# Anyone have experience with Microsoft speech-to-text program? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 10, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125 "2011-01-10T19:10:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/1 "2011-01-10T19:10:59Z")
Long story short, I messed up my left shoulder. I’ll be seeing an orthopedist tomorrow, but it’s difficult to type for more than five minutes at a stretch. I can click a mouse and do a large portion of my job, but I do have an article and a couple of presentations to write in the next few weeks. Anybody have experience using the MS speech to text program? It seems promising, but then what doesn’t on paper? ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/2 "2011-01-10T19:16:10Z")
I don’t know anyone who has had any luck with it whatsoever. I get the distinct impression that Microsoft didn’t put much time or effort into developing it, but just wanted to claim that they’d developed such a program for disabled users. Dragon Naturally Speaking, on the other hand, works great in versions 9+. Version 11 is in stores now, and you could probably get an older (and cheaper) version online within a few days. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/3 "2011-01-10T23:00:21Z")
The speech recognition (SR) engine in Windows Vista and 7 is pretty much state-of-the-art. I worked with SR and text-to-speech (TTS) a lot in my last job (and I am a co-inventor on a patent for improving SR). Compared to the various Nuance products [they own or have exclusive license for virtually every SR engine on the planet, including Dragon Naturally Speaking], the most recent generation MS engine have a higher success rate in dictionary mode. Microsoft Research does a lot with SR, and some of their work made it into Vista. What Microsoft does not have (as a commercial product) is a good server-based SR engine that can do recognition on voice segments, such as is required for IVR (telephony) systems, nor do they have a grammar-based engine (which generally produces much better results, but requires that the user keep to a very restricted vocabulary). For dictation, such as document creation, the built-in Windows engine will give as good or better results than a third-party product. Ideally, the Windows engine would have a grammar-based engine for menu navigation and file and application control, but they don’t. If third-party products support grammar-based engines for non-dictation situations, they will generally have better results. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/4 "2011-01-11T21:03:36Z")
**Cerowyn** , I’m trying hard to believe you, but I just tried the MS speech-to-text program and it did not understand a single word I said. Not one. “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” was transcribed as “Law or OM were all were even.” It’s not even coming up with _words_. Absolutely nothing about the program worked. OTOH, saying the same phrase on my cell phone came up with the correct phrase. So, I’m kind of at a loss as to what I might be doing wrong with the MS program. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/5 "2011-01-11T23:50:52Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > **Cerowyn** , I’m trying hard to believe you, but I just tried the MS speech-to-text program and it did not understand a single word I said. Not one. “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” was transcribed as “Law or OM were all were even.” It’s not even coming up with _words_. Absolutely nothing about the program worked. OTOH, saying the same phrase on my cell phone came up with the correct phrase. > > So, I’m kind of at a loss as to what I might be doing wrong with the MS program. Did you run the training wizard? Dictation engines usually need a good voice model, and the training wizard will also identify any audio issues that might play havoc with recognition. If you did, I don’t have an explanation for your experience. I don’t use the SR engine very often, but I just tried the same sentence as you in WordPad and it came out fine. Here’s an [Ars Technica review](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2010/05/win-7s-built-in-speech-recognition-a-review.ars) that judges MS’s effort good (but inferior to Dragon Naturally Speaking 9). It doesn’t appear that [Dragon Naturally Speaking](http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-product/dragon-for-pc/home-version/index.htm) has a demo version, but if you’re unhappy with the built-in SR engine, it might be worth the $99 for you to try out DNS. I should also point out that my post was a bit inaccurate in at least one respect: Microsoft does have a server-based product, based on technology they bought in 2007. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2011, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/6 "2011-01-12T02:13:36Z")
I have both Dragon Naturally Speaking and Vista Voice Recognition. Both performed about the same for me. And I used the moduals to get the programs to adapt to your voice. Maybe I just speak awful ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-experience-with-microsoft-speech-to-text-program/567125/7 "2011-01-12T17:08:29Z")
I found what was wrong…it was an internal mike on my laptop that was malfunctioning. Now it works great! Thanks 🙂