as good as Dragon Dictate. This is mainly due to the complete lack of any correction capability. Hereâs how it compares to Dragon Naturally Speaking, and how to enable the âEnhanced Dictationâ Mode which makes it a lot faster.
Overview.
You may remember the launch of the first Macintosh in 1984. Steve Jobs said âtoday, for the first time ever, Iâd like to let Macintosh speak for itself,â and the computer replies.
âHello, Iâm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.â
Then in the 1990âs we had âPlaintalkâ and âMacintalkâ. These were attempts to make the Macintosh computer human. There was also âSpeakable Itemsâ where you could dictate short commands to the Mac.
In OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) Apple introduced âdictation.â It was basically an OS X version of âSIRIâ where your speech would be sent off to a server to be recognised and the text would come back to your computer.
In OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), for the first time, there is a usable speech recognition engine built-in to Mac OS X. There was not a lot of fanfare about it. In fact it almost comes as a hidden feature. You need to turn it on by enabling a mode called âEnhanced Dictationâ in the System Preferences. Despite this understated introduction, I think itâs one of the best things about OS X Mavericks.
The only thing lacking from the built in Mavericks dictation is correction. If correction arrives in the next version of OS X, it will be a game changer.
The one major flaw: No correction.
Mavericks Dictation would be to be very painful to use as a long term solution because there is no way of correcting mistakes and therefore helping it to learn. If there is a word it gets wrong, it will be getting it wrong forever. It works OK for me, but if it made any more mistakes that it did it would be un-usable without a correction and training feature.
One of the redeeming features of speech recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking (on the PC) and Dragon Dictate (on the Mac) is that even though it makes the occasional mistake, it has a correction feature. If you correct a word it will learn from this. The more mistakes you correct the better it gets.There are lots of articles comparing the accuracy of Dragon dictate with the built in OS X dictation. But most of these articles fail to address this important difference. For example here at macworld they state that the accuracy of Dragon Dictate is 96.6 percent and for Mavericksâs Dictation is 89.6 percent. But no mention that the Mavericks has no learning ability. Here they compare the speed of dictation between the two programs. Again, they miss the biggest difference.The biggest difference is not the accuracy or the speed. The biggest difference is the ability to learn. Accuracy and speed can both improve as the software learns to adapt to your voice. This means that Dragon Dictate will continue to improve as you use it. The OS X built-in dictation will continue to be stuck with words it doesnât understand.If you are thinking of speech recognition, the built in Maverickâs OS X speech recognition might be a good trial. If you like what you see, go and buy Dragon Dictate. If you donât like it, stay away!
Enabling the âEnhanced Dictationâ
To enable this you need to go into the System Preferences. Under âDictationâ there is a checkbox called âuse enhanced dictation.â If you check this box it will download the speech files that you need.
See it in action
Unlike Dragon Dictate, there is no training involved. The built in, untrained speech recognition does a reasonably good job. Look at this:
Compare this with Dragon Dictate. Dragon Dictate is slightly better:
Here is an example of where the Mavericks OS X built-in dictation seems to be going a bit better:
Microphone
If you are going to attempt to seriously use the built-in OS X dictation, I suggest you get yourself a good microphone. You really need a good headset microphone with some noise cancellation that is either Bluetooth or USB compatible. I suggest you check out knowbrainer.com. I got a great Samson wireless headset from them.
![]() Conclusion
The built-in Mavericks OS X speech recognition is in my opinion a good trail. It is almost as accurate as Dragon Dictate and will give you a feel for speech recognition provided (1) you have a good microphone and (2) you are expecting it to be a trial, not a viable long term speech recognition product.
It sounds like Nuanceâs Dragon engine is what powers SIRI. If thatâs the case, if Apple add correction to their Dictation app then Nuanceâs Dragon Dictate would become completely obsolete. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future with Appleâs Dictation.
My suggestion is to try out OSX Dictation (in Enhanced Mode), and if you like it, go and buy Dragon Dictate.
Related posts:Dragon Naturally Speaking arrives on the Macintosh!How to dictate to your Macintosh with good accuracyHow to buy Macspeech Dictate in AustraliaDragon for Mac FeaturesHow to stop Dragon for Mac 6 from crashingRoss Macdonaldsays:July 16, 2014 at 7:49 am
I have recently purchased a MacBook Pro Retina (unbelievable graphics!!!) and decide to try Maverickâs Dictation. To say I was disappointed was an understatement! I found that the time taken to go back to find and fix the mistakes probably took longer than typing the text in by hand. The real annoying part is that I can not train it to prevent it from making the same mistakes over and over again. ReplyWaynesays:July 17, 2014 at 3:58 am
In the past I have used Dragon Dictation in Windows. Okay, it took half an hour of reading to have the computer recognise my broad Australian drawl. Each time I used it I would correct the mistakes. After a week or so I was down to one or two errors per page! Give me Dragon over Maverickâs any day. Reading how Apple strives for excellence, the concern I have is that in future editions of Maverickâs, Apple might include a âlearning procedureâ. If so all that money for Dragon might be wasted. Even still I think I will purchase a Mac version of Dragon and educate my MacBook Pro so it performs even better. I hope this was useful. Regards Ross Macdonald
That was very a very useful comment Ross. Speech recognition is so variable and subjective itâs great to hear from other users. Yes I agree the lack of training and correction is a complete deal-breaker. So your trial of OS-X Dictation was worse than my vide above? Iâd love to hear if Dragon Dictate goes better, and if itâs better out of the box or only after training. Did you see the link for Dragon Dictate download for $99? (I assume you have a good mic?)
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ReplySyd
Speech Recognition Software For Mac Os X 10 13 Downloadsays:November 17, 2014 at 5:39 pm
While I really do appreciate the time you spent comparing the different types of word recognition and I can see the benefits of both, I am really surprised that you, as a writer, would not take the time to grammar or spell-check your work. It seems that youâve come to rely on the dictation software just a little too much.
I wonât point out the several mistakes (and Iâm talking about in the main article, not the text on the video thumbs), but if you even re-read it, Iâm sure youâll find them. I am one of those people who feels itâs important to preserve at least reasonable writing or it will go the way that the âeducatorsâ are taking cursive writing: out of the systemâanother mistake.
In any case, enjoy your Samson!
ReplyWaynesays:November 17, 2014 at 10:26 pm
Oops â thanks. Iâll have a look at that!
ReplyKreggersays:December 11, 2014 at 12:07 pm
Does anyone know if thereâs voice recognition that can be used to express commands to videos on YouTube? Say basic stuff like, pause, play, etc.
Thank you
ReplyKlaus Hecklesays:April 26, 2015 at 2:46 am
Thanks for your reviews! ReplyWaynesays:April 28, 2015 at 4:50 am
How is it with Yosemite, has Dictate improved? Apple says, the recognition would âlearnâ, is this true and if yes, does this apply for the online or/and the offline-version?
Yes has improved very much with accuracy. Itâs quite amazing out of the box. It seems pretty much on par with Siri and it seems more accurate than Dragon out of the box. But there is still no correction. So although it is better, it cannot learn by you telling it to correct your mistakes. For example it will not recognise me saying âYosemiteâ and there is no way for me to train it so I simply cannot dictate the word âYosemiteâ to it. With dragon I can train it to words it doesnât know and it learns them.
ReplySean Brophysays:December 4, 2018 at 5:09 am
I have used dragon dictate for many years and found it to be really good. However, after upgrading to Mojave it no longer works in many applications, and when I tried to remedy this I found that they have decided to discontinue Dragon Dictate for mac. They did this 2 months almost to the day after taking $300 from me for the latest version. To say i am annoyed is an understatement. They had to have known it was about to be discontinued and still took my money. Alas, for any serious typing tasks the mac built-in in dictation is absolutely useless, massively annoying in the way it can not decide when to start new sentences random capitalizations etc., and is actually very counter productive. Beyond simply commands it is utter pants. If there are alternatives to Dragon ReplyJoysays:August 27, 2019 at 8:33 am
now that it has been pulled I am desperate to know about it.
Exactly the same here Shawn, and I apologise that Mac dictation is so appalling it canât even spell your name correctly the. Oh look a bonus word from Apple⦠sadly not arresting alongside Brandon capital letters okay so that made no sense(I said not a random saying no) nope I said round round. Obviously random and round are the same word. Not a random failure. You see how hard it is to just make a sentence? Any way Back to the plot what there is of it,I too was a ripped off by Dragon literally moments after purchase and also after purchasing a Mac Pro. As I am disabled and cannot use either hand, I Like so many disabled Mac users this is an appalling situation and Iâm shocked that they donât care about people who already struggle so deeply to communicate because of disability and pain. Apple dictation is even worse because it cannot be edited all trained or as OR and now I just said all these things and itâs just completely deleted it matters how bad it is it is genuinely impossible to communicate if you want this disabled and the unfortunate owner of an Mac computer given that despicable company Dragon Grey and another random word anyway wish you well. Anyone reading this do not buy apple and avoid Dragon.
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