Newsgroups: comp.speech
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From: daphne@netcom.com (Daphne Gould)
Subject: Re: speech to text
Message-ID: <daphneCvH2Ew.4F7@netcom.com>
Sender: Joel Gould 
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <daphneCvBntn.4tJ@netcom.com> <341mnu$1s7@search01.news.aol.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 1994 22:28:08 GMT
Lines: 47

In article <341mnu$1s7@search01.news.aol.com>, MeiTien <meitien@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <daphneCvBntn.4tJ@netcom.com>, daphne@netcom.com (Daphne Gould)
>writes:
>
>Joel,
>
>Is Dragon system "speaker independent" and can dictate continuous speech?
>
>Does it do both recognition and text to speech? Will it confirm to MS new
>Speech API standard?
>
>How much does it cost? Will it have run time fee?
>
>Thanks.
>Mei-Tien

DragonDictate for DOS and DragonDictate for Windows are both 
"speaker-adaptive" which means that they learn the way you talk as you use
the products.  Although there is no required training before you use the 
products, initial performance is not good enough to consider them 
"speaker-independent".  They require that you correct any recognition 
errors that the recognizer makes as you use the product and they learn 
from both the corrections and from the words that were recognized correctly.

DragonDictate is a discrete recognition product.  It does not currently
support continuous speech.

DragonDictate does speech-to-text (recognition).  It does not include any
text-to-speech function; however, resellers and customers often use 
DragonDictate in combination with text-to-speech products from other
vendors.

The MS Speech API is still under development and is not available in any
shipping product.  Although I can not comment on unannounced products,
Dragon is participating in the MS Speech API effort and future products
should support it, if appropiate.

DragonDictate for Windows, Starter Edition (5,000 words active) retails 
for $395 for users who already have a sound card.  DragonDictate for 
Windows, Classic Edition (30,000 words active) retails for $695.  These 
prices are for single user liscences.

Contact Dragon Systems at (617) 965-5200 for more information.

Joel Gould
Dragon Systems

