Microphone

[dadill]

Does the microphone "learn". I can not get it to recognize any word with more than two sylabills.

Dale

 

[twerppoet]

Dictation?

It is supposed to learn, but it is also notoriously poor at accents and dialects. If you're accent is other than what we west coasters consider 'no accent' then that is probably the hangup. It's one of the reasons that Apple has been careful to label Siri as a public beta (not finished) product. Dictation uses the same services and servers as Siri for language recognition.

iOS 6, coming sometime this fall, is supposed to greatly improve it's recognition of dialects and accents; as well as more than double the number of languages supported.

 

[dadill]

I live in St. Louis and feel I do not have any heavy accent. The microphone will not reproduce TAP. I repeated refridgerator at least six times and got a different translation every time. If it is supposed to learn it has a steep learning curve.

Dale

 

[twerppoet]

Well, it has to somehow figure out you meant refrigerator before it can learn you said refrigerator; at least close enough to offer it as an option. I believe most of the learning is in Siri, where your responses offer a greater degree of feedback.

And, guessing from the many blog posts, some people's voices just don't seem to work right with Siri or Dictation. I imagine it's something that Apple will have to continue working on for the product's entire life.

Here is a quick test I did. I had no problem getting it to recognize refrigerator. It did fail on the word 'opened', but notice the blue underline and alternate interpretations it offered. I'm guessing the next time I say 'opened' it will be more likely to get it right. {providing I make the correction} To be fair, I stumbled a bit saying that word, and two previous test I made with the same sentence got it right on the first try; as well as refrigerator.



None of this is particularly helpful.

I suppose you could practice your best newscaster impression.

 

[twerppoet]

Cool! I just discovered I can select text, and then dictate a replacement/correction.

 

[thewitt]

Back in the 1980s I created a system for voice data entry inside a factory. The users were sitting with their faces up against a microscope and had on a headset with noise canceling microphone.

We had to train the system on their particular speech pattern for about 10 hours, repeating the numbers and commands they would use when actually on the system. After the training, error rates were about 1/2 of 1 percent.

I'm amazed that's today's technology understands me nearly that well with no training...

 

[twerppoet]

In theory the F4 flight simulator I worked on had the same ability, to respond to pilots practicing flight and emergency procedures. The reality was that it took so much voice training from each pilot that it was rarely/never used. It was far simpler to have another pilot at the control board to play tower, wing, etc.

And yes, that was also the early 80's.

 

[dadill]

Please explain "select a text". If my messages is simple enough it is a wonderful way to make quick notes and I appreciate it and keep trying. It can replace my little notebook, that gets lost or overlooked, but I get so frustrated making a notation the finding out I must go back and delete then replace the work or phrase that was misunderstood by the iPad.
Thank all of you for the appreciated input.

Dale

 

[twerppoet]

Selecting text, the normal way. Tap and hold on a word, and you will get a popup menu with Select, and Select all as options. {lift your finger when you see the magnifying glass} Choose select, then drag the little dots (drag handles) to include the text you want to replace. Enter dictation mode while the text is highlighted and it (that text) will be replaced by what you say.

You can also double tap on a word to highlight just that word, then drag the handles to expand the text. This works best with larger text fonts.