[Freeswitch-users] Voice to text / speech recognition

Tue May 11 18:51:38 PDT 2010

Hi Wellie,

Many thanks for purchasing Vestec speech recognition engine.

Respectfully, I would like to make a few clarifications: 

(a) Vestec speech engine is designed for IVR-type interactive voice applications. Almost all such applications can be easily addressed with a vocabulary size of 500 keywords per recognition. (Remember, there can be several recognitions within one application; each recognition pertains to one state, such as one level in a multi-level menu tree). In addition, a variety of non-IVR applications - such as speech-based directory assistance (ie. utterance of a person's name as opposed to entering the customary first three letters of a person's last name for routing) - can be built for all SMB and most SME applications with a speech engine supporting 500 keywords vocabulary size.

(b) Vestec speech engine is not designed to be used as a general purpose dictation/transcription system. Such dictation/transcription systems - for example, for voicemail-to-email transcription - generally require a vocabulary size of tens of thousands of words, not to mention important "training" data (that must be collected or purchased separately) for building the grammar for the desired application. Nuance offers a dictation system in the form of its its Dragon Speech product.

(c) in the IVR space - which by the way constitutes the overwhelming majority of commercial speech applications and is a natural fit with telephony platforms such as Freeswitch - Vestec speech engine offers the best deal around. Not only does it offer among the highest recognition accuracy in the industry and industry standards-based grammar writing format, it supports the same vocabulary size as LumenVox Lite (500 keywords) but costs less than 50% of its retail price, and offers twice the vocabulary size of Nuance tier-1 engine (250 keywords) and retails at less than 20% of its price.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
-Kashif

 Kashif Kahn
VP, Business Development
Vestec, Inc.
Waterloo, ON Canada
phone: (519) 885-7615

________________________________
From: Wellie Chao <wchao at yahoo.com>
To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 9:03:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Voice to text / speech recognition

Thanks! I am installing Vestec's solution now. It only handles small 
vocabulary speech recognition rather than large vocabulary speech 
recognition, but that's also useful (albeit for a different service). We 
can use it for IVR menus. Still looking for a large vocabulary solution 
similar to Nuance's product. I'd love to hear from anybody on the list who 
has used a large vocabulary speech recognition product.

Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 16:46:12 -0700
From: Michael Collins <msc at freeswitch.org>
Reply-To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Voice to text / speech recognition

You guys need to check out Vestec. Go buy a $25 SDK for your dev server. Tell them that the FS guys sent you and they'll refund
your $25 (check via snail mail). I haven't had a chance to dig into this one yet but I fully intend to do so. However, if you
guys are working on real solutions to real world problems then you're in a great position to give Vestec a test drive. More
info: http://www.freeswitch.org/node/252

See, you should visit freeswitch.org more frequently than twice a year! ;)

-MC

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Jan Berger <jan.berger at video24.no> wrote:
      Hi,

      I am going to look into Sphinx myself for IVR menus.

      Recognition factor is not so much the software as it is the quality of the
      database and how well it is tuned. Tuning you can do yourself with tools
      provided from sphinx + it does exist a separate open source database that I
      believe you can use.

      Doing IVR menus is feasible. But, to translate free speech you have a
      challenge called dialects. The fact is that recognition factor is not 100%
      even with people with the same dialect, and many dialects are very far out
      so analyze the language of your clients and make some very accurate
      questions to the vendor to ensure you get what you want.

      Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org
[mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of Wellie
Chao
Sent: 10. mai 2010 19:09
To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
Subject: [Freeswitch-users] Voice to text / speech recognition

I'm looking to provide a feature to transcribe voicemails into text for my
users. I've looked at SpinVox (which was acquired by Nuance). Their
licensing method doesn't seem particularly friendly or flexible. They
charge per user and lock each license to a particular user's actual
identity. If I have a user named John Smith, I have to buy a license from
Nuance _for John Smith_. If John Smith stops using the voicemail to text
feature, but I have another user named Jane Doe who wants to start using
the voicemail to text feature, I have to buy a new license for Jane Doe.
Since Nuance makes you pay for a license one year at a time, it gets
expensive if you have any significant churn. Apart from that, it is just
annoying to have to register users with another company. I'd like to buy
100 or 1000 or 10000 licenses and use them how I see fit and not have to
bother with registering individual users with a provider of speech
recognition services.

I am wondering if other FreeSWITCH users have recommendations for good
voice to text services or software. I'd be happy to consider either a
service or software. If software, ideally it would be free of course, but
a reasonable cost would also be acceptable. I know about PocketSphinx, but
is it really sufficiently high quality as to be useful for transcribing
voicemails? I don't need 100% accuracy -- probably 80% or 90% would be
good enough since I will also attach the WAV file and direct my users to
use the WAV file when in doubt.

Any pointers or tips would be appreciated.

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