Customer Reviews

iListen (Mac)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

When the time came to write this review, I unfortunately came down with a case of laryngitis and therefore found the review quite a bit more challenging! I then worked on trying to get the program to deal with my hoarse voice... but iListen came through pretty well, and I wrote this review with very little use of the keyboard.

IListen is, quite simply, a powerful, comprehensive voice recognition and command system for the Macintosh. It uses a system of recognizing sounds and putting them into context to create words or commands on your Mac (horrific oversimplification). I have played around with systems like this in the past, and I'll admit that I have been less than impressed with the results. The voice recognition system that comes with OS 9 and 10 certainly didn't hold up to hard use (and doesn't have a dictation mode, anyway) and my interest in a robust system is more than a passing interest, in that my work requires me to dictate large quantities of text at very high rate of speed. Accuracy and ability to easily correct my errors are also paramount to me, and so it was with great interest that I loaded up iListen and set about trying to use it for simple home applications.

Set up of the program was very easy, and with a little bit of messing around with system preferences I got the program fully working. There is a somewhat lengthy initial period of training the program to recognize your voice, which consists of reading chunks of text into this system so that it can learn your particular style of speech. Interestingly enough, the program is also capable of assimilating text documents you have already made to try and learn your style of writing. The more time and effort you put into the training period (both initially and along the way, any time you like), the better the program does with your speech.


IListen has several modes of function, including a dictation mode, a spelling mode, and a command mode. There is a great deal of customizability to the system, and you can certainly add extra words, your own macros, and your own phonetics. The program is engineered to recognize natural, full-speed speech: no awkward pauses or exaggerations - you just talk, fast as you like, in your normal speaking style. You can use iListen to dictate documents in virtually any program, and you can even just use the program to command your Mac in a hands-free manner. There is quite a bit of learning involved in getting all of the available commands down, but the program is surprisingly flexible, and I'm confident that with frequent use it will continue to just get better and better at its job.

Ideally, I would love to challenge this program by taking it to my office, seeing an entire schedule of patients, and then dictating all my encounters for that day into the program at my regular full-bore speed, just to see how well it handles my mumbling, my medical jargon, and my particular and at times unconventional syntax. Unfortunately, there are some privacy laws that are going to get in the way of that experiment, but in the future I certainly could see myself getting a hand-held Dictaphone and plugging it into a computer at the end of the day, correcting my dictations, and then printing them so that they can go back into the chart that day! (And for quite a bit less than the cost of transcription, the fees for which are sizable.)


After some initial growing pains, I must say that I have been impressed with the results this program can produce. Even with a fairly rudimentary training period, the accuracy of the program is reasonably good, even now as I sit here and dictate this review, recovering from laryngitis.

Overall, I found the program to be quite flexible and customizable, and greatly capable of learning from its mistakes. Its initial recognition rate is quite good, and the percentage improves with more time and effort put into training the program. And mentally, the "widget factor" is quite substantial, but in all seriousness the implications of programs like this are potentially important in fields that involve dictation and voice commands. Obviously people who can't use their hands and fingers have had use for programs like this for quite some time, and those possibilities are exciting as well.

Initially, I thought I had found the program to be buggy in getting correction mode going properly, but found that I simply had not set the System preferences properly (as the instructions had stated), and after setting the universal access preferences properly, I had no further significant problems in using this program. I tested the program on a high end G5 Macintosh with plenty of physical RAM, and I found performance to be excellent; I'm not sure how iListen would fare on a slower system, but I've seen user reports on the net that indicate that its performance is satisfactory on G3 PowerBooks.

Although I have not used any competing products (e.g., Via Voice), I rate this program highly and would recommend that anyone with an interest in putting voice recognition to work for them give iListen a try. One caveat, though: iListen requires a quality microphone (preferably a headset) to function optimally; I bought a Telex H-851 microphone use for this review, and I've found its performance to be very good with iListen. The MacSpeech website lists compatible microphone hardware, and as of the time of this review, the iSight is not among the compatible devices listed (I think its microphone is not directional enough to work well with iListen).

This is definately not a plug and play Mac-like product. I wanted it to work for me, but instead, I was working for it from the beginning. In trying to problem solve its errors, I purchased first their recommended transcription digital voice recorder (Olympus DS 2, which I do love), to find out that it then needed its recommended headset, and THEN, find out MacSpeech did not support this setup unless I bought the DS-2 directly from them (reconditioned no less), and I was supposed to fork out MORE money to get the suplemental software in order to get the program to work from the recorder. Tech support wrote back promptly advising me to use the OLD version included in the folder which had voice recorder bridges built in. It would have been very nice for them to inform me of all these complexities in advance of the purchase, or give a little consideration (such as a coupon for their recorder software bridge) because they led me down the path of over two hundred dollars more of purchases (the Olympus and the wonderful Platonix headset) beyond the basic software purchase. Did I mention the hours of web reseach trying to figure out where the button they referred to on their technical documents was to activate the recorder transfer fuction was? Only to find out there was none until they finsihed with the supplemental software, which I would haave to buy because I didn't buy the Olympus from them. They admitted they were in the process of developing the recorder transfer fuction AFTER their marketing campaign that led to my purchase. Not to mention the crytpic anti-intuitive training and correction methods. I felt more used by them than I did by my ex-wife. By then I was discouraged and lost my belief in the company. More good money after bad? No, so I went back to my human transcriber. Although she does C work, at least I could get her to correct my errors, she takes responsibility, and I know what she is going to cost. I figure the few hundred dollars to MacSpeech was cheaper then my divorce decree, and equally as non-productive. This is a windows like program in Mac clothing.

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The thing is that this is the best there is and the best just is not very good yet. There are just too many variables. They really need to warn people when they buy because this is expensive stuff. I want a refund. We should not have to rely on the word of others but on the company itself. They are not being honest enough. They should say this is still primitive and hard to use and prone to errors. It is just barely usable at best. It takes a ton of work to make it better and better is still not good. I bought this on a hope and a dream and was shot down by that, being all I was standing on. The problem is that they still have my money. It is not fair but that it is the way it is. I knew it going in but I warn you all now. Watch out. The chances are better than not that this is not a good move buying this. The chances are this will not be what you need it to be.

Paul

If you're looking for software that will just type what you say the moment you install it, you are going to be disappointed with ALL voice recognition software. Training a computer to understand you takes time, it is like learning a foreign language. IListen is WAY better than the other VR programs out there, much better organized, seamless, I'd say. I got this program working much quicker than Dragon. There's a misconception that this sort of program is just going to work out of the box. It's not like that, it's more of a power-user program. Stick with it, it DOES work.

I have the newest version Mac OSX, and use AOL. This software freezes up when I open AOL - so I can't use to type emails (the whole reason I bought it). Furthermore, they have no free telephone support (and highly "discourage" any phone calls at all) - and I submitted a trouble ticket more than a week ago and haven't heard a peep.

Used Dragon Naturally Speaking for years on my PC, but shifted to a Mac and got this program. Did two tutorials and txt document for training, but after hours of frustrating attemps, will have to give it up. Most of the time it will not even correctly recognize the command "correct that", and enters other words. Repeatedly I did corrections of common words to no avail. I have some disappointments with the Mac, but this is serious for one used to voice dictation.

I purchased this product hoping I could save myself a lot of typing. It kept adding words that i was not saying and by the time i corrected it, it would add more words. I am writing a book on short stories, so i had to send them to my sister to type for me.

If you want to waste you life trying to make this work then go ahead. I followed the ilisten instructions to the letter. The first time I invested 5hrs training and the software crashed destroying my profile. The second time I did the same but could not get it any higher than 70% accuracy (a lot of the time it struggled to make it past 50%) then you have got spend a lot of time correcting its mistakes. I can type faster than that. This product is a joke.

I've been using iListen for almost 10 years now. They've been continually improving it & it is really a great speech recognition product. I'm disabled & learned to use it expecting I'd lose control of my hands. While I still have use of them, it is a huge energy saver. It is great whether you have a disability or just need dictation software.

I can tell you it is equally important to buy a good mic/headset or other mic setup for it...[...] This is true of any application where you input audio into the computer.