Hey Kids,

Im looking at buying a digital voice recorder atm, but Im wondering if anyone is aware of some decent software for converting the audio into text?

Im just wondering how easy I can make this process or if its all going to have to be hand done.

Ive done the standard google searches, theres alot of hits for Dragon which Ive heard of, but have never used so Im no aware of its capabilities or if it has a digital audio plugin etc.

Advice?

Cheers!

While I havent used anything of the sort for a long time.
Dragon Dictate, use to be the best I found.

Only used it mucking around though, never for any real purpose.

No idea it it will accept other media as an input inplace of a Mic though.
I see no reason why It couldn't.

I think it's now called Dragon NaturallySpeaking?

The software built into Vista works pretty nicely. Of course, you can only use it if you have Vista installed.

^ Na, just running XP Media Pro

4 staff members at my work use Dragon. While it does take some persevering, it can become extremely efficient. Lots of people will tell you it just isn't worth the effort (was my opinion before I worked here). If you're doing lots of dictation then it could save you countless hours in the long run...but be prepared to waste a lot of time to get it going.

It does have the ability to accept audio from dictation devices. I have not used this feature though so can't tell you how well it works...the obvious problem that comes to mind is not being able to see and correct what the computer interprets as you speak....but I guess if you had it trained accurately enough and you had enough experience using it it could be OK.

I would go for a good quality device though...probably one recommended by Dragon (they list approved models on their website and give them ratings). Audio quality plays a big part in accuracy.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k252/jwcol1/dicktation.jpg

Also probably worth noting that Dragon will liekly cost you much more than upgrading to Vista would....so if the speech recognition in Vista is good that might be a cheaper alternative...but I've only briefly looked at the Vista recognition (it appeared to work quite well). Also not sure if it has dictation device input as an option.