# 1 Week Training My Dragon



## Elizabeth Ann West

Hi all!

I'm still on lunch break. I have 6 minutes to post this. That's okay, me and my headset I have aptly named Toothless can do this! In fact, just now when I dictated toothless, it made the name lowercase, and I was able to use my voice to go back,select that word and tell it to make it capitalized. It  did that and we're moving on.

To recap, it's been one week since I purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4 for Mac because primarily of my injuries from poor posture in my neck. I also use a Sony IC recorder to dictate my stories all over, often in my car, and have my computer transcribe them. When I first started, I managed 550 words dictated in about 20 minutes. Using my IC recorder to record two 11 minute files today I'm happy to report I'm up to 1190 words!! 

I've taken copious notes about my sessions to dictate and my sessions to edit those words. I am consistently over 1000 words for 20 minutes of dictation. However, that total increases significantly when I dictate for longer periods of time I think because I become more comfortable telling the story. In 40 minutes, I have consistently dictated 2500 words plus. But what about editing?

On average it takes me half  of the time it took to dictate the words to edit them into a polished state I consider draft material for my editor. My editor is my business partner and she reads over it, makes changes, and runs through autocrit. We do use a copy editor for our final drafts to look for typos. 

So here's where I'm over the moon, jumping for joy, and screaming from the rooftops:  two hours of dictation this week equated to over 7000 words of raw material. It took me two more hours total, to edit all of that material.  And while that's an average of 1750 words per hour, that's higher than the words per hour I can type physically without even going into what I have to pay later in pain to do so. So even if you're not a victim of stress-related injuries, training your own Dragon might still be a good idea to shoot your productivity into the stratosphere.

Taking on a Dragon is not something you should do lightly.  I tried twice before when I had no motivation to really make it work and failed. But, since Toothless and I have become best friends forever more, I've heard from other authors who've given it a try and found it works similarly for them. Make sure you're willing to give it a week or two to adjust to writing a new way. Keep telling yourself the words you write in the words you say all come from the same place: your brain. It takes a little bit of practice, but I think within a week you'll find yourself flying high as a kite with your own  Dragon!

**My lunch period is over   I have to go dictate more/edit more. I promise I won't keep giving Dragon updates. In reality, I won't need to, you'll just see my author page filled with books I talked out loud.  But I thought one week of working with my Dragon was a good status report to share.


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## NoBlackHats

Very interesting!  Thanks for the review.


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## Christian Martin

Wow....very interesting. Thank you for sharing.


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## Zelah Meyer

Congrats on finding a method that works well for you.  

I am intrigued by voice to text - but I currently can't imagine dictating a story.  I could improvise one with just dialogue, and that would flow reasonably well - but to dictate it?  That seems like such a big and scary step.  So very different to the way I currently work that it seems impossible that I would be able to adjust.

How did you feel before you tried it?  Were you similarly uncertain, or did you think it was something that would work for you even back then?


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## Elizabeth Ann West

I have to go pick up my daughter, I forgot today is a half day. GRRR.

I felt like an idiot the first time I tried it years and years ago (like version 6 back in the mid 2000s). In 2012, I started off just dictating IDEAS. Since I always get plot bunnies and ideas for a project when I'm driving, it was frustrating to never be able to write them down. Now I just turn on my SONY recorder and stick it in the cup holder and off we go and I talk to myself. 

This time around, I expected to be SLOWER talking my story out. Ha! Yeah, we speak waaaaay faster than we type. Way faster. Those 11 minutes files for example? Probably 25% is silence. You can talk with huge gaps in between thoughts and the Dragon just ignores it. So when you're recording you FEEL super slow. When it transcribes, you're like "Holy hell, how did I say that many words??" I did research and realized most people speak about 100 word per minute, auctioneers 300 words per minute. The FASTEST I've ever written typing was 1250 words in an hour, creating words. I type fast, but typing words I have to come up with, 20 words per minute is what I can manage. Dictation I'm transcribing 54 words per minute, coming down to about 30-40 wpm if you include editing time.

ok gotta jet! 

P.s this was typed. I think I make more mistakes when I type lol


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## Lydniz

I like the sound of it, but I'm not sure I could get on with it myself as I tend to write and rewrite and rewrite each sentence. Wouldn't that get a bit annoying?


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## Elizabeth Ann West

LAST post, just got back, then I have to go work. 

To Lydniz, no it doesn't get annoying. When I talk into my Sony recorder I just talk. I can't SEE the words, so there's no desire to rewrite. By the time I transcribe it, it's been a little bit of time and I'm editing it anyway, that's when I rewrite a sentence or two. I think speaking has improved my writing because it's more storytelling. I tell more details speaking than writing because I think writing I see it in my head and assume it's all getting there on the page.

Truly, if you don't want a dragon, don't get one. Once you HAVE a dragon and train it, you won't go back.


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## John Ellsworth

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Hi all!
> 
> I'm still on lunch break. I have 6 minutes to post this. That's okay, me and my headset I have aptly named Toothless can do this! In fact, just now when I dictated toothless, it made the name lowercase, and I was able to use my voice to go back,select that word and tell it to make it capitalized. It did that and we're moving on.
> 
> To recap, it's been one week since I purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4 for Mac because primarily of my injuries from poor posture in my neck. I also use a Sony IC recorder to dictate my stories all over, often in my car, and have my computer transcribe them. When I first started, I managed 550 words dictated in about 20 minutes. Using my IC recorder to record two 11 minute files today I'm happy to report I'm up to 1190 words!!
> 
> I've taken copious notes about my sessions to dictate and my sessions to edit those words. I am consistently over 1000 words for 20 minutes of dictation. However, that total increases significantly when I dictate for longer periods of time I think because I become more comfortable telling the story. In 40 minutes, I have consistently dictated 2500 words plus. But what about editing?
> 
> On average it takes me half of the time it took to dictate the words to edit them into a polished state I consider draft material for my editor. My editor is my business partner and she reads over it, makes changes, and runs through autocrit. We do use a copy editor for our final drafts to look for typos.
> 
> So here's where I'm over the moon, jumping for joy, and screaming from the rooftops: two hours of dictation this week equated to over 7000 words of raw material. It took me two more hours total, to edit all of that material. And while that's an average of 1750 words per hour, that's higher than the words per hour I can type physically without even going into what I have to pay later in pain to do so. So even if you're not a victim of stress-related injuries, training your own Dragon might still be a good idea to shoot your productivity into the stratosphere.
> 
> Taking on a Dragon is not something you should do lightly. I tried twice before when I had no motivation to really make it work and failed. But, since Toothless and I have become best friends forever more, I've heard from other authors who've given it a try and found it works similarly for them. Make sure you're willing to give it a week or two to adjust to writing a new way. Keep telling yourself the words you write in the words you say all come from the same place: your brain. It takes a little bit of practice, but I think within a week you'll find yourself flying high as a kite with your own Dragon!
> 
> **My lunch period is over  I have to go dictate more/edit more. I promise I won't keep giving Dragon updates. In reality, I won't need to, you'll just see my author page filled with books I talked out loud.  But I thought one week of working with my Dragon was a good status report to share.


Do you use a mike or headset independent of the mac? Or is the mac's built-in mike sufficient?

Thanks.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

I have the headset that came with Dragon 12 for PC. it works on my MAC. The mac built in mike works fine too as long as your room is quiet. I prefer the SONY recorder to anything (so I can get comfy), the headset over the built in mike because I can listen to music while I dictate (the headphones are independent of the microphone piece, even though they are connected).


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## TBD

With the latest Dragon for PC -- DNS 13 -- my laptop mic works fine. That wasn't the case with DNS 12 on either my laptop or desktop.

I am the world's worst typist. What I discovered when I *finally* made the switch to Dragon was that I had been self-editing to avoid typing to much?!?!? A TOTAL surprise. 

When I started dictating, I added much more color and dialogue... all in all, it was a dramatic improvement.


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## X. Aratare

Names though (unusual ones) do NOT work on Dragon.  I train them religiously and nope!  Doesn't work. It is so frustrating.  I keep hoping that it'll get better but it doesn't.  But I can write so much faster by talking than typing.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

X. Aratare, did you have it analyze your manuscripts? I told mine to run through my manuscripts and it's got all of my character names well aside from Lady Catherine de Bourgh (it always wants to make her de Burke). You can also do vocabulary training.


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## Guest

Thanks so much for sharing. I already dictate my ideas on my phone. I feel like I would clam up and get a brain freeze if I tried to dictate my books, but maybe it just takes getting used to. I'm going to try it. I've had surgery for carpal tunnel in the past and am very careful with not overworking my hands.


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## X. Aratare

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> X. Aratare, did you have it analyze your manuscripts? I told mine to run through my manuscripts and it's got all of my character names well aside from Lady Catherine de Bourgh (it always wants to make her de Burke). You can also do vocabulary training.


I've only ever done the vocabulary training. Maybe having to analyze my manuscripts would make it better. Thanks for the tip!


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## Adam Poe

I got Dragon over a year ago and only used it twice ... for maybe 15 minutes both times. I should probably take it out and work on it some more. Maybe I could write some scenes while out walking. Can you train it to ignore heavy breathing I wonder?


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## David Peterson

I went ahead and bought it a couple days ago. Figured it was worth trying out. It came in the mail last night. 

I'm impressed how accurate it is for me, but talking the story is going to take some getting used to.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

It ignores all breathing, silence, UMMMS , hmmmm, beeping noises like when you're backing up in a car and your parking sensors are beeping. It does not ignore human voice. And when you want to PUT thought noises into your dialogue like 

"Hmmm, would you say Anne is on death's door?" Darcy asked, raising an eyebrow

On my Sony recorder, I have to say 

OPEN QUOTE SPELLING MODE H M M M M COMMA DICTATION MODE would you say Anne is on death's door QUESTION MARK


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## Crystal_

AH!!! I love Toothless <3<3<3

I tried Dragon Dictate about two years ago, but it felt really awkward. I was using it for screenwriting so the formatting was an issue. I had to say tab or enter all. the. time. I would like to get a cordless mic and try again next year. I can't imagine I'd be able to dictate my steamier stuff (can you imagine dictating a sex scene--how awkward!), but I'd love to be able to even do an hour or two less typing a day.


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## Kenzi

X. Aratare said:


> Names though (unusual ones) do NOT work on Dragon. I train them religiously and nope! Doesn't work. It is so frustrating. I keep hoping that it'll get better but it doesn't. But I can write so much faster by talking than typing.


Do you have the latest version, Aratare? I've found the newest one is dramatically better at things like that than version...12? for PC.


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## Mark Tyson

Okay, you inspired me. I will have to dust off my dragon (I've had it for about a year sitting on a shelf) and get to training it. I think I might have to re-install it on my computer too.


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## 13893

Does anyone know if Dragon 13 for PC works with Word 2007? (Yes, I need to upgrade my Office, but... but... )


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## Lloyd MacRae

I have Dragon version 12 on one of my PCs and it works with 2007. 

I've been using Dragon since it first came out in 1997 because of physical difficulties and I can't live without it now


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## Jane Killick

Very, very tempted!

Can I ask, what Sony recorder do you use?


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## 13893

Lloyd MacRae said:


> I have Dragon version 12 on one of my PCs and it works with 2007.
> 
> I've been using Dragon since it first came out in 1997 because of physical difficulties and I can't live without it now


Thanks, Lloyd


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## Elizabeth Ann West

I have a sony ICD SX 712. Apparently it's a $400-$500 recorder but I didn't pay that for it. I bought it second hand for $20 when I bought my IKEA desk for $20 from a family on Craig's List (gotta love rich folk in Connecticut with too much stuff). But I've used a rinky dink recorder (less than $100) and it works just as well. 

Tonight I tried to record a scene making dinner, putting away dishes, family in the way . . . epic fail. I will have to re-record that in a quiet place (like my office or bedroom). I hadn't tested the full extent of background noise issues. Now I know. You can't record cleanly with people around. It worked fine in a quiet part of a casino, and fine in my car. But it doesn't like RANDOM noises it doesn't know to edit out or not. It was only 900 words in 10 minutes (because I was cooking and cleaning at the same time which worked fine when the house had no one else in it, but not with people). So I didn't lose much.

I FINALLY finished off editing that 7K I had, and I only have the 1.2k left to do plus whatever else I record tonight (which should be in the 8-10 K range)


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## BrentNichols

This could be out of date, since my Dragon's a couple of years old, but two things I did:

1) I dictated into Notepad instead of Word, and it was MUCH faster.

2) I periodically went through the Dragon dictionary deleting people's names that corresponded with words, so Dragon wouldn't capitalize them. Burns, Carpenter, Rich, that sort of thing.


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## Jake Kerr

Received my (free) copy of Dictate 3 today and was shocked to see that it doesn't work with the latest Mac OS. Man, I'd be seriously bummed if I didn't get it for free. So I'm thinking I'll download Dictate 4.0 for $99 from Amazon. I have a $13 credit at Amazon. So I may as well. 

Elizabeth, it sounds like I could just dictate into my cell phone via a handsfree outfit and then import that into Dictate. Is that what you do? That would be idea, I think.


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## H.M. Ward

I just got my Dragon. I average typing 2500 words per hour. I'm wondering what Dragon is going to do. 

Why notepad over Word? I noticed someone said it worked faster.


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## Cherise

H.M. Ward said:


> Why notepad over Word? I noticed someone said it worked faster.


Dictating into Notepad works faster in plain old Windows Speech to Text, too.

My guess at why? Notepad is a much smaller app, so it doesn't hog up CPU time the way Word does.


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## TBD

I have used DNS 12 and DNS 13 with Word and with Scrivener-- mainly Scrivener. DNS 13 was enough of a quality improvement, I didn't mind spending the money. I had just bought a laptop and DNS 12, so I ended up buying three copies of DNS in less than a month by the time I got everything upgraded... In terms of productivity, it was a worthwhile investment. I bought Premium so I would have the transcription option.


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## Chinese Writer

After reading about Elizabeth Ann’s success with Dragon, I decide to make a go at this. I have used Dragon for my PC since 2009. However, I recently switched over to a Mac for my fiction writing. And I just couldn't get my Mac to play nice with Dragon, so I moved on to purchasing a mechanical keyboard instead.

After two days of fiddling with my technology, I am sold on Mac dictate. The key is to use Dictate's notepad. I use my phone to do a lot of my writing because I used those 10 to 15 minute snatches of time that I have throughout the day (busy mom with a full-time job). 

So here is my current workflow: I use the Dragon Recorder app on my iPhone, and record my words. Using Wi-Fi, I can transfer the file to my Mac. I run the wav file through the transcription, which would type the words out on Dictate's notepad (this is just as satisfying as watching the words magically appear when I transfer it from my Neo). Then, I copy and paste the text to a word file which I saved to my dropbox. Using the word app I can edit the file on my phone.

After 15 minutes of dictating on my phone, I was able to get 467 words! OMG! Sometimes this is how much I would give in an hour of typing.

I also have a wireless headset that I'm using right now to dictate this post. The TV is on. I have two kids making noises in the background. And it still got about 95% accuracy. But like I said before, the key is to use the native Dictate's notepad.


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## georgette

X. Aratare said:


> Names though (unusual ones) do NOT work on Dragon. I train them religiously and nope! Doesn't work. It is so frustrating. I keep hoping that it'll get better but it doesn't. But I can write so much faster by talking than typing.


Here's a workaround that someone suggested - when you're using dragon, substitute the unusual names for common names - like, Alariana becomes Susan. Be consistant with the name throughout the book. Then, when you are editing, do a "find and replace" for the names that you need to replace. Obviously you'd want to keep a list of all the names and their substitutions.


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## Jane Killick

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I have a sony ICD SX 712. Apparently it's a $400-$500 recorder but I didn't pay that for it. I bought it second hand for $20 when I bought my IKEA desk for $20 from a family on Craig's List (gotta love rich folk in Connecticut with too much stuff). But I've used a rinky dink recorder (less than $100) and it works just as well.


Thanks Elizabeth! I'm really excited about this idea. Think I will take the plunge.


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## Charmaine

H.M. Ward said:


> I just got my Dragon. I average typing 2500 words per hour. I'm wondering what Dragon is going to do.
> 
> Why notepad over Word? I noticed someone said it worked faster.


If you have the newest version of dragon for Windows, then I believe it's Word compatible.
If you're using a Mac, Dragon actually gives you a Notepad program with it. TextEdit can be used as well.
In the manual, it says Dragon Dictate will work better on simpler word processors, because the more simpler programs are more relaxed.
And being more forgiving, they are more likely to use the right word. (Maybe, it's something to do with autocorrects and/or caching?)
And if you use the Notepad program provided, the program is more likely to learn from your word choices.
When I used Notepad, there was a big improvement in the program's memory/ ability to know I meant 'duck' and not 'duct'.



georgette said:


> Here's a workaround that someone suggested - when you're using dragon, substitute the unusual names for common names - like, Alariana becomes Susan. Be consistant with the name throughout the book. Then, when you are editing, do a "find and replace" for the names that you need to replace. Obviously you'd want to keep a list of all the names and their substitutions.


I do this too!


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## DanaG

OK, I'm definitely going to try Dragon.  Among other things - I am hoping it makes me less likely to surf the internet when I should be writing. 

And Elizabeth, I REALLY appreciate you posting this, and emphasizing that it took you a good solid week to get comfortable with it.  That's good to know.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

I love my DRAGON!!!

This morning, fed kiddo, made coffee, then I climbed back in bed and snuggled down to dictate more. The 22 minute file > 1300 words. And it's gotten sooooooooo much better, there were hardly any mistakes! I mean I'm actually moving multiple paragraphs before I'm having to make changes!! It's transcribing the second file now.. that one is 27 minutes and more skeleton (a ball). I know I will want to add detail to that with type. It's longer but has waaay more silence there as I thought through the scene while I was trying to dictate it.

Either way, 48 minutes snuggled in bed produced 2500 raw words to play with. Not shabby at all!

And thanks for the NAME tip! Lady Catherine de Bourgh is now Gertrude!  LOL. 

Now, I'm going BACK to bed to go snuggle down and dictate more. I don't think I will EVER write another scene completely with just type. It's so prosaic LOL


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## DanaG

Writing in bed? I'm IN! I love my bed. We're very good friends, in a committed relationship with each other in fact.


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## Marcus Richardson

I love, love, love Dragon. I use 12.5 on my desktop and laptop and triscribe 90% of the time. I use an Olympus WS-821 digital recorder. Comes with a built in USB Jack and microSD slot. Great little device and about $60 on the 'Zon.

It's extremely hard to think about going back to....<<shudder>>...typing stories. Dragon ftw (after you spend time to train it and get used to speaking punctuation, that is)!


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## Elizabeth Ann West

This is how accurate it is becoming. (Keep in mind my five-year-old is being VERY demanding this morning. Is her father home, downstairs, on the couch? Why yes, yes he IS. So why on God's green earth must MOMMY do everything? Lord help me, I just told the child she keeps whining over every little thing, she's going BACK to bed!) 

Raw was a little over 2500 words. With a few tweaks here and there (I opted not to expand the ball scene, it read well, and where I am in the storyline, it's coming to a very dramatic second crisis so it's not the time to slow down the action) I ended up with 2638. Now I feel like I've written nothing physically and mentally. And to put this in perspective, Dean Wesley Smith's pulp speed one is 2700 words a day. (Pulp speed is writing 1 million + in a year).  

I edited 9200 words yesterday from dictation total. Today I'll keep trucking, doing my normal 6-8 hours and report back what I end up with. If I can do 8,000 words a day with little to no effort on my writing days though? I'm going to need some pen names ... stat.


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## Deke

I'm very tempted to jump into this pond. I'm on a mac. I see Dragon 3 for Mac for like $20 on Ebay new in box. The 4.0 is over $300. Is there that much difference in versions?


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## Chinese Writer

Deke said:


> I'm very tempted to jump into this pond. I'm on a mac. I see Dragon 3 for Mac for like $20 on Ebay new in box. The 4.0 is over $300. Is there that much difference in versions?


I have v4. At the time I did a bunch of googling and found this link for $99. It's a download version, but you can purchase a CD backup. For the download and Cd backup, I paid $118 total. Sorry for the link mess, but I don't know how to shorten. It's like the Microsoft Home User Program where employees of their Enterprise license get the software at home for a discount. The software download is deliver by a company call Digitial River (or maybe River Digital). Since my Microsoft Home User program from work uses the same delivery company for their software downloads, I wasn't worry about security. Also remember to have your own backup of the software. I think they only guarantee a valid download from your purchase link for 30 days.

https://shop.nuance.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_US&SiteID=nuanceus&campdate=03-04-14&id=ThreePgCheckoutShoppingCartPage&utm_campaign=Dictate&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Dragon


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## Jane Killick

Deke said:


> I'm very tempted to jump into this pond. I'm on a mac. I see Dragon 3 for Mac for like $20 on Ebay new in box. The 4.0 is over $300. Is there that much difference in versions?


Um... Where are you looking? There's a special deal on at the moment for $149. Usually $199.

http://shop.nuance.com/store/nuanceus/Custom/pbpage.dragon-dictate-4-resp-landing?utm_medium=ps&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=dragon&utm_term=dragon%20dictate%20mac&cvokeywordid=16670&cvosrc=ps.Google.dragon%20dictate%20mac&gclid=COn-8Y-8w8ICFW7MtAodLgkAHA

That's assuming you are in America (you said dollars). I got mine for 10% off at the UK site. Was going to go for the one in the box so I got the headset, but went for the download as a) I wanted it NOW, and b) computers don't have DVD players to load software any more.

By the way, having only got it this morning, I think I'm going to like it


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## Elizabeth Ann West

All I can say to everyone who thinks they can't write prose with dictation is that THAT very mindset stopped me for years. Give it up.  Prose comes from your brain. Talking comes from your brain. Typing comes from your brain. See the common source?

I absolutely had to have a 100% I can do this attitude with my dragon. I am NEVER going back. Since last Friday, I have dictated and cleaned up over 20,000 words on my current WIP. I'd be lying in a painkiller or alcoholic HAZE if I had typed all of those words in one week (because I took 2 days off, so I really know it's 5 days), on the floor, over my ice pack or heating pad telling my husband and children to NOT touch me. 

20,000 words a week, 50 weeks a year IS a million words a year. And for three of those days, I was still training myself and my dragon. I really wasn't kidding when I said 2015 is the year I fill up my Author Page with titles and aim to sit my happy butt on the top 100 Historical Authors list on a day to day basis.  

Love my dragon!


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## Deke

I think the $300 version i saw on Ebay included some sort of headset.  Is the Mac Dictate version the same thing as 4.0?  I can't find that $99 link. Is that a UK thing?  I did find the $149.99 link.  There is a $99 link on the same site for a "Naturally speaking home edition." Is this different from the 4.0?  I'd like to make sure I buy the right version.

Good to know that the $20 3.0 version seen on Ebay doesn't work with the latest OS.


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## Deke

And there is this at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Dictate-for-Mac-4-0/dp/B00IP93PV4/ref=dp_ob_title_sw


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## Jake Kerr

If you are using Mac OS Yosemite DO NOT GET DRAGON DICTATE 3.0. It does NOT work with Yosemite. You need to buy 4.0.


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## Sarah Scribblez

Very interesting results, I'm glad Toothless is working for you! 

I'm looking into this myself, but I'd mainly want to use it in the car. I've got an android phone, no 4G, just plain old wireless for now, and I just downloaded the app to make sure there was one. But it says that I'd need to be connected to the internet via the same network as my Dragon software is on? So I wouldn't be able to use it in the car. Am I missing something here? The app does say Dragon 12 compatible, so perhaps it's a new feature for 13? And if so is there an android app that will let me dictate to my phone via Dragon 13? Thanks to anyone that can shed some light on this for me!


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## Jane Killick

Sarah -- if you want to actually have the dragon software turn your spoken words into text via your phone live, then I guess you would need to connect your phone to your computer.

However, you are probably better off just recording onto your phone and later taking that recording and putting into the dragon software using the transcribing option. Assuming the recording on your phone is good enough.

Transcribing is an option on Dragon Naturally Speaking (for the PC) only on the premium edition, I gather. It's included already in the Mac version.

The above is what I have learned form looking at it today.


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## A.E. Williams

Yeah, I named mine "Pete".

A.E. Williams


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## Elizabeth Ann West

Awwww. I LOVE the name Pete.

Alright everyone, if you have a dragon, share the name!


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## Chinese Writer

Deke said:


> I think the $300 version i saw on Ebay included some sort of headset. Is the Mac Dictate version the same thing as 4.0? I can't find that $99 link. Is that a UK thing? I did find the $149.99 link. There is a $99 link on the same site for a "Naturally speaking home edition." Is this different from the 4.0? I'd like to make sure I buy the right version.
> 
> Good to know that the $20 3.0 version seen on Ebay doesn't work with the latest OS.


The $99 link I posted up earlier is for the U.S. download version of Mac Dictate 4.0. You would need to get your own headset. You could set the microphone to internal and plug in your hands free headset from your phone to you laptop. The wireless headset I use in the middle of the livingroom with the TV on and both kids playing still gives me 95% accuracy on the Dragon's notepad.

Dragon Home or Premium is for the PC. If you have Dragon Home 12.0, do not take the free update to 12.5. It will corrupt your profile. Go either to 13.0 or skip the "free" update.

You'll need Mac Dictate 4.0 to work with the latest OS.


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## Amanda M. Lee

I have no idea why, but each time I read the title of this thread it takes my nerdy-geeky-filthy mind to an odd place. I can't help it. Each and every time it causes me to think of something dirty in a fantasy realm. Sue me.


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## Moist_Tissue

Does it transcribe into Scrivener?


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## Lloyd MacRae

Moist_Tissue said:


> Does it transcribe into Scrivener?


I use Dragon on my PC and put my words right into Scrivener.

Not sure about a Mac.


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## hayley

After reading your post I decide also give dragon dictation a go, but with the iPhone app. I read up on it and set it up for Monday. 

My normal word count is 2000 per day over 3 hours. (Lunch break & when my daughters in bed).
Monday - I ended up writing 3000 in 2hours! I was over the moon.
Tuesday - 3000 - 2hrs 
Wednesday - 2000 1 1/2 hrs
Thursday - 1500 - 1hr

I'm sold! And looking forward to the drive to work to get my word count in


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## Mark Tyson

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I love my DRAGON!!!
> 
> This morning, fed kiddo, made coffee, then I climbed back in bed and snuggled down to dictate more. The 22 minute file > 1300 words. And it's gotten sooooooooo much better, there were hardly any mistakes! I mean I'm actually moving multiple paragraphs before I'm having to make changes!! It's transcribing the second file now.. that one is 27 minutes and more skeleton (a ball). I know I will want to add detail to that with type. It's longer but has waaay more silence there as I thought through the scene while I was trying to dictate it.
> 
> Either way, 48 minutes snuggled in bed produced 2500 raw words to play with. Not shabby at all!
> 
> And thanks for the NAME tip! Lady Catherine de Bourgh is now Gertrude!  LOL.
> 
> Did you say which version you use. Elizabeth?
> 
> Now, I'm going BACK to bed to go snuggle down and dictate more. I don't think I will EVER write another scene completely with just type. It's so prosaic LOL


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I use Dragon 4 for Mac. I use a sony recorder to dictate, computer to edit. 

I'm at 7k so far for today of new words dictated and edited.


----------



## Mark Tyson

Awesome, Mine is 12.5 but I noticed it gave me an option to upgrade to 13 for pc at a discount if I want to. Mine is also the student/teacher version and has all the stuff that is included with premium. I had to prove I was a teacher though lol. I named mine Shadesilver after one of the dragons in my fantasy novels.


----------



## TBD

Mark Tyson - I would upgrade to DNS 13. I found a marked improvement between DNS 12 and DNS 13. ;-)


----------



## Mark Tyson

AdearaAllyne said:


> Mark Tyson - I would upgrade to DNS 13. I found a marked improvement between DNS 12 and DNS 13. ;-)


Thanks, I kind of already made up my mind that I would upgrade and now I definitely will! I only have one more problem with Dragon. My two cats Khleesi and Evane think I am talking to them and they gather at my feet and start meowing! I guess I am going to have to shut my computer room door!


----------



## John Ellsworth

I'm in. Got mine this afternoon. Cannot believe how fast and how accurate this app is. I was trying to use Mac's built-in dictation app that comes free with Mac the last couple of days as I was following this thread, but then decided on the Dragon. It's at least twice as fast as  the freebie. I'm working on a first draft of new book that is due February 20. This new way of doing things is going to considerably speed this up. I'm loving it! 

For anyone who is interested, I'm using a Hushnoise wireless headphone mic and it works terrifically well.


----------



## kathrynoh

I have to ask, don't you feel self conscious talking your stories out loud? That's what puts me off. Maybe if I lived alone... or I could pretend to myself I'm telling stories to the dog.


----------



## Dean Murray

I just wanted to chime in and say that this post also convinced me to give DNS a try. I attempted to make the switch more than a decade ago, but was using a pair of very low-quality mics and didn't really *have* to make it work.

I'm not looking forward to the week or two transitioning from typing to speaking, but I figure it won't be too much worse than the change from QWERTY to DVORAK that I did about this time last year (seriously though that was a pretty traumatic experience--especially once I started writing my next novel in Jan).

The speed increase or reduced wear and tear on the wrists either one would make it worth it. If I can manage to capture both of those benefits this will be time well spent--here's hoping for 15 novels in 2015 

Thanks for the heads up, Elizabeth!


----------



## Dean Murray

emilycantore said:


> My story-typing brain isn't the same as my speaking story brain. But perhaps all I needed was to stick with it.


I started out writing down stories long-hand and then typing the pages up later. I quickly realized that wasn't sustainable, so I decided that I needed to skip the long-hand portion of my process. I remember it taking a few days before I could ignore the typing enough to focus on the writing (I wasn't a bad typist, it was just adding in a new variable).

I really struggled talking out my story back when I tried DNS the first time, but I remember thinking that it was probably just similar to when I'd first started typing my stories--something that would go away with practice. I discontinued my DNS experiment back then almost completely because I couldn't get the accuracy up to an acceptable level.


----------



## unkownwriter

I just heard a commercial for a sale on Dragon. It's $74 and some change. It's the latest version, they said, and it includes two units plus something I didn't hear because I was moving around.

Elizabeth, I've enjoyed reading about your progress training your dragon, and how many words you're getting. It's amazing. Now I know when the day comes I have to change things up that Dragon is a viable option.


----------



## Leanne King

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Awwww. I LOVE the name Pete.
> 
> Alright everyone, if you have a dragon, share the name!


Mine's called 



, of course


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I just wanted to say that I am so tickled that my experimentation and data has helped others decide if getting a dragon is right for them. This is dictated by the way. The fact that I'm now able to  do days of 9000, 7000, etc. and not feel any pain is this year's Christmas present to myself!

Even though I've been using this for a week, and  I know that dictation is faster than typing, I still have to mentally tell myself  "you're going to dictate"  because I am still trying to overcome years of typing my thoughts. That's where data for my sessions of how many words to my type in a half-hour, how many words to I type in an hour when I'm writing stories, how many words do I dictate in a 20 minute session, how long does it take to edit those dictated words all helped me overcome that stigma.  not kidding I have a sheet of paper with all of that data written on it right on my desk. It probably will be some time before he truly think of dictation first and typing second to tell my stories.

I also admit that I have a pretty good set up to be able to dictate. My house is quiet all day when the kids are in school. I live in a rather large house  (it was more or less handed to us by a man in my husband's office who is retiring) that is three stories including the basement. I have a bedroom that is just my office and I  can close the door. I have not always had this wonderful environment to write in. when I wrote canceled for example I had a brand-new baby who was mobile and a little netbook and a living room couch to sit on. So environment does play a big role as well, but I didn't dictate a little bit in front of complete strangers at a casino. So it can be done, but I agree it's a little weird. 

I love all of the Dragon names! Time for me to go dictate and then make them sparkle, dictate and then make them words sparkle!  I have learned that piling up a huge count of words dictated is a bad idea. I get daunted when there's more than 2000 or 3000 to go over and the bad procrastination voice takes over in my head


----------



## DanaG

I'm fortunate that my kids are 19 and 20 and aren't home a lot of the time, but since I write e-rom, I am indeed going to feel self-conscious dictating certain scenes. But the potential benefits would be worth it to me.

I'd really love to get to the point where I could dictate and walk. Not sure how I could do that, but it would be great to exercise and write at the same time. I have a treadmill desk, but I ended up just using that when I'm watching TV.


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## 13893

I've decided to take the plunge. I'm downloading DNS 13 from Amazon right now. It was $49, and I like the idea of having the software there in the cloud when I upgrade my computer.


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## Mark Tyson

Okay, I have been writing with Dragon all morning. I'm already hooked. I'm still using 12.5 but I plan to upgrade to 13 soon. It's much more accurate than I remember the first time I tried it. In fact I'm dictating this right now. I've also noticed that it's a much faster way to write.


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## Chris Fox

Thank you so much for posting this, Elizabeth. I'm two hours into using it and I'm already sold. The ability to write while walking and gesticulating is great, and I'm having a lot of fun adding emotion to dialogue when speaking.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

Me too! I'm sitting here transcribing three files as we speak! My favorite part is learning the word counts... it's like Christmas morning every day! (Will edit this to share the counts) My prediction is 4,200.

**** EDIT ****
HA! I was wrong! 4700 baby! Three files totaling 74 min of dictating and I've been editing for 40 minutes so far. I edited the earlier files while waiting for the rest to trasncribe since that takes a little time. I only have the last 1700 to transcribe and I will have another 4800-5000 starting at 5:48 PM and likely being done by 8:20 PM my time. 2.5 hours and NO typing. (Well minor typing since I am typing to edit tonight).


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## Pauline Creeden

Elizabeth has been preaching Dragon software in so many threads, that I gave the free version for iPad a try - it's been very accurate, but that version has the annoying habit of stopping recording at odd times when I didn't want it to, about every 90 seconds or so - so I have to keep an eye on it instead of just talking and getting into my story. SOooo...I'm trying to decide whether to go the download route from Amazon or the in hand route directly from Nuance...


----------



## Moist_Tissue

I took the plunge and purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking 13 on Amazon for $49.99. Elizabeth has sold me on the benefits. Some of my best lines and ideas come to me when I am falling asleep. Sometimes, I start up the computer and jot them down. But that usually gets my brain cranked into overdrive and it doesn't settle down for hours afterwards. I like to think that I could be in my bedroom, transcribing until I fall asleep.


----------



## Pauline Creeden

Do you have the Home Edition or Premium?


----------



## Moist_Tissue

Pauline Creeden said:


> Do you have the Home Edition or Premium?


Me? I have the Home. I know the Premium allows me to use a voice recorder.


----------



## KGGiarratano

Ugh -- why is the Mac version so expensive?


----------



## RachelHanna

For those of you who use the Dragon dictate app on your phone, don't you have the problem of it cutting off after 30 to 60 seconds? When I used it a couple of years ago, there was a limit to how long I could record.


----------



## RachelHanna

For those of you who use the Dragon dictate app on your phone, does it still have the limitation that only allows you to record for 30 to 60 seconds? When I used the app a couple of years ago, it had that limit and really disrupted the flow of my writing.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

The Mac version is really that expensive comparatively. There's only one version for Mac, dictation and transcription in one. PC users can opt to only have dictation with the Home edition. Also, there are fewer Mac users in the world than PC so I imagine development costs too (but if they made the project opensource . . . nevermind).


----------



## Pauline Creeden

RachelHanna said:


> For those of you who use the Dragon dictate app on your phone, does it still have the limitation that only allows you to record for 30 to 60 seconds? When I used the app a couple of years ago, it had that limit and really disrupted the flow of my writing.


Yes - I think it's 60 to 90 seconds on the iPad/iPod app - and it is disrupting, which is why I'm going to go with the home version now


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

How is everyone doing with their dragon this Monday morning? 

Counting up my pretties, as of last night I have 32,670 words dictated and edited since December 5th. I dictated for 90 minutes this morning and I now have 5,000 words to go edit. there's only 10 more scenes in my WIP. I love the moment when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I feel like killing off the manuscript is within my grasp.


----------



## 75910

Downloaded the latest version last night and looking forward to giving it another try this week.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

Keep us posted Olivia!


----------



## Sheluvspink

I purchased Dragon this morning and so far have come to about 1000 words in about an hour with me still figuring things out with it. I am a really fast typist about 80wpm so I didn't know how Dragon would be beneficial to me but what I have found is when I am able to speak it keeps me from procrastinating and becoming so distracted and the ideas flow out easier. I am really excited to see how it will work when I start a new project. I will keep you guys posted.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

So far I have amassed 8,000 words today to edit. Thats from 2 hours and 20 minutes of dictation. I am spitting distance to my story's end and just soooo done. So I'm breaking my rules and just dictating to get to the end then go back and polish up these words. I need to dictated about another 10-15K and that will be the end of this novel. Whoa nelly. 

Then I have 5 days to work with my two editors to get it in ship shape by Saturday. Thank goodness we edit as I write, if we had to edit all 80,000 words of this best in 5 days, I'd be crying right now.


----------



## Crystal_

kathrynoh said:


> I have to ask, don't you feel self conscious talking your stories out loud? That's what puts me off. Maybe if I lived alone... or I could pretend to myself I'm telling stories to the dog.


My fiance really, really wants me to start dictating my sex scenes. Talk about self conscious... Geez.


----------



## Pauline Creeden

Another author friend and I have gone in halvies on Dragon's BOGO offer...now the wait for the software to come in the mail...


----------



## Hope

I think I'm going to make the jump.  Amazon has 4.0 for Mac for $129.99.  I have dreams of wandering around the house dictating my story, as well as dictating while using my treadmill.  Can anyone recommend an inexpensive cordless headset on Amazon?


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## Mark Tyson

Ack! My dragon bit me today! I think it's accuracy went down! I have only been training it for two days though. I am learning that I occasionally slur words I guess. When I say end of sentence to move the cursor it sometimes will write out stuff like "in innocence" or "end of sent tens" bad dragon! or maybe bad slurring author!


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## Christine Kersey

After reading this thread, I was looking around for a free trial and found where you can get Dragon 4 for Mac for $99.00. When I clicked on the link, it said if I bought it in the next 10 minutes I would save an additional 20%.

You have to scroll to the bottom of the article to click on the link. If I post the link directly, it just brings up an empty cart. Here's the link to the article.

http://www.macdrifter.com/2014/03/dragon-dictate-4-and-the-insanity-of-nuance.html


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## Elizabeth Ann West

Mike Tyson I said pitch and it changed that p to a B. I write sweet historical fiction, I can't be having characters running around yelling THAT word. LOL.

I've also learned that when I get tired and put the sony record right up to my mouth, It Capitalizes Every Word. I think it thinks I'm shouting.


----------



## starkllr

emilycantore said:


> I've tried DD a few times over the years and failed each time. My story-typing brain isn't the same as my speaking story brain. But perhaps all I needed was to stick with it.


This is why I haven't tried it out myself yet. The way I think about the words isn't the way they ultimately end up on the screen, if that makes any sense at all. For those of you who are using Dragon successfully, how long did it take you to adjust the way you think so that you could dictate your prose so that it comes out the way you want it on the page? Or did you not have much trouble to start with?

My other question about the software is, how "forgiving" is it? I talk fast, and (according to my wife) not always as distinctly as I ought to.


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## Hope

Amazon's price for the dowload Mac version just went down to $99.  Glad I didn't buy it last night.


----------



## S. Shine

My dragon is called "Red". No idea why, really. Still in the training phase, which will probably never truly end, and seeing the potential. You just have to stick with it. At the start, it was a real female dog that had me cursing out loud more times than I care to remember, but that could be because apparently I speak English with a French accent. I have no idea why that is. I don't even speak French other than "Paris" and "Vive la révolution!"

Regardless of my personal frustrations at first, well worth the investment - tax deductible - and effort. Highly recommended.


----------



## John Ellsworth

S. Shine said:


> My dragon is called "Red". No idea why, really. Still in the training phase, which will probably never truly end, and seeing the potential. You just have to stick with it. At the start, it was a real female dog that had me cursing out loud more times than I care to remember, but that could be because apparently I speak English with a French accent. I have no idea why that is. I don't even speak French other than "Paris" and "Vive la revolution!"
> 
> Regardless of my personal frustrations at first, well worth the investment - tax deductible - and effort. Highly recommended.


Love this.


----------



## Guest

Using my Mac's mic worked great to train my dragon, but when I got to dictation, it misunderstood _everything_. So I bought a headset, and now it understands perfectly.

When I first used it, I dictated 500 words in 12 mins. I was in heaven. Then I forgot how to write apparently, and all I could think of was dialogue with no narrative. It stressed me out so bad, I considered returning the software. Now, I'm a little gun shy.

It might take some time to get back to it. Right now, I'm on a deadline.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Okay I'm speaking as fast as I would a normal conversation to see how fast it dictates.  it's pretty darn fast. If I close my eyes and pretend that I have someone next to me, I'm just talking like I would to them. Being from the South, not the deep South, but the coastal areas, my dialect is a very fast talking one. When my sisters and I talk on the phone to each other, we often have told the other one slow down. So I think it's very forgiving when you're talking fast as long as you train it.

The only thing that slows me down a single punctuation. But when I'm writing, I'm starting to make that pause to say the punctuation thinking time so I'm ready for the very next phrase. Even with that "thinking time" we still talk much faster than we write. Unless you're typing over 100 words per minute, talking is going to be faster. I just managed to dictate all this in less than two minutes.


----------



## Lisa Grace

Okay, I'm sold. I'm going to buy it.  I'm being offered the Dragon 13 Holiday Bundle for $99 plus the wireless blue tooth for $100, total $211 for tax and shipping. 

Is that a good deal?


----------



## S. Shine

LisaGrace said:


> Okay, I'm sold. I'm going to buy it. I'm being offered the Dragon 13 Holiday Bundle for $99 plus the wireless blue tooth for $100, total $211 for tax and shipping.
> 
> Is that a good deal?


It certainly is better than what I got! I paid 74.99 for this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LX4BZAQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and it is now 49.99.


----------



## Lydniz

What is the difference between versions 12 and 13? The premium version of 12 is very cheap. Is there a big difference?


----------



## Avril Sabine

starkllr said:


> This is why I haven't tried it out myself yet. The way I think about the words isn't the way they ultimately end up on the screen, if that makes any sense at all. For those of you who are using Dragon successfully, how long did it take you to adjust the way you think so that you could dictate your prose so that it comes out the way you want it on the page? Or did you not have much trouble to start with?
> 
> My other question about the software is, how "forgiving" is it? I talk fast, and (according to my wife) not always as distinctly as I ought to.


When I first bought my Dragon, I alternated between typing and dictating, quite often within the same paragraph. But it didn't take me long to start getting more into the habit of dictating. I still alternate between the two, but usually only because after several hours of talking, my voice needs a break. I also find that whenever my Dragon makes a mistake, if I train it then it rarely repeats that mistake. It's also very good with strange character names, once I've taught them to it. I also use it with a bluetooth headset when I'm baking, doing housework and even when I did some house painting recently. I found that the longer I had it and the more I trained it, the more accurate it became. For those who worried about what age programs it works with, I'm still in the Dark Ages and using Word 2000 and I haven't had a problem with it.

Buying a Dragon would have to be the second best thing I've bought when it comes to tools for my writing. A laptop would be the first and a treadmill the third. Although I do tend to do more typing than dictating when I'm on my treadmill for some reason. It's amazing all the extra things you can get done when you're wandering around the house dictating.

For those who feel self conscious about speaking your stories aloud, maybe try dictating them in a room with the door closed until you become more comfortable with the process. My kids don't like me to dictate my stories where they can hear them. They don't want me to ruin the story for them with spoilers about what's going to happen. They want to wait and find out once the story is complete. So I tend to warn them if I plan on walking around the house dictating and then it's up to them if they want to do something to make sure they can't hear. Such as hang out in their rooms with their music turned up. : )


----------



## John Ellsworth

LisaGrace said:


> Okay, I'm sold. I'm going to buy it. I'm being offered the Dragon 13 Holiday Bundle for $99 plus the wireless blue tooth for $100, total $211 for tax and shipping.
> 
> Is that a good deal?


Maybe this is contrarian thinking, LG, but I had the wireless and now am switching over to the wire version (USB). The wireless seemed to have a habit of discharging and needing a charge right when I was in the middle of something. Word to the wise.


----------



## Moist_Tissue

Silly question: when y'all refer to training your dragon, are you talking about reading the sample texts in the accuracy section?


----------



## Avril Sabine

Moist_Tissue said:


> Silly question: when y'all refer to training your dragon, are you talking about reading the sample texts in the accuracy section?


That is the initial training. After that, when it makes a mistake there is an option under vocabulary to add and train that word.



John Ellsworth said:


> Maybe this is contrarian thinking, LG, but I had the wireless and now am switching over to the wire version (USB). The wireless seemed to have a habit of discharging and needing a charge right when I was in the middle of something. Word to the wise.


In your Dragon profile, you have the option of adding other mics. I alternate between bluetooth when I'm wandering around the house and USB headset when I'm in my study or in the car. I change between the two options under 'open user profile'. I find I often have to train both separately.


----------



## Guest

Can some confirm for me, please. Can you not say commands during recording like "scratch that" "open quote" etc? I am transcribing a recording, but when I give commands, it doesn't understand them. When I dictate, it does. Is this normal, or did I miss some training somewhere? Thanks.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Okay I'm speaking as fast as I would a normal conversation to see how fast it dictates. it's pretty darn fast. If I close my eyes and pretend that I have someone next to me, I'm just talking like I would to them. Being from the South, not the deep South, but the coastal areas, my dialect is a very fast talking one. When my sisters and I talk on the phone to each other, we often have told the other one slow down. So I think it's very forgiving when you're talking fast as long as you train it.
> 
> The only thing that slows me down a single punctuation. But when I'm writing, I'm starting to make that pause to say the punctuation thinking time so I'm ready for the very next phrase. Even with that "thinking time" we still talk much faster than we write. Unless you're typing over 100 words per minute, talking is going to be faster. I just managed to dictate all this in less than two minutes.


Back in the dark ages when I was taking shorthand classes, we had to reach 120 wpm because that was the average dictation speed.


----------



## TBD

I don't think this tip has been given here ;-)

For DNS With Scrivener - If you want to *talk and write* directly into Scrivener, without using the Dictate Box you'll need to make this setting change --
Tools/Options/Miscellaneous -- Uncheck the *Use the Dictation Box for unsupported applications* and hit the Apply button.


----------



## MatthewBallard

I got it last night. Went through the tutorial and worked for about 30 minutes this morning. I had many stops and starts trying to both work with the software and train my mind to think of the story rather than find the next key. I managed almost 900 words in 30 minutes which is mind blowing out of the gate.

I can close my eyes and just talk which is just freaking amazing. Thank you. This looks like a game changer for me. With a full time job and four kids, I can bring my surface pro along with me and "write" literally any time I want. Thank you so much. This forum never ceases to amaze me.


----------



## S.B. Williams

AdearaAllyne said:


> I don't think this tip has been given here ;-)
> 
> For DNS With Scrivener - If you want to *talk and write* directly into Scrivener, without using the Dictate Box you'll need to make this setting change --
> Tools/Options/Miscellaneous -- Uncheck the *Use the Dictation Box for unsupported applications* and hit the Apply button.


Good to know DNS can be configured to work directly with Scrivener.

Is anyone here using the latest version for Mac? I see lots of bad reviews for DNS 4.0 with OS X Yosemite, crashes, etc. I've been experimenting with the built-in dictation that comes with Yosemite and find it's not bad at all and may be all I need. Just wondering if it's worth paying the $99 for the Mac version. The built-in dictation works with Scrivener as well, and also with any other app in which you can enter text on the Mac. I'm sure it's missing some features that come with DNS and maybe it's not as accurate. Anyone compared the two?


----------



## Jac1106

oakwood said:


> I considered buying a voice recorder but seeing how well my cheapo phone headsets is working together with the phone I am pretty impressed so far.


Nuance has a voice recorder app for iphone/ipad/ipod. I think you'll find a similar app for android.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

You can dictate commands. You need to pause before and after so it picks up you are giving a command. It takes a little practice to get it. I take a breath before and after punctuation which helps


----------



## S.B. Williams

Scott B. Williams said:


> Is anyone here using the latest version for Mac? I see lots of bad reviews for DNS 4.0 with OS X Yosemite, crashes, etc.


I should have mentioned I was referring to the update: 4.0.6, which is supposed to fix the problems with Yosemite. But I should have read back through the thread more carefully, because I see several users here including the OP are using the Mac version with no apparent issues. I think I'll go ahead and jump on the Amazon deal!


----------



## Lydniz

Do you hardened Dragon users find it difficult to go back to typing?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I do.  I've been using my Dragon for probably 30 or 40% of the time I would originally have been typing and its been great for me for the time I now can spend with my family plus the lack of physical exhaustion. I do find about 8 to 10,000 words is the maximum I can dictate in a day right now with the holidays and everything else going on before mental exhaustion kicks in.

I dictated this for example, one because my hands are cold, and two because I have editing to do and I still prefer to use the keyboard for that. So I have to save my typing for when I absolutely have to do it. I really love being able to "write" in time that was previously not available, such as driving the car, relaxing in bed, waiting in line during an errand, doing housework, that sort of thing. For example, I can clean my house in an hour in the morning, be dictating into my Sony recorder, then have that transcribed, edit for an hour and have 2000 words done and dusted. Then I still have  four more hours before my first kid gets home from school! Who knows, maybe one day a week I'll start treating myself to a movie!


----------



## Pauline Creeden

SO far I'm finding it great for getting the raw ideas down, but editing is virtually a re-write. I seem to be one of those who needs to think through my fingers so far - but I am not giving up yet -not by a long shot. This will rescue me from my carpal tunnel flare ups if I can do it. So I'm hoping that this will just take some getting used to...


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I can't speak for everyone, but for me, taking the day or two to FORCE myself to SAY the punctuation was key to getting it to work this time. It did NOT feel natural at all. Even now, 40,000+ words dictated since December 5, when I first start, I have to think to say the punctuation. Once I get into a file, about 5-8 minutes along, I do it naturally. It definitely without a doubt takes practice.

I also find doing something else while I'm dictating (driving, dishes, cleaning, stretching) seems to take the awkwardness away. It's like I keep the part of my mind that would be having an absolute hissy fit over dictating too busy with the other task that I can write in peace without my inner critic. 

With practice, you can turn those punctuation marks into little thinking times.


----------



## Paul Kohler

I've tried DNS 11 with mixed reviews a few years ago. I ended up ditching it for one reason or another. It was either the accuracy, my mic at the time, or my mind not accepting the fact that i have to speak all the punctuation's. It was probably a combination of them all to tell the truth. I felt like the story suffered because my mind was on trying to remember to speak the punctuation's. 

Regardless, I am going to give it a go once more! I have a bunch of tome off around the upcoming holidays, so hopefully, I can get the puppy trained. Training my mind might be the biggest obstacle though, so wish me luck!

P


----------



## Hope

Does anyone know of an inexpensive cordless headphones/microphone set that will work with dragon?  Will any of them work?


----------



## Chinese Writer

John Ellsworth said:


> Maybe this is contrarian thinking, LG, but I had the wireless and now am switching over to the wire version (USB). The wireless seemed to have a habit of discharging and needing a charge right when I was in the middle of something. Word to the wise.


I have a wireless headset too. When it works, great! But when it doesn't (low battery or Dragon can't detect it), I end up wasting my time fiddling with it. Urgh! So my wired headset is also my prefer one too.


----------



## Dean Murray

Does anyone have suggestions for a good Android app for recording dictation for later transcription? I was thinking that Nuance had one for Android, but that app is only for the iPhone.

I've tried a few so far--all of which have had a ton of static on them--and thought maybe someone here would have a suggestion that would save me a few hours of trying out different apps. My software doesn't arrive until tomorrow so I'm not sure how much of a problem the static would be on the apps I've tried out so far.

Thanks,

Dean


----------



## Jane Killick

Bought mine at the weekend and decided I was going to like it.

And now -- throat infection!

So I have to rest my voice, just as I was getting into it.

Ho hum ... so, for when I am able to speak again, does anyone have any tips for training my MIND to dictate my stories? As opposed to my dragon, who seems to be reasonably well behaved.


----------



## Leanne King

oakwood said:


> Here is where I hope some of the pro-users tell me there's a function/plugin/trick for getting the ," in there without having to recite them... if not, I guess I'll be editing a bit more this way, but saying it is faster and for me at least is a help during talk-intensive episodes.. which means most of my writing


In theory you can do this using text macros. On the Mac you can set up text replacements (I assume Windows allows this too). So for example you could tell your computer that when you type *hetag*, it should replace it with *," he said.* Then you train your Dragon to learn the word hetag, et voila, now you just say HETAG to get COMMA CLOSE QUOTE HE SAID FULL STOP.

That's the theory. The trouble is I have zero success in training Dragon to learn new words. None whatsoever. It ignores them completely. Apparently I'm not alone, lots of reviews say the same thing. It's just one of the many frustrating bugs in the software. Maybe the Windows version is better at this.

On the plus side, Dragon for Mac works directly into Scrivener and any other application I've tried flawlessly, without needing to alter any settings etc. No noticeable difference to using the built-in notepad (indeed most times I've tried, the notepad is worse). If you're editing an existing document, just remember to use the CACHE DOCUMENT command before starting, so it has some context.


----------



## Leanne King

Dean Murray said:


> Does anyone have suggestions for a good Android app for recording dictation for later transcription? I was thinking that Nuance had one for Android, but that app is only for the iPhone.
> 
> I've tried a few so far--all of which have had a ton of static on them--and thought maybe someone here would have a suggestion that would save me a few hours of trying out different apps. My software doesn't arrive until tomorrow so I'm not sure how much of a problem the static would be on the apps I've tried out so far.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dean


The problem might not be the applications but more the microphone in the phone. Here's a good article that explains why smartphones aren't the best devices for recording voices, especially for dictation.


----------



## Gina Black

This is fantastic! Last week I bought a Bluetooth microphone determined to get my Mac's built-in dictation to work and it didn't really. Most of the time, we had a failure to communicate. 

I've wanted to try Dragon Dictate, but I've always heard the Mac version was not as good the PC version. But, with the encouragement of this thread, I went for it. I followed the link that has the $99 download and got the 20% discount on top of that. Here I am dictating. It's a little rough and bumpy so far, but already better than the built-in dictation capability in my MacBook Air. So thank you all. I'm hoping this will improve my output because it's hard to hear my built-in editor when I'm talking.  

Edited to correct the mistakes I missed in proofing. Does anyone know how to get this Dragon to stop using two spaces after a period?


----------



## beccaprice

are we going to have a Dragon icon like we have an Alphasmart icon for our sigs?

says becca, who has Dragon 12, and hasn't even opened the box yet.


----------



## 75910

I''m kind of bummed.  I'm on a deadline with this current book so I haven't had time to take my Dragon for a walk.  I'm determined to write the next one beginning to end with it.


----------



## Censored

emilycantore said:


> That's an interesting solution. I like the idea of hetag, shetag.
> 
> I was just reading a tips page (it made my eyes bleed but here it is: http://www.voxscripta.com/Tips.html) and this was something I didn't find in the Dragon installation:
> 
> "4. MAKE CORRECTIONS ! ! ! This is one of the two biggest things you can do to improve accuracy. Dragon has
> a rather average picture of your voice following enrollment - you have to teach it the idiosyncrasies. If you don't
> correct misrecognitions, it will be making the same mistakes a year from now that it's making on the first day.
> Making corrections does not mean taking your mouse and crossing out something and typing in the right word.
> It means saying "Correct <word>" and using either the Spell dialog or the Correction menu. Doing this improves
> the software: Dragon is "smart" software, and if you correct it when it gets things wrong, it gets
> better and better. If you don't, it won't. Just resign yourself to making a lot of them for the first week or two, and
> if you do, you won't have to correct much after that. (It's more of an investment than an ongoing chore.)"


Thanks for posting that. I was also wondering if Dragon "learned" from corrections. I hadn't been bothering to correct the misfires through the voice codes, but now I'll start giving it a try.

(Yes, I've also picked up Dragon because of this thread. Haven't had much time to dig into it, though--too many work distractions--but like everyone else, I'm hopeful this will help me increase my production and/or mute the inner critic.)


----------



## Gina Black

katygirl said:


> Does anyone know of an inexpensive cordless headphones/microphone set that will work with dragon? Will any of them work?


I bought this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004T6SBEI/ and it's working just fine.


----------



## Dean Murray

Pelagios said:


> The problem might not be the applications but more the microphone in the phone. Here's a good article that explains why smartphones aren't the best devices for recording voices, especially for dictation.


Thanks for this--I'll have to rethink some of my plans!


----------



## Amanda Hough

Okay. So I was convinced and I got Dragon to.
I love this. It's a whole new level of multitasking. I'm so excited. I may never use my fingers for typing again.
Its most immediate application that I can see, is that I can now eat and work at the same time. Life is good.
A
PS space I have now convinced my daughter I'm a wizard.


----------



## John Ellsworth

I use Mac Dragon.  I'm wondering if one of you kind people would write out exactly what must be said to get Dragon to make a correction AND learn the correction? I'm using the software like crazy but I'm a little slow picking up this kind of stuff.

TIA.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

John - Are you transcribing or speaking live dictation into the computer?

When you transcribe, you must click edit after it's done doing it's thing. Then you put the cursor in the notepad window it makes and starting at the first wrong word say "Correct ____" with your microphone. 

When you are dictating live and it messes up, say "Correct _____" whatever it screwed up. It will pop up with 5 options. If any of those are correct, say "Choose #" being the number you want. If they're all wrong say "Spelling mode" wait for it to change, and SPELL the word. 

Slowly it will learn.


----------



## TBD

In Windows, you can also train it ahead with Vocabulary/Add New Word or Phrase...

I taught both my dragons -- Aunt Lonnietta Maye Moberly that way ;-) Needless to say, off the cuff, DNS wasn't even close enough to guess what the name was... or even if it WAS a name!



Elizabeth Ann West said:


> John - Are you transcribing or speaking live dictation into the computer?
> 
> When you transcribe, you must click edit after it's done doing it's thing. Then you put the cursor in the notepad window it makes and starting at the first wrong word say "Correct ____" with your microphone.
> 
> When you are dictating live and it messes up, say "Correct _____" whatever it screwed up. It will pop up with 5 options. If any of those are correct, say "Choose #" being the number you want. If they're all wrong say "Spelling mode" wait for it to change, and SPELL the word.
> 
> Slowly it will learn.


----------



## Mark Tyson

ACK! I am going to have to do something with my two cats, Khleesi and Evane, while I am writing with Dragon. They think I am talking to them and they won't leave me alone! I shut the door and they both stand outside the door screeching because they hear me talking and they want in! I let them in and they stay right underfoot mewing and screeching! (okay screeching is an exaggeration but when you are trying to concentrate they might as well be screeching!) I write too many hours a day to lock them in another room, I would feel bad. I guess I will either get used to it or they will get used to it!


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

This is why I don't have pets. I have children. Children go to school.  (I love my children very much)


----------



## Mark Tyson

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> This is why I don't have pets. I have children. Children go to school.  (I love my children very much)


My children grew up that's why I have pets (HAHA YOU WILL BE ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ELIZABETH) I do have 1 grandson now, (he's 2) but he goes home to Mommy!


----------



## Hope

Gina Black said:


> I bought this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004T6SBEI/ and it's working just fine.


Thank you Gina!


----------



## John Ellsworth

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> John - Are you transcribing or speaking live dictation into the computer?
> 
> When you transcribe, you must click edit after it's done doing it's thing. Then you put the cursor in the notepad window it makes and starting at the first wrong word say "Correct ____" with your microphone.
> 
> When you are dictating live and it messes up, say "Correct _____" whatever it screwed up. It will pop up with 5 options. If any of those are correct, say "Choose #" being the number you want. If they're all wrong say "Spelling mode" wait for it to change, and SPELL the word.
> 
> Slowly it will learn.


Thank you so much. And thanks for this thread, Elizabeth Ann. 3500 words today!!!!!


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

WOOOOOOHOOOOOO John Ellsworth! Ain't it amazing? 

I have my final tally, since I just finished my WIP tonight and my editors are finishing the last 10K (they edit as I go). 

Since December 5th, I have dictated and edited 47,720 words.    Not remotely possible without my Dragon.

**drops her sony IC recorder to the floor**

**then hastily picks it up and hugs it, hopes it's okay**


----------



## Mark Tyson

emilycantore said:


> Lol, wow, that's amazing. I can't wait to start using mine properly. Unfortunately there is some sort of people gathering going on that will interfere with writing time over the next week!


I may try to sneak my Dragon in on the people gathering ritual and hide somewhere.

Elizabeth, I got it Trained! I also bought some toys for the cats that I pull out during writing time. I am humming along now at a little over 3500 words a day so far. I want to increase to 5000.


----------



## Lydniz

I am quite keen to give it a try, but aside from other concerns, I'm also worried that I only have a thousand words a day in me, so all that would happen is that I'd get the same amount of work done in half the time rather than increasing my output. Wait. That's still good, isn't it?


----------



## Avril Sabine

Lydniz said:


> I am quite keen to give it a try, but aside from other concerns, I'm also worried that I only have a thousand words a day in me, so all that would happen is that I'd get the same amount of work done in half the time rather than increasing my output. Wait. That's still good, isn't it?


More time for recharging your creativity. : )


----------



## Guest

My concern is that I type somewhat cleanly. Now with the dragon, there's way more errors in the transcription that I have to fix. It takes me much, much longer than just typing. Yet, it feels so fun dictating. Maybe if I learn to make corrections. I still haven't heard from anyone regarding saying "scratch that" in the recording. Will it just never know what I meant? Anyone?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I don't know about scratch that. I know commands work in recording but you HAVE to pause before and after. 

Dragon is probably not going to work for everyone since we all have our own processes. I agree my prose is less clean when I dictate, but it cuts my time in front of the computer to 25% of what it was before to write a story and takes a ton of stress off my writing induced injuries. I'm 32. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. I had tingling in my fingers for 5 years before any pain came. And when the pain came, it came like it had 5 years to make up for! 

Part of the reason this happened was I was uneducated about the types of injuries my posture could create. My doctor said it wasn't carpal tunnel which let's face it, IS the poster child of ergonomics. But I've learned there is a bunch of other bad, bad things that can come as early as our thirties from writing in our twenties. Poor circulation, joint problems, bulging discs. etc. I am NOT a doctor. But I don't think these other problems get nearly the screen time they should.

Dictation is for all of us to protect ourselves. Maybe you can only use dictation sometimes, maybe all the time, maybe you wait until you are in a situation like me and HAVE to use it. I only wanted to make others aware of the mistakes I made so they could avoid them if they wanted to. And for me, the doubled word count still means I'm dictating faster than typing even though I edit.


----------



## Guest

So true! I'd forgotten the benefit of resting my hands. I am 45, and I had surgery for carpal tunnel in my twenties. I had a typing job and rushed nonstop typing for 90% of my job. Basically, I injured myself.

Now I hardly ever overwork my hands, but right now my elbow is killing me. I want to just live with it straight. Typing doesn't allow that. 

Let's not even get into my darn eyes. I look like a racoon most days because I overwork them staring at the computer.

I think it does behoove me to get a better hang of my dragon. Okay, I won't give up hope. Thanks.


----------



## John Ellsworth

I'm sitting there all day yesterday, dictating with my headphone/mic on my head. Going like crazy. The headphone is supposed to be noise-canceling yet every time the dogs bark upstairs it screws up my live dictation and I get errors. So...I start fooling around with my Mac and discover that the headphone mic I'm using, which I have plugged into the headphone jack, isn't actually...working. My Macbook's built-in mic is what's picking up all the words and running with them. Duh.

So, word to the wise. If you're using Macbook, the headphone jack isn't going to work with your headphone mic. You need the kind of rig that plugs into USB instead. So...Zon is doing a return/new purchase for me today.

**removes headphone mic and grins sheepishly**


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

That's weird, my headphone jack works. I just had to go into settings and select it as the default mic. In Dictation & Speech in System Preferences I clicked the drop down and selected external microphone.


----------



## Chinese Writer

John Ellsworth said:


> So, word to the wise. If you're using Macbook, the headphone jack isn't going to work with your headphone mic. You need the kind of rig that plugs into USB instead. So...Zon is doing a return/new purchase for me today.
> 
> **removes headphone mic and grins sheepishly**


My headphone jack works with the headphones that came with my iphone. I haven't tried it with another type of headphones though.


----------



## Charmaine

John Ellsworth said:


> I'm sitting there all day yesterday, dictating with my headphone/mic on my head. Going like crazy. The headphone is supposed to be noise-canceling yet every time the dogs bark upstairs it screws up my live dictation and I get errors. So...I start fooling around with my Mac and discover that the headphone mic I'm using, which I have plugged into the headphone jack, isn't actually...working. My Macbook's built-in mic is what's picking up all the words and running with them. Duh.
> 
> So, word to the wise. If you're using Macbook, the headphone jack isn't going to work with your headphone mic. You need the kind of rig that plugs into USB instead. So...Zon is doing a return/new purchase for me today.
> 
> **removes headphone mic and grins sheepishly**


Yeah! I had the same problem. 
On your Mac, there are 2 jacks. 
First, which is closest to you (headphone jack)
Second, the other, which is farther away (microphone jack).
My headset only works in the headphone jack.
Plug it in and go to System preferences. Click on the Sound icon. 
It should be showing: External microphone AND Line-in (your headset)
If you don't see Line-in, then you could try the other jack. 
When you do see Line-in. Select it. 
Tap the headset's microphone, to make sure that the bar is going up. That means the headset is working.
Now, open Dragon.
Audio Sources:
You should have 2 devices listed. 1. Standard Audio Source 2. Microphone
If you don't see Microphone, you'll have to add the device, by clicking the '+'.
Then go through the whole setup again, using the microphone.
When opening Dragon again, make sure 
1. Headset is in before you open Dragon
2. You select Microphone as your Audio Source.


----------



## Chinese Writer

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Dictation is for all of us to protect ourselves. Maybe you can only use dictation sometimes, maybe all the time, maybe you wait until you are in a situation like me and HAVE to use it. I only wanted to make others aware of the mistakes I made so they could avoid them if they wanted to. And for me, the doubled word count still means I'm dictating faster than typing even though I edit.


Hear! Hear! If you want to write for the rest of your life, you need to take care of yourself. I have an office job, and the stress from the typing and clicking at the day job is part of the reason why I started using Dragon in 2009 back in my blogging days. If it's not for the cube farm, I would install Dragon at my work computer too.

As for errors, I find that correcting them to still be less typing time overall. I'm trying to learn to dictate while closing my eyes or looking away from the scene. I've always waited for the words to appear before moving on. After reading about Elizabeth Ann's recorder, I'm trying to get use to recording as well, and using the transcription feature. So far, I don't have much luck with the transcription via an app on my phone. I will test out a couple more apps, but might break down and buy a digital recorder (urgh, another thing to lug around in my purse) if the apps don't work out.


----------



## Guest

I love my little digital recorder. I used to use an app on my phone, but that was just for taking notes in the middle of the night when I couldn't see. The recorder I got is the Philips Voice Tracer for about $64. Okay, I'm going to go dictate for 30 mins. Fingers crossed. Hoping that will knock out the 2k I need to get done for today. I've only managed to type 1k because of distractions and just laziness.


----------



## John Ellsworth

Well...I just turned my Mac sideways-upside down-backwards but can't find a second jack. It's a Macbook Pro retina 13" that's about eight months old. 

When I go to the System Preference selections for Sound and Dictate there's no line-in option there. No drop-down, nada.

My machine is jack-challenged. Hmm.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

OHHH yeah my headset came with a splitter. I have a piece that plugs into the jack, then has two female endings for the mic and headset endings the headset has. This thing http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-headsets-separate-headphone-microphone/dp/B004SP0WAQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418915543&sr=8-1&keywords=adapter+for+mic+jack+for+two+jack+headset+mic+and+headset


----------



## Charmaine

John Ellsworth said:


> Well...I just turned my Mac sideways-upside down-backwards but can't find a second jack. It's a Macbook Pro retina 13" that's about eight months old.
> 
> When I go to the System Preference selections for Sound and Dictate there's no line-in option there. No drop-down, nada.
> 
> My machine is jack-challenged. Hmm.


I just checked your model. Sorry, mine has 2 (older model)
Just try the steps while using the one jack.
If it's not one step, then it maybe another.
I was using the external audio by accident for 2 days!

My headset had a splitter too. Try getting your computer to recognize your headset with and without the splitter.
My computer doesn't work with them for some reason.


----------



## Charmaine

John Ellsworth said:


> Well...I just turned my Mac sideways-upside down-backwards but can't find a second jack. It's a Macbook Pro retina 13" that's about eight months old.
> 
> When I go to the System Preference selections for Sound and Dictate there's no line-in option there. No drop-down, nada.
> 
> My machine is jack-challenged. Hmm.


This means your computer isn't recognizing the headset. That's good, because we know where the problem lies now.

ETA: With your computer being MUCH newer than mine, there may be some changes.
After you plug in the headset, go as far away from the computer as you can.
Tap the microphone and see if the sound gauge goes up and down. 
Even if the computer doesn't recognize the headset, it may be acting/ showing up as the external audio.


----------



## Lisa Grace

Okay, I went to nuance (dragon) yesterday, put it in my "cart" but didn't order right away. I came back later that evening, reopened, and a banner went across my page saying they would give me an additional 10% off (on top of the 50%) if I purchased with in the next ten minutes, so I received another $20 off. 

This was for the professional version 13 wireless with blue tooth, and holiday bonus stuff. 

You might want to try this trick  to get an additional amount off.

It's supposed to arrive by Christmas eve, so Merry Christmas to me!


----------



## David Peterson

I'm curious about people using digital recorders. Are you using headsets? 

My thought is that I would like a recorder with some sort of headset that I can use on walks and whatnot. I'd love to have something that uses Bluetooth, but that's not an option with recorders, is it? And I was kinda hoping for something small. I don't really want to walk around with some big contraption on my head like I'm on my lunch break from NASA mission control or something.


----------



## S.B. Williams

John Ellsworth said:


> Well...I just turned my Mac sideways-upside down-backwards but can't find a second jack. It's a Macbook Pro retina 13" that's about eight months old.
> 
> When I go to the System Preference selections for Sound and Dictate there's no line-in option there. No drop-down, nada.
> 
> My machine is jack-challenged. Hmm.


John, Your MacBook Pro Retina must have the have the same dual input/output jack that's on my 2014 MacBook Air. If that is the case, not all mics will work with it. I tried mine with an expensive external mic I use with my DSLR camera for video recording and it was not recognized or visible as an external mic in the sound preferences pane. But when I plugged in the earphones with mic that came with my iPhone, it worked great and the external mic showed up in the pane. The difference is the plug for mic needs to have three contact bands instead of two in order to work with the dual input/output jack. Or you can use one that has USB connectivity instead.

With the iPhone earbuds/mic combo, I noticed the built-in Mac dictation app is much more accurate than using the mic that's built into the laptop. Now I will order and install Dragon 4.0 after testing this.


----------



## Guest

David Peterson said:


> I'm curious about people using digital recorders. Are you using headsets?
> 
> My thought is that I would like a recorder with some sort of headset that I can use on walks and whatnot. I'd love to have something that uses Bluetooth, but that's not an option with recorders, is it? And I was kinda hoping for something small. I don't really want to walk around with some big contraption on my head like I'm on my lunch break from NASA mission control or something.


Lol. I used a Koss headset that works great with my recorder. I don't know if a bluetooth can work with it, but I hope so as at some point, I want to go out in public and record. I don't want to look crazy either.


----------



## Gina Black

John Ellsworth said:


> I'm sitting there all day yesterday, dictating with my headphone/mic on my head. Going like crazy. The headphone is supposed to be noise-canceling yet every time the dogs bark upstairs it screws up my live dictation and I get errors. So...I start fooling around with my Mac and discover that the headphone mic I'm using, which I have plugged into the headphone jack, isn't actually...working. My Macbook's built-in mic is what's picking up all the words and running with them. Duh.
> 
> So, word to the wise. If you're using Macbook, the headphone jack isn't going to work with your headphone mic. You need the kind of rig that plugs into USB instead. So...Zon is doing a return/new purchase for me today.
> 
> **removes headphone mic and grins sheepishly**


Oh no! That's what I was doing too. So I spent a bunch of time I didn't have digging around and it seems that it wants a USB connection. There are mics that are Bluetooth to USB dongle that work with it.

I also discovered there is an iOS app and an Android app that will turn your phone into an external mic as far as Dragon is concerned. I have configured the iPhone version and it is allowing me to step away from the computer while I dictate. However it's not as easy as that little headset. I would like to not only be hands-free but cord free as well. I have a bad tendency of trying to walk away from my computer only to be pulled back by the wires between it and my ears.


----------



## Guest

I did 2k in about 35 mins. I had a lot of fixing to do because I was speaking very lazily and slow. I'm hoping I'll be able to speak faster in future. I would also like to up my length of time working.

My quality of writing is suffering somewhat too. I feel like what I'm saying is much more elementary, and I end up sprucing it up in edits. 

I want to be able to dictate with the same strength that I type and do it much faster. Still, 4k dictated in an hour would be wonderful!!! I am greedy for more and to be able to do 8k in a day. I tend to stop when I know I have reached 3k because that's my daily typing goal.


----------



## John Ellsworth

Scott B. Williams said:


> John, Your MacBook Pro Retina must have the have the same dual input/output jack that's on my 2014 MacBook Air. If that is the case, not all mics will work with it. I tried mine with an expensive external mic I use with my DSLR camera for video recording and it was not recognized or visible as an external mic in the sound preferences pane. But when I plugged in the earphones with mic that came with my iPhone, it worked great and the external mic showed up in the pane. The difference is the plug for mic needs to have three contact bands instead of two in order to work with the dual input/output jack. Or you can use one that has USB connectivity instead.
> 
> With the iPhone earbuds/mic combo, I noticed the built-in Mac dictation app is much more accurate than using the mic that's built into the laptop. Now I will order and install Dragon 4.0 after testing this.


Thanks Scott, thanks everyone. Zon will be delivering a USB headphone/mic to me today. Then back to the WIP--at least I hope.

EAW: This is a great thread. It has literally changed how I write, for the better. It seems the story flows better when I'm not translating thoughts to fingertips to screen. Loving it!


----------



## Brevoort

David Peterson said:


> I'm curious about people using digital recorders. Are you using headsets?


I use a lapel mike (Olympus ME-52) with a Sony PCM M10 recorder to good effect. It works nicely for quietish walks or hikes, normal highway driving, and any situation that does not have a lot of extraneous sound such as children, passing street traffic, dogs, other nearby speaking people. That said, the Sony has excellent and easily accessible manual controls and I can set the record levels to defeat most backgrounds.

With automatic level control, all recorders will try to adjust to the initial sound level and that can result in a few seconds of poor sound at the beginning. Automatic will also try to defeat suddenly higher ambient sound to the detriment of what you are trying to record.

The Sony in my opinion is the best hand portable recorder out there. I also use it for broadcast television and radio production. But lesser priced recorders work nicely as well. I particularly like the Olympus WS-822 and the older VN-702.

However, the Sony has a wired remote controller which allows the recorder's buttons to be locked, but still remotely operated. This protects against inadvertent pocket button presses.

For good audio quality with a decent lapel mike, make sure it is not touching any clothing, that it is pointed directly at your mouth and not much farther away than a spread hands breadth from your chin.

There is one odd thing about using a lapel mike. Other people don't see it, but they do see you talking to yourself and the odd looks can get distracting. To go cloaked while recording in public, just use the voice recorder as if it was a phone. Presto, instant invisibility.


----------



## Moist_Tissue

I almost gave up on it. Accuracy was becoming a big issue and it seemed to operate really slowly. On a whim, I modified the settings to select speed over accuracy. Strangely enough, it not only became faster but it actually became more accurate.


----------



## lostagain

This thread is timely. I plan to get this for myself for Christmas. I know I'm going to hate it the first few days, but the nerve pain I'm feeling in my shoulders is only going to get worse if I don't make a change.  Thanks for this thread!


----------



## John Ellsworth

VioletVaughn said:


> This thread is timely. I plan to get this for myself for Christmas. I know I'm going to hate it the first few days, but the nerve pain I'm feeling in my shoulders is only going to get worse if I don't make a change. Thanks for this thread!


I hope you don't hate it the first few days. My feeling was love at first listen. It rocks!


----------



## Jac1106

In my case it was love at first transcription.


----------



## JRHenderson

Charmaine said:


> Second, the other, which is farther away (microphone jack).
> My headset only works in the headphone jack.
> Plug it in and go to System preferences. Click on the Sound icon.
> It should be showing: External microphone AND Line-in (your headset)
> If you don't see Line-in, then you could try the other jack.


I don't want to sound pedantic, but can I just point out that "Line-in" is *not* the same as a microphone jack; a microphone's output is about a tenth of the volume of a line-out, so if you plug your mic into the line-in socket, your voice will seem very quiet to the computer.

When I had this problem with my Mac Mini, I bought a Griffin iMic which plugs into a USB port and offers a mic-in and earphone-out socket...


----------



## Avril Sabine

Mizuki said:


> I still haven't heard from anyone regarding saying "scratch that" in the recording. Will it just never know what I meant? Anyone?


Try 'select [unwanted word]' then 'delete'. There are a lot of commands. Most of them I don't know off by heart because I don't use them regularly, but you also have the option to change them to commands you'd prefer. Not sure how, I just recall reading that somewhere in all the stuff I read when I first bought my Dragon.


----------



## Guest

Avril Sabine said:


> Try 'select [unwanted word]' then 'delete'. There are a lot of commands. Most of them I don't know off by heart because I don't use them regularly, but you also have the option to change them to commands you'd prefer. Not sure how, I just recall reading that somewhere in all the stuff I read when I first bought my Dragon.


Thanks. I don't know why transcribing understands period, quotes, paragraph, etc but not scratch that. Dictation understands it all. Now I can't seem to break myself out of saying scratch that when I record because I mess up constantly. Lol.


----------



## Jason Eric Pryor

Well, my Dragon software came in the other day, (YAY)! But....um.....I have a Macbook Pro and there's no CD drive to install the software with. (BOO)! So.....

My new external DVD drive comes in tomorrow, (YAY)!

It's cool because it's a Blu-Ray reader/ DVD burner. I've been needing to get one anyway, so this gave me a good reason to.


----------



## Charmaine

JRHenderson said:


> I don't want to sound pedantic, but can I just point out that "Line-in" is *not* the same as a microphone jack; a microphone's output is about a tenth of the volume of a line-out, so if you plug your mic into the line-in socket, your voice will seem very quiet to the computer.
> 
> When I had this problem with my Mac Mini, I bought a Griffin iMic which plugs into a USB port and offers a mic-in and earphone-out socket...


You don't sound pedantic, thanks for pointing that out.


----------



## Justawriter

This thread has inspired me!  I'm wondering though, have any of you tried the dictation that comes with a Mac? I was thinking I'd have to get Dragon, but just discovered dictation is built into my MacAir. I tried it out last night for just a few minutes and it seems to work pretty well and types right into Scrivener. Is that too good to be true? I'm not sure how well it will work with a digital recorder?


----------



## Guest

I tried the dictation that comes with my Mac, but it didn't work well at all without a mic plugged in. I didn't try it after my mic came in, and I didn't try it for transcribing. Worth checking out.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

No slacking anyone!  

I finished a novel on Wednesday, took yesterday to do some fun outlining, made a new cover for my pen name, and today I'm 500 words in on the next story. My Dragon likes to be exercised!


----------



## Lydniz

I have another question: does Dragon let you use single quotes? I like single quotes.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I think you just say apostrophe.


----------



## Charmaine

Lydniz said:


> I have another question: does Dragon let you use single quotes? I like single quotes.


Yes, use the command: Open single quote or Close single quote

Here's a list of all the commands 
http://www.nuance.com/ucmprod/groups/dragon/@web/documents/collateral/nc_008229.pdf

These are for the Mac Version. I have it printed out for quick reference


----------



## Lydniz

Ah, thanks. I'm glad of that. Just apostrophe wouldn't work, as it would presumably be facing the wrong direction half the time.


----------



## beccaprice

I finally opened my Dragon box - I got it through a groupon coupon some time ago and never did anything with it. It's version 12, home edition. Is it possible to upgrade it to version 12.5 (I've heard that v. 13 has problems) professional version, or am I stuck? What are the differences between 12 and 12.5? 

My goal for 2015 is to start using Dragon after I finish the current collection (One more story to go! huzzah!), to take a break before starting the next set and learn Dragon, but I'd like to have the best version before I start.


----------



## Gina Black

Can someone point me to instructions for transcribing? I made it through the initial training part, but I'm not sure how to make corrections that it will remember.


----------



## TBD

beccaprice said:


> I finally opened my Dragon box - I got it through a groupon coupon some time ago and never did anything with it. It's version 12, home edition. Is it possible to upgrade it to version 12.5 (I've heard that v. 13 has problems) professional version, or am I stuck? What are the differences between 12 and 12.5?
> 
> My goal for 2015 is to start using Dragon after I finish the current collection (One more story to go! huzzah!), to take a break before starting the next set and learn Dragon, but I'd like to have the best version before I start.


I don't know about upgrading to 12.5 but here a group that can help... and you probably want Premium, not Pro ;-)

I prefer DNS 13 because it is more accurate and I can use the built-in mic on my fiction only latptop... YMMV

https://www.facebook.com/groups/25795099715/


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Gina what version do you have? Then someone can walk you through it.


----------



## beccaprice

AdearaAllyne said:


> I don't know about upgrading to 12.5 but here a group that can help... and you probably want Premium, not Pro ;-)
> 
> I prefer DNS 13 because it is more accurate and I can use the built-in mic on my fiction only latptop... YMMV
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/25795099715/


thank you!


----------



## Nancy Warren

I bought a Sony ICD TX50 for $199. specifically to work with my Dragon Dictate on my MacBook Air. It says mac compatible on the package but not in the instruction booklet. I can't find a way to get the sound organizer software.

I am not tech savvy so forgive me if I'm doing something stupid but can anyone help?  

Elizabeth, I'm in awe of your production. I do like Dragon and with a torn rotator cuff I need the help, but I find I dictate at about the same speed I type. Interesting how we're all so different. I'm dictating at about 1200 words an hour when I get going. Slower when I'm feeling my way. Which is exactly how fast I go when I'm keyboarding.

Nancy


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Nancy-

You have to connect the recorder to the computer AFTER you have dictated into it and have the software transcribe the MP3 file. I don't think you can use it like a microphone plugged into the computer. So open dictate and create a new transcription profile. I name mine my Sony Recorder. It will have you listen and correct a minute or two of a file to get the profile going.


----------



## JRHenderson

PamelaKelley said:


> This thread has inspired me! I'm wondering though, have any of you tried the dictation that comes with a Mac? I was thinking I'd have to get Dragon, but just discovered dictation is built into my MacAir. I tried it out last night for just a few minutes and it seems to work pretty well and types right into Scrivener. Is that too good to be true?


I use enhanced dictation, and it works well enough, but I've heard that it isn't as quick or accurate as Dragon Dictate.



PamelaKelley said:


> I'm not sure how well it will work with a digital recorder?


If you type "recorded audio to text" into YouTube's search box, there are a couple of videos that will show you how to feed the output from an audio file into OS X's dictation software.


----------



## Gina Black

beccaprice said:


> thank you!


I have Dictate for the Mac. 4.0.6


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Gina -

When you tell the Mac to transcribe, it will pop up with what you want to do next. Click Edit. Then using your voice, use the commands to correct. Those will help train it to transcribe you better.


----------



## Gina Black

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Gina -
> 
> When you tell the Mac to transcribe, it will pop up with what you want to do next. Click Edit. Then using your voice, use the commands to correct. Those will help train it to transcribe you better.


Thanks! I'll give that a try.


----------



## Nancy Warren

Hi Elizabeth,

Yes, I managed to do that, and called the new transcription source Sony Recorder too! But I have no software. When I click on my recorded file it won't open. That's the bit I can't figure out. You're on a Mac too, right? Where did you get the sound organizer software or whatever we need?

I've emailed Sony but so far nothing.

thank you. Most exciting progress everyone.

Nancy


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

No you need to go through Dragon. It's at the top in the menu, Transcription in Tools I think. That opens a window to browse your file to select the MP3. Just clicking on it won't do anything.


----------



## John Ellsworth

OK, guys, I got the Logitech headset/mic USB today from Zon and guess what? DNS still won't record it. I can go into Profile and set the external mic up as "default" but then when I click the round circle (I'm using Scrivener), it won't record the mic. Blah.

So I'll use the Mac mic because that's working pretty good anyway. It's just that I have back surgery on Monday and I was hoping to have the headphone mic because I'll be up on my treadmill pretty fast and wanted to use it there.

Oh well, it still beats having a real job, even if I have to yell through a downspout to a tape recorder, right?


----------



## Hope

I have some questions…when you first started using Dragon, how much editing did your text need?  My Dragon is doing a pretty decent job of understanding me, but I am having trouble getting my thoughts together and am stuttering and unsure of which words to use.  Does this get better?  Is it just the awkwardness of switching to speaking your story?

Also, I tend to write a line or two, then as I'm continuing on, i think of a better way to say the line i wrote a couple lines back…is there an easy way to handle going back to that previous line?  Or is it just considered part of the editing process?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I outline a little about each scene first. So I don't rewrite. You have to separate writing from editing. You'll drive yourself batty. 

Writing is harvesting the clay. Editing is sculpting the clay.


----------



## Mark Tyson

katygirl said:


> I have some questions...when you first started using Dragon, how much editing did your text need? My Dragon is doing a pretty decent job of understanding me, but I am having trouble getting my thoughts together and am stuttering and unsure of which words to use. Does this get better? Is it just the awkwardness of switching to speaking your story?
> 
> Also, I tend to write a line or two, then as I'm continuing on, i think of a better way to say the line i wrote a couple lines back...is there an easy way to handle going back to that previous line? Or is it just considered part of the editing process?


I had the same problem as far as getting my thoughts together and stuttering. (I do outline scenes a bit before hand and it helps) I would sit there and stare at the screen for about 5 minutes saying "ik, at, the, scratch that," Just making utterances LOL. Yes, it does get better. Once I trained my mind to go ahead and speak it got better. Although I dictated very, very, extremely choppy at first like this: The clouds rolled............in...........I could......taste....select taste......smell .....the rain. etc. Now I am speaking pretty fluidly after a few days practice.

As far as your other issue. (This may be a bad habit I am about to teach you be warned) I started doing a hybrid dictation and typing thing. Elizabeth is right, I teach my students to not write and edit at the same time because they are two completely different parts of your brain. but I do simple edits as I write. So, I have been using the mouse and keyboard to go back and select things or put my cursor in between words to select things and I speak the correction, move the cursor with my mouse, say the correction or fix the line and go back instead of doing it all by speaking. I find speaking all the commands kind of slow. By doing the hybrid method, I have sped up my writing from incredibly fast to ludicrous speed! I am probably not training my dragon correctly by not using voice commands to select, correct, and insert as much but I got tired of getting "in descendents" every time I commanded to to go to "end of sentence" etc.

Even though I am using the mouse and keyboard instead of the commands in certain instances, it is still worth it because you do speak way faster then you type. I guess everyone needs to adapt it to the way they can use it best.

Sorry, If I am teaching bad habits here!!!


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I am fastest recording when I can't SEE that's why I use my Sony IC Recorder most. I only use my headset when I'm at my desk and trying to not type.

I type to edit.


----------



## Nancy Warren

Okay, bear with me. I'm in the Dragon transcription mode under tools. so far so good. A box comes up asking me to choose a file. I have a recorded file on the Sony recorder. I plug the recorder in to the Mac and IC Recorder shows up on my desktop. Inside, in a file with the correct date stamp, is a file called MSGLISTL.MSF and it's greyed out. I can transfer it to my document file it's still greyed out and Dragon won't open it. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you!

Nancy


----------



## Chinese Writer

Nancy, the Mac recognizes MP3 file formats. Is that the setting you record to on your digital recorder? If it's set to wav format, you would need to convert to MP3 before using the Dragon transcription feature.

Annie


----------



## TBD

Mark Tyson said:


> As far as your other issue. (This may be a bad habit I am about to teach you be warned) I started doing a hybrid dictation and typing thing. Elizabeth is right, I teach my students to not write and edit at the same time because they are two completely different parts of your brain.


 I do this, too, but I call it FIXING, not EDITING. ;-) For me at least, writing and fixing work together, with editing taking place long after...


----------



## Mark Tyson

AdearaAllyne said:


> I do this, too, but I call it FIXING, not EDITING. ;-) For me at least, writing and fixing work together, with editing taking place long after...


I really like that! Instead of calling them simple edits I am going to steal your term and call it fixing too! I don't dictate and transcribe, I dictate right into the word document, I forgot to say that earlier. Actually I separate my word documents by chapter and I combine them into one document later. That way I can edit in chunks and If I accidentally delete something or lose something due to computer failure etc. It just seems easier for me to manage. Fixing! why didn't I think of that?


----------



## TBD

Mark Tyson said:


> I really like that! Instead of calling them simple edits I am going to steal your term and call it fixing too! I don't dictate and transcribe, I dictate right into the word document, I forgot to say that earlier. Actually I separate my word documents by chapter and I combine them into one document later. That way I can edit in chunks and If I accidentally delete something or lose something due to computer failure etc. It just seems easier for me to manage. Fixing! why didn't I think of that?


Mark - That's exactly what I do EXCEPT I use Scrivener ;-) I dictate and FIX directly into Scrivener. I am a visual person and I doubt that I could *just* dictate without looking at *something* related to what I'm writing lolol

With Scrivener, I can back-up multiple places and I can sync between my fiction only laptop and my desktop.

Right now I am editing a novel so I also save a *snapshot* of each chapter before I start editing -- a function within Scrivener.

Also, I have one Scrivener for each Series so it has the Series Bible and all of the books all together


----------



## Mark Tyson

AdearaAllyne said:


> Mark - That's exactly what I do EXCEPT I use Scrivener ;-) I dictate and FIX directly into Scrivener. I am a visual person and I doubt that I could *just* dictate without looking at *something* related to what I'm writing lolol
> 
> With Scrivener, I can back-up multiple places and I can sync between my fiction only laptop and my desktop.
> 
> Right now I am editing a novel so I also save a *snapshot* of each chapter before I start editing -- a function within Scrivener.
> 
> Also, I have one Scrivener for each Series so it has the Series Bible and all of the books all together


I downloaded the free trial of Scrivener a while back, but never actually tried it lol It's just sitting on my desktop. I guess I should give it a go and see what's what.


----------



## Gina Black

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I am fastest recording when I can't SEE that's why I use my Sony IC Recorder most. I only use my headset when I'm at my desk and trying to not type.
> 
> I type to edit.


I *love* that. I have already found that when I'm speaking my manuscript into the computer or my recorder I drown out my inner editor and that's a wonderful feeling...

_Edited to remove a question that I managed to answer myself..._


----------



## Hoop

DNS 13 *HOME* is now down to $39.99 on Zon.
Judging from all the comments here though, you'll probably want Premium. It's still at $99.

Here's a comparison chart on the different versions:
http://www.nuance.com/ucmprod/groups/dragon/@web-enus/documents/collateral/nd_004125.pdf?PID=2971329

Looks like Premium allows you to:
- record into something else, then transcribe into DNS
- use a bluetooth headset
- create custom word lists (like HETAG, SHETAG)


----------



## Hoop

I have a question on the transcribe feature (where you record into a different device, then stuff that mp3 file into DNS and it transcribes it): is it real-time transcription?
In other words, if I record in the car for 15 minutes and then get home and feed the file into DNS, will I have to wait around 15 minutes for it to listen to that file and transcribe it?

That could get old, fast - especially with long files.

Can it transcribe a file in the background and still be taking input from a mic in the foreground?  (Say the transcription file is Chapter 1 and you want to work on Chapter 2 while it's transcribing.)


----------



## A.E. Williams

Hoop -- You can always record during the day, and transcribe while you sleep. (You can mute the volume, you know.)

I don't know about you, but I find that I can't do 24/7 as yet...


Also, the answer to your question is 'maybe'. I  work on several Chapters at once, in Word, for example. 

I jump back and forth, and sometimes old Pete won't like that, and gets cranky and slower.

I am going to see if I can use the Notepad trick, since then Pete won't have to grammar check and spellcheck and all that.

Should make him more easy to get along with...

But, you probably mean can DNS process two separate dictation events at the same time.

My guess is 'no'. 

There might be a way to do that if you have one computer set up for dictation, and another with the headphone, which is why 'maybe'.

Assumption is that you have two PCs (or Macs)...and $99 x 2 to afford to do this.


A.E. Williams


----------



## A.E. Williams

John Ellsworth said:


> OK, guys, I got the Logitech headset/mic USB today from Zon and guess what? DNS still won't record it. I can go into Profile and set the external mic up as "default" but then when I click the round circle (I'm using Scrivener), it won't record the mic. Blah.


John -- is it the Logitech 800 with Bluetooth? I have that and I remember it being a bit tricky to set up.

I am a PC guy, so it's going to be different, but I had to go to Control Panel --> Sound --> SET DEFAULT to get it to work correctly.

And, when I am finished, I have to go back and reset the DEFAULT back, so I can watch Netflix (for inspiration and research purposes, of course.)

I'd imagine that something similar is going on here. See if there is either a CONFIGURE or TEST for the headset in your Mac settings.

If the Mac hears you (ie the record and playback gauges show a volume level change) then the headset is working correctly.

As Elizabeth mentioned, then you have to go into DNS and choose the input, in the Manage Dictation Sources under Profile.

If it shows up there, you should be good to go.

(Btw, mine actually says 'Microphone Logitech Headset' as a choice, so you should see something similar.)

Don't forget to reset it back when you have finished...

A.E. Williams


----------



## Paul Kohler

Quick question. When you all are "training your Dragon" did you read through all the excerpts to improve you accuracy? I think when i installed it, i had to read through one of the 15 or so choices. Should i go back and read through all of them, of is one good enough. I've actually gone through 5 as of today, and wonder if I should continue to read them, or just get started on my own work.

Thanks!


----------



## Hoop

A.E. Williams said:


> Hoop -- You can always record during the day, and transcribe while you sleep. (You can mute the volume, you know.)
> 
> I don't know about you, but I find that I can't do 24/7 as yet...


Heh. I wish! 
I guess if you were to let it run while you slept, the biggest issue would just be to make sure you set the cursor at the right spot before you tell it to start transcribing. You could insert the transcription right into the middle of something. 
Say you worked on Chap1 and got to 1,500 words, drove to pick up the kids and recorded something that would take you up to 2,500 words, came home and continued to work on Chap1 from the 2,500 word point. You'd just let the transcription loose at the 1,500 mark and let 'er rip, inserting the recorded part into the middle. Right?



> But, you probably mean can DNS process two separate dictation events at the same time.
> My guess is 'no'.
> There might be a way to do that if you have one computer set up for dictation, and another with the headphone, which is why 'maybe'.
> Assumption is that you have two PCs (or Macs)...and $99 x 2 to afford to do this.


Okay, that answers the question. It can't do two processes at once. Good to know. Thanks A.E.!


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Nancy- I had to go into a bunch of folders to find my mp3 files. On my recorder it's in a voice folder. Then I have 5 folders that are default and my date stamped files are in there. That's probably the files you are looking for. 

Hoop no the transcription is not real time. A 40 minute file takes about 10 min on my Mac to process. It probably goes by how much actual speaking is on the file it ignores silence etc.


----------



## Chinese Writer

Paul Kohler said:


> Quick question. When you all are "training your Dragon" did you read through all the excerpts to improve you accuracy? I think when i installed it, i had to read through one of the 15 or so choices. Should i go back and read through all of them, of is one good enough. I've actually gone through 5 as of today, and wonder if I should continue to read them, or just get started on my own work.
> 
> Thanks!


When I used the PC version, I only read through 3-4 of the training excerpts. The key to training is to use the Dragon commands to make corrections with your own work.


----------



## Gina Black

Ok, I have it transcribing and that's working for the most part but . . . 

I can go into those transcribed files and manually correct them, but it doesn't respond at all to voice commands to change anything in those files. It might be faster to finish by hand anyway, but if it needs to hear my corrections in order to be properly trained then I want to be doing that.

Also, I can't always remember or figure out what I said vis-à-vis what it should be which means I have to replay the audio file. There has to be an easier way....?


----------



## beccaprice

I've got 12. Is it worth upgrading to 13 (I've heard such terrible things about 13 and people backing up into 12.5) to go from the home version to the premium version?


----------



## A.E. Williams

Some other tips:

1) Break it up into smaller chunks.

In other words, if you have a LOOONNNGGG stretch, then don't drop every bit of it into your Scrivener or Word, or whatever.

Do it like sprints...1,000 words here, 1500 there, and then copy and paste them into your master document.

That way, you don't get discouraged by DHS taking too long to 'do something'.

It does have a tendency, especially with a software that grammar and spell checks, to pause.

2) Dictate ideas as well as actual 'work'. Notes, character development, and location info can all be done with DHS, and you won't have to edit it, exactly.



3) One way I like to work, when using DNS, is to organize the work into drafts. 

(Everyone does pretty much the same kind of thing when they write, regardless, and we each develop a process.)

For me, what works is to dictate the general ideas, and then plot out 'scenes'. 

I then dictate the character and other details for that 'scene'. (Location, equipment, etc.)

I map out the action I want to occur, in a general fashion.


You can do this for Chapters, or for the entire story, if you are a pantser.

Once all those pieces are first drafted, you can fix the errors. In Word, everything is highlighted, so you can easily find and decide what to do.

Then, you piece it all together, and let DHS read it back to you.

You will quickly find anything that 'sounds' funny.

Make a note of where it is, but don't stop to fix it right then.

When you have finished listening, make your edits. Change things if you don't like the way they sound.

Then, do your proofing and final formatting.

Upload and go on to the next big thing....

4) If you are a pantser, then DHS will need a bit more attention. I suggest what was earlier mentioned, and use Notepad or the DHS text window to dictate, then move to your 'real' word processing program for editorial revision.

Regarding the transcription process, there are many ways to defur that feline. You can let DHS transcribe, then use the techniques above to manage your workflow.

Or, you can let it do direct transcription into your working document as Hoop mentioned, and then pick up where you left off.

One other thing --

Don't think that DHS is a magic writing machine -- it is a tool. It can be finicky. It takes a good amount of time to adapt to using it correctly and efficiently.

Having said that, it is pretty cool, and for those who can no longer use keyboards or have physical limitations, it's a good option.

At the very least, you will develop a useful skill with voice recognition technology. 

You can take that with you, if you decide to get a job in the Customer Service industry.  

A.E. Williams


----------



## Darren Writes

PamelaKelley said:


> This thread has inspired me! I'm wondering though, have any of you tried the dictation that comes with a Mac? I was thinking I'd have to get Dragon, but just discovered dictation is built into my MacAir. I tried it out last night for just a few minutes and it seems to work pretty well and types right into Scrivener. Is that too good to be true? I'm not sure how well it will work with a digital recorder?


There's a free version on PC too. That said, I still bought dragon. When I first heard of dragon about two years ago I couldn't belive my luck when I found the free version. I tried it out, but quickly got frustrated by it and didn't try again.

It could be good software, but I know unless I pay for it I won't take the time to learn to use it, even though it could greatly help me in future.

My copy of dragon has just arrived today, I'm going to make it work this time around.


----------



## A.E. Williams

A short history lesson...

Ever since Windows 3.1 came out, (yes I am THAT old), there has been voice-assistance in Windows. I know this because it was SO freaking cool to speak into a microphone and navigate to one application or another, and open files, using just your voice! It was gimmicky, but there was a valid reason, and that was accessibility.

The ergonomic part of hands free certainly existed, but mostly, people thought it was just neat to be able to do something like that.

Fast forward to Windows 98, and the text to speech and all the other software applications were in their infancy, in that, NOW, there was some real dictation programs running on Windows. 

But, they were clunky, with about 70-80% accuracy, on a good day.

In early 2000's, I was helping a co-worker set up DNS, as they were disabled, and NUANCE was kind enough to donate a copy for testing. 

Frankly, it sucked. Now, as to why that was, it was a complicated answer. The person in question had Cerebral Palsy, and could not enunciate words clearly. 

Today, the DNS is probably capable of handling that, but back then, it just could not be trained for that situation.

Mind you, I had only about 85% accuracy with my efforts. I must admit to being somewhat biased against it. 

You could go to a computer show ( they had those then, this was before Ebay and Amazon made it stupid easy to shop online), and there would be some cute gal or dude slowly speaking into the mic, and showing everyone how easy DNS was, and what a productivity enhancer it was.

But, I knew better...he says, smugly....until I tried it out again, round about 2010.

The newer version was MUCH faster, more accurate, and not as tedious. Still, I type fairly quickly... and, my need for something that specific was not continuous.

Now that I am writing my series, I find it really does allow me to create finished products more rapidly, with the caveat that I still need to edit, proof and format.

But, as Elizabeth has said repeatedly, it's the OTHER things that really allow you to open up and make much more progress OVERALL.

If you can get a system together, dictating ideas and plot arcs while driving and talking to your digital recorder or phone app, then transcribe while you are making dinner, and then listen to it read back, and then make your edits, and then putting it all together, the process flows just so.

I am seriously considering doing one of those video sessions that Matt did a while back, during his 50,000 word stint on NaNoWriMo, but I would dictate a couple of Chapters for my next Episode live, using DNS. I would explain the whole process of how I create, from an idea to the actual editing and final document.

If there is enough interest, I think I will set this up. (Or, maybe Elizabeth would like to do a session? Just thinking out loud here....)

It's one thing to read about it, and another to see it in action. 

But, I will say that having better processing power and audio technology than I did almost 15 years ago (YIKES! ) certainly has made me a convert to DNS.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled program, brought to you by Ovaltine and Depends. 

A.E. Williams


----------



## DanaG

I would LOVE a video session of someone using Dragon! 

Also I just ordered it, for my PC.


----------



## TBD

Hoop said:


> I have a question on the transcribe feature (where you record into a different device, then stuff that mp3 file into DNS and it transcribes it): is it real-time transcription?
> In other words, if I record in the car for 15 minutes and then get home and feed the file into DNS, will I have to wait around 15 minutes for it to listen to that file and transcribe it?
> 
> That could get old, fast - especially with long files.
> 
> Can it transcribe a file in the background and still be taking input from a mic in the foreground? (Say the transcription file is Chapter 1 and you want to work on Chapter 2 while it's transcribing.)


I have transcribed Camtasia/video recordings in to Word. My experience: you don't hear it, it is much faster than real time, and you can't touch the computer while it transcribes


----------



## Chrissy

A.E. Williams said:


> Now that I am writing my series, I find it really does allow me to create finished products more rapidly, with the caveat that I still need to edit, proof and format.
> 
> But, as Elizabeth has said repeatedly, it's the OTHER things that really allow you to open up and make much more progress OVERALL.
> 
> If you can get a system together, dictating ideas and plot arcs while driving and talking to your digital recorder or phone app, then transcribe while you are making dinner, and then listen to it read back, and then make your edits, and then putting it all together, the process flows just so.
> 
> *I am seriously considering doing one of those video sessions that Matt did a while back, during his 50,000 word stint on NaNoWriMo, but I would dictate a couple of Chapters for my next Episode live, using DNS. I would explain the whole process of how I create, from an idea to the actual editing and final document.
> *
> If there is enough interest, I think I will set this up. (Or, maybe Elizabeth would like to do a session? Just thinking out loud here....)
> 
> It's one thing to read about it, and another to see it in action.
> 
> But, I will say that having better processing power and audio technology than I did almost 15 years ago (YIKES! ) certainly has made me a convert to DNS.
> 
> And now, back to your regularly scheduled program, brought to you by Ovaltine and Depends.
> 
> A.E. Williams


Oh, please do!! 

Thank you -- that would be so helpful.


----------



## Hope

A.E. Williams said:


> I am seriously considering doing one of those video sessions that Matt did a while back, during his 50,000 word stint on NaNoWriMo, but I would dictate a couple of Chapters for my next Episode live, using DNS. I would explain the whole process of how I create, from an idea to the actual editing and final document.
> 
> If there is enough interest, I think I will set this up. (Or, maybe Elizabeth would like to do a session? Just thinking out loud here....)
> 
> It's one thing to read about it, and another to see it in action.
> 
> But, I will say that having better processing power and audio technology than I did almost 15 years ago (YIKES! ) certainly has made me a convert to DNS.
> 
> And now, back to your regularly scheduled program, brought to you by Ovaltine and Depends.
> 
> A.E. Williams


Yes! Please!!! That would be awesome!


----------



## Hoop

A.E. Williams said:


> I am seriously considering doing one of those video sessions that Matt did a while back, during his 50,000 word stint on NaNoWriMo, but I would dictate a couple of Chapters for my next Episode live, using DNS. I would explain the whole process of how I create, from an idea to the actual editing and final document.
> 
> If there is enough interest, I think I will set this up. (Or, maybe Elizabeth would like to do a session? Just thinking out loud here....)
> 
> It's one thing to read about it, and another to see it in action.


That would be flat-out awesome!
Also, I remember those shows. Such great deals and all the latest gadgets! Hubby and I would get all of our parts at the shows and build our own machines. When I bought my 250Mb hard drive at one I thought I had SO much room I'd never use it up...


----------



## Mark Tyson

A.E. Williams said:


> A short history lesson...
> 
> Ever since Windows 3.1 came out, (yes I am THAT old), there has been voice-assistance in Windows. I know this because it was SO freaking cool to speak into a microphone and navigate to one application or another, and open files, using just your voice! It was gimmicky, but there was a valid reason, and that was accessibility.
> 
> The ergonomic part of hands free certainly existed, but mostly, people thought it was just neat to be able to do something like that.
> 
> Fast forward to Windows 98, and the text to speech and all the other software applications were in their infancy, in that, NOW, there was some real dictation programs running on Windows.
> 
> But, they were clunky, with about 70-80% accuracy, on a good day.
> 
> In early 2000's, I was helping a co-worker set up DNS, as they were disabled, and NUANCE was kind enough to donate a copy for testing.
> 
> Frankly, it sucked. Now, as to why that was, it was a complicated answer. The person in question had Cerebral Palsy, and could not enunciate words clearly.
> 
> Today, the DNS is probably capable of handling that, but back then, it just could not be trained for that situation.
> 
> Mind you, I had only about 85% accuracy with my efforts. I must admit to being somewhat biased against it.
> 
> You could go to a computer show ( they had those then, this was before Ebay and Amazon made it stupid easy to shop online), and there would be some cute gal or dude slowly speaking into the mic, and showing everyone how easy DNS was, and what a productivity enhancer it was.
> 
> But, I knew better...he says, smugly....until I tried it out again, round about 2010.
> 
> The newer version was MUCH faster, more accurate, and not as tedious. Still, I type fairly quickly... and, my need for something that specific was not continuous.
> 
> Now that I am writing my series, I find it really does allow me to create finished products more rapidly, with the caveat that I still need to edit, proof and format.
> 
> But, as Elizabeth has said repeatedly, it's the OTHER things that really allow you to open up and make much more progress OVERALL.
> 
> If you can get a system together, dictating ideas and plot arcs while driving and talking to your digital recorder or phone app, then transcribe while you are making dinner, and then listen to it read back, and then make your edits, and then putting it all together, the process flows just so.
> 
> I am seriously considering doing one of those video sessions that Matt did a while back, during his 50,000 word stint on NaNoWriMo, but I would dictate a couple of Chapters for my next Episode live, using DNS. I would explain the whole process of how I create, from an idea to the actual editing and final document.
> 
> If there is enough interest, I think I will set this up. (Or, maybe Elizabeth would like to do a session? Just thinking out loud here....)
> 
> It's one thing to read about it, and another to see it in action.
> 
> But, I will say that having better processing power and audio technology than I did almost 15 years ago (YIKES! ) certainly has made me a convert to DNS.
> 
> And now, back to your regularly scheduled program, brought to you by Ovaltine and Depends.
> 
> A.E. Williams


Yes!!!!


----------



## Jason Eric Pryor

I've just finished watching several Dragon video tutorials on YouTube. There's lots of them available to those wanting to see them.


----------



## David Peterson

I feel kind of bad. I upgraded to Premium 13 last night so I could start using a voice recorder. I had it analyze some my writing to learn new words. It came back with a list of obscenities, asking me if it should learn those words. I kinda feel like I'm corrupting the little guy. 

Bought my 13 premium and a Sony ICD-PX440 recorder yesterday. Lapel mic in the mail. I should be wondering around town talking to myself in no time.  (Apparently saying a lot of dirty words.)

ETA: Not sure if this was mentioned, but I just got an email from Amazon that they are offering a $20 gift card with purchase of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 (Home or Premium) and Mac 4.0. Looks like it is only on the box version, not download, but I may be wrong. The instructions are at the bottom of the product description.


----------



## Chad Winters

FYI for those using Dragon, especially on a latop: as a doctor I have used Dragon to dictate for years and have used many different mics, some over $500 and this one worked the best for me and was less than $40


its accurate, you don't have to hold it, and has a cardiod setting which means it won't pick up sounds from behind the mic if you don't want it to.


----------



## S.B. Williams

Thanks to all the recommendations here, I installed Dragon Dictate 4.0 in the MacBook Air I use for writing yesterday and I'm delighted with the results. After some issues getting the iPhone and MacBook to play together, I'm now using the Dragon Recorder app on the phone for audio recording, then transferring the files over the wireless network to the MacBook for transcription. It's working great. So is the direct dictation using the built-in mic. This is going to change the way I work!


----------



## bethrevis

Thanks to everyone, especially Elizabeth, for all this discussion! I've just placed my order for Dragon. I figure if I don't end up being able to use it for dictating a novel, it'll be worth it for dictating email.


----------



## ecg52

I just ordered Dragon 13 Premium on sale for $99. Dragon 13 home is on sale for $49. I've been using version 11 since it came out and mostly use it while on the treadmill desk. In an hour I can dictate 2000 words into my WIP. I use it on my desktop as well when I'm home alone. I type when hubby's home, just can't dictate those hot scenes with him in listening range.


----------



## Avril Sabine

David Peterson said:


> It came back with a list of obscenities, asking me if it should learn those words. I kinda feel like I'm corrupting the little guy.


Don't worry, yours isn't the only one that has been corrupted. I had to train mine to learn a few obscenities too. Just think of it as extending its expressive vocabulary. Although my family and I had a few chuckles over the first attempts it made before being taught how to swear. : )


----------



## Leanne King

David Peterson said:


> I feel kind of bad. I upgraded to Premium 13 last night so I could start using a voice recorder. I had it analyze some my writing to learn new words. It came back with a list of obscenities, asking me if it should learn those words. I kinda feel like I'm corrupting the little guy.


Another advantage the Windows version has over the Mac version. Dragon for Mac filters all obscenities and there's no way around it. You can't add them. It's a known limitation, and a pain for writing fiction. Real people swear!

Here's another one - try dictating the words "the bullet had entered" and enjoy watching your cursor fly off back through your text searching for the most recent instance of the word "had" so it can stick a bullet point in front of it. Now my characters can neither shoot nor curse.

I have a love/hate relationship with Dragon.


----------



## Moist_Tissue

Has Dragon affected anyone else's number keypad? I can no longer use the plus, minus, divide, or multiple buttons, but the numbers work just fine.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

My keyboard doesn't have a keyboard, it's a mac little thing. 

Driving today from the airport got 2500 words dictated. New WIP has 3K now, I"m on my way to another finished draft probably by the end of this weekend. WOOT WOOT


----------



## Jac1106

MT, not sure but I think it's the hot keys. Maybe you should disable them or reassign to other keys? I don't use them or the numeric keypad.

http://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2537/~/dragons-default-hot-keys


----------



## A.E. Williams

Watch out if you are NOT using NUMLOCK on a laptop!

A.E. Williams


----------



## OW

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> My keyboard doesn't have a keyboard, it's a mac little thing.
> 
> Driving today from the airport got 2500 words dictated. New WIP has 3K now, I"m on my way to another finished draft probably by the end of this weekend. WOOT WOOT


What do you use to dictate into while your driving please Elizabeth?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

My Sony IC Recorder.


----------



## Moist_Tissue

Jac1106 said:


> MT, not sure but I think it's the hot keys. Maybe you should disable them or reassign to other keys? I don't use them or the numeric keypad.
> 
> http://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2537/~/dragons-default-hot-keys


That was it! Thanks!


----------



## bethrevis

I just began training my Dragon!  Unfortunately, I'm noticing a weird thing.  At the end some sentences, I get a random letter. It's sometimes been S, D, or G.  I have no why I'm getting these weird random letters at the end of sentences. It's not all the time, but happened enough that it's really distracting.  has happened anyone else? E

(See that E up there? That's one of the random letters! I just said, "Has this happened to anyone else QUESTION MARK and got the E added randomly.)


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Yes, I sometimes get those. What I do is leave it alone until the whole thing is finished. I think it's expressing a plosive. Then I say select letter delete that and it removes it. 

You'll never get perfect copy using dictation. It will always have a bit of typos to it, just like our typing does. Part of using Dragon is accepting what typos you can work around and teach it to stop making the ones it can learn to stop.


----------



## A.E. Williams

I get a lot of "him him him" from when I breathe.

You just need to mute the mike every once in while, like when you are thinking about the plot.

A.E. Williams


----------



## lynnfromthesouth

I find Dragon great for blogging. 

However, when I first draft, I write very dialogue heavy scenes, and having to slow down for all the punctuation causes me to stop my flow. I haven't really found a good way around this except to drop punctuation, but then it drives me crazy because it looks wrong.


----------



## Gina Black

I've got the transcription process down now, at least the importing part. I'm still having trouble with the editing part. It doesn't always want to understand my commands. Often it will delete things I didn't tell it to, so I have to go in with the fingers and keys to fix things. But that doesn't help with the training. 

Still, it's such a joy to be able to dictate and to know I don't have to do the transcribing!


----------



## Jac1106

I've found out that to improve accuracy we should know when to use CORRECT and SELECT. 

Use "CORRECT" if we want to correct word/words that we dictated correctly but Dragon misrecognize.  
Use "SELECT" if we want to change word/words that we dictated correctly and Dragon recognizes correctly but we want to change/edit.

When we use "CORRECT" we are telling Dragon that it's wrong (bad dragon!)
When we use "SELECT" we are telling Dragon that we're wrong (i'm only human...)


----------



## OW

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> My Sony IC Recorder.


Thanks Elizabeth


----------



## OW

Do you mind if I ask what version of this you are all using please?


----------



## Jac1106

DNS 13 Premium


----------



## David Peterson

I'm using 13 premium directly into Scrivener. It dictates into me Scrivener text files, but it doesn't let me use the special commands (SELECT, DELETE THAT, etc). It works fine in the DragonPad, but not Scrivener. I thought it worked with 12.5, but maybe I'm making that up. 

Is there a way to make those special commands work going directly into Scrivener or do I need to go to DragonPad first and then to Scrivener?


----------



## MyraScott

I need more practice talking out loud- my writing, when spoken, loses a lot of the character and detail.  I find myself going along detailing what's going on without "feeling" it the same way when I write.  

Probably also has something to do with teenagers wandering in and out of the room while I'm trying to dictate. 

It does accomplish a lot, very quickly!


----------



## OW

Has anyone tried using this with the built in mic on a laptop? As I've noticed they have a digital download and the lack of headset makes me assume a built in mic is the only dictation option in this circumstance.


----------



## Jac1106

David Peterson said:


> I'm using 13 premium directly into Scrivener. It dictates into me Scrivener text files, but it doesn't let me use the special commands (SELECT, DELETE THAT, etc). It works fine in the DragonPad, but not Scrivener. I thought it worked with 12.5, but maybe I'm making that up.
> 
> Is there a way to make those special commands work going directly into Scrivener or do I need to go to DragonPad first and then to Scrivener?


You're right -- Scrivener and 12.5 worked well together but Scrivener and 13 don't, unfortunately. 
I use DragonPad then Scrivener.


----------



## Jac1106

OW said:


> Has anyone tried using this with the built in mic on a laptop? As I've noticed they have a digital download and the lack of headset makes me assume a built in mic is the only dictation option in this circumstance.


I tried using the laptop mic, it worked ok. But I discovered that my iPhone earpods' mic picks up audio better so now I use it when I dictate into my laptop and my phone.


----------



## A.E. Williams

Laptop mics pick up ALL the noise, usually, because they are omnidirectional (ie gathering sound from all directions), and the dynamic noise filters tend to cut off sharp noises.

When used with your Dragon, this can confuse it, and it won't work as well.

It WILL work, but you need to speak directly into the microphone, and enunciate clearly, in a quiet room.

Desktop mics work well, if you get a Blue Yeti or equivalent, which retail between $200 and $500. They are designed for broadcast, and have shielding.

This is why most users get relatively inexpensive ($50 -150) headsets.

Logitech makes nice ones, I use the 800 wireless series. Downside to wireless is that the battery runs out, as opposed to a USB, where you end up yanking the headset off if you try to roam about.

A.E. Williams


----------



## TBD

OW said:


> Has anyone tried using this with the built in mic on a laptop? As I've noticed they have a digital download and the lack of headset makes me assume a built in mic is the only dictation option in this circumstance.


I've been using DNS 13 Premium on my laptop using the built in mic. It does fine. I couldn't do it with DNS 12.5

Now I am using a standing desk with an embarrassingly large monitor and a keyboard. The laptop is off to the side, so I am using the headset that came with the DNS CD. I don't have to wear it. It just sits on the desk.

If you plan to have DNS transcribe and are using Windows, you'll need the Premium edition. Win DNS Home doesn't have the transcription option.


----------



## Mystery Maven

I'm on Amazon, and I see "Dragon Dictate" for Mac, but not "Dragon Naturally Speaking." Are they the same thing?


----------



## Jac1106

Dictate is for Mac, DNS is for PC.


----------



## Mystery Maven

Jac1106 said:


> Dictate is for Mac, DNS is for PC.


Thanks, Jac!


----------



## Chad Winters

OW said:


> Has anyone tried using this with the built in mic on a laptop? As I've noticed they have a digital download and the lack of headset makes me assume a built in mic is the only dictation option in this circumstance.


I posted this earlier but will repost:

FYI for those using Dragon, especially on a laptop: as a doctor I have used Dragon to dictate for years and have used many different mics, some over $500 and this one worked the best for me and was less than $40



its accurate, you don't have to hold it, and has a cardiod setting which means it won't pick up sounds from behind the mic if you don't want it to.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Chad people can't tell what kind of mic that is from the picture. Do you have the brand and model number?


----------



## KGGiarratano

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Chad people can't tell what kind of mic that is from the picture. Do you have the brand and model number?


If you click on the picture, it takes you to the mic's Amazon page. It's Samson Go Mic Portable USB Condenser Microphone.


----------



## Deke

I bought a $20 copy of Dictate 3 for Mac off Ebay recently and am really amazed at the accuracy of the program. I think this will save a lot of wear and tear on my wrist.  Works well on my iMac running 10.7.5 and I'm going to try to iPad app next.


----------



## Hoop

Grr. I was hoping Amazon would lower the price of DNS 13P after Christmas, but instead they raised it. Now it's $115 instead of $99.


----------



## Pauline Creeden

Just got my dragon today - and put in 1200 words in 45 minutes while figuring it out


----------



## OW

Thanks for the replies about the mics guys. I'm assuming most external headsets/mics are compatible with this, not just the one that comes in the box?

Also does anyone know (particularly with voice recorders/Dictaphones) whether you have to purchase separate software or a product including software for installation, or if they just work with dragon as they are?


----------



## Dean Murray

In case anyone else was struggling to find the hardware compatability link on the Nuance site, here it is:

http://support.nuance.com/compatibility/Search.asp?PRO=DNS&CID=7

The headset I bought originally turns out to only get 4 dragons, so I'll be ordering a new model that got 6 dragons in testing.

So far I'm still trying to adjust to my dragon. I dictated a bit over 3k words yesterday, which was nice because it eliminated about a third of the stress on my wrists, but I'm still quite a bit slower dictating than I am typing.


----------



## Brevoort

OW said:


> Thanks for the replies about the mics guys. I'm assuming most external headsets/mics are compatible with this, not just the one that comes in the box?
> 
> Also does anyone know (particularly with voice recorders/Dictaphones) whether you have to purchase separate software or a product including software for installation, or if they just work with dragon as they are?


Yes, any microphone that will connect to your computer will work with DNS. The one that comes with some versions of Dragon does work but its quality is pretty dire. Very likely the cheapest available at your local computer store would be better.

Any version of DNS with the transcribe feature (not Home edition) will work with sound files with a .WAV WMA, MP3, DSS, or DS2 format.

Either, copy your file out of the recorder and into the computer and have DNS transcribe it, or point Dragon to your recorder connected to your computer and press Transcribe on the file you want. You can even highlight a bunch of files and do them all at once but be aware that Dragon will not put a clear separation between transcribed files so the resulting text may look monolithic if not downright strange.

No special software is needed. If by some chance you have some odd recorder that puts out a format Dragon does not support there is no doubt a converter available somewhere on the web.

Also, voice recordings made on your phone will work. And, there is an Apple app that lets you use your ipad etc but I have no experience with it.


----------



## MyraScott

I use the one that came with the software.  No problems. 

I am considering a bluetooth version though, so that I'm not tied to the computer desk.


----------



## John Ellsworth

Plantronics 478B USB is the mic I found that works on Macbook Pro/DNS. I went thru several orders/returns until I hit on one that worked. Others said they worked in the marketing stuff, but actually didn't. Word to the wise.


----------



## Diane Patterson

I've used the built-in mic on my Macbook Pro (retina version, with the one microphone port), a combination of Sennheiser headphones plus a Blue Yeti mic, and my iPhone earbuds/mic. All have worked (provided I check the settings in System Preferences > Sound input & output).


----------



## Deke

Bluetooth headset mic….great idea.


----------



## Kalen ODonnell

LOL I'd been putting off getting this for a long time, because as much as I figured it would increase my writing time, I had no idea where to fit in the time needed to train myself to write via dictation.  But much like She Whose Name Can Not Be Duplicated Without Greater Knowledge of Computer Keys Than I Have, I figure I might well find the time now somehow.  Though in my case its because someone got it for me as a gift.


----------



## Kalen ODonnell

ゴジラ said:


> Copy and paste, my friend. Or call me Gojira. But preferably in all caps while looking horrified. AHH! GOJIRA!!


Shhh, I'm saving all my logic and fine reasoning skills for the new year. But I can probably manage to be suitably horrified while screaming in all caps before then.


----------



## Lisa Grace

Kalen ODonnell said:


> LOL I'd been putting off getting this for a long time, because as much as I figured it would increase my writing time, I had no idea where to fit in the time needed to train myself to write via dictation. But much like She Whose Name Can Not Be Duplicated Without Greater Knowledge of Computer Keys Than I Have, I figure I might well find the time now somehow. Though in my case its because someone got it for me as a gift.


I miss her knife.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

My first day, 20 minutes was 550 words. So there is a curve once you get the hang of it. I really say it takes a good week of practice, figure out when and how it works for you. Some may only use it to write when they normally could not. I bank thousands of words driving my car, sitting my Sony IC recorder in my cup holder so I'm hands free and just talking. Human voice does get transcribed, so yes, with a baby, that's troublesome. 

My favorite places are laying in bed dictating words for tomorrow's work day and in the car.


----------



## Diane Patterson

I've decided on "Temeraire" for my Dragon, even though I read those books a while ago, and I have zero memory of what the Dragon was actually like.


----------



## LondonCalling

You guys are well on your way to convincing me! My only concern is that I really need this for commuting, and the complaints about the app stopping its recording at odd times has me worried.


----------



## Pauline Creeden

Bluetooth headset mic  - anyone have a link recommendation?


----------



## JR.

I just realised how awesome this would be when I spent a few hours alone with the baby today. She's always the same when her mother is out: she NEEDS to be held. She sits on my hip, watching me, thinking at me, "put me down and I'll SCREAM" and "start typing and I'll SCREAM". It's really quite difficult to type with one hand and a baby screaming in your ear...


----------



## OW

I downloaded this yesterday, took well over 12 hours and now it won't install. Been trying everything I can think of for over three hours now, but nope. Any ideas?


----------



## 75910

OW said:


> I downloaded this yesterday, took well over 12 hours and now it won't install. Been trying everything I can think of for over three hours now, but nope. Any ideas?


Is this the Mac version? If so, it says to move it to the desktop and then double click but that didn't work for me. I had to double click from Finder to get it to install. Very strange but it worked.


----------



## OW

Nope it's the PC version. I'm launching it and it starts to install the files, then I see some of them showing in red as unable to install. Just before the green car reaches the end I get an error pop up saying some files could not be installed to reboot and stat again but it doesn't work.

Are you suggesting to move the installation file to the desktop the launch from there?


----------



## Lydniz

OW said:


> I downloaded this yesterday, took well over 12 hours and now it won't install. Been trying everything I can think of for over three hours now, but nope. Any ideas?


If you have any other Nuance programs on your computer try uninstalling them first. Difficult installation is a known issue with Dragon.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

For those just starting to use the software, remember, there are many ways Dragon can work for you:

1 - You can use it just to dictate typing that's not stories.  Like I'm dictating this right now and sparing my hands extra typing. If after a week you truly cannot write stories by dictating, this can still help reduce typing and writing related stress injuries.

2 –  You can use dictation to write when you otherwise would not have been able to such as while driving or riding in a car, exercising like walking, or while you're picking up the house. This does require using either a mobile app or a digital voice recorder that you can plug into the computer and have the Dragon version that has transcription if you're on a PC. (Mac versions have transcription built-in)

3 –  You can adapt your writing process to include dictation. Personally, I have found this to be the biggest lifesaver. I absolutely write faster when I dictate, but more importantly, I have tons of energy for other parts of my life when I dictate more than type.


----------



## 75910

OW said:


> Nope it's the PC version. I'm launching it and it starts to install the files, then I see some of them showing in red as unable to install. Just before the green car reaches the end I get an error pop up saying some files could not be installed to reboot and stat again but it doesn't work.
> 
> Are you suggesting to move the installation file to the desktop the launch from there?


This only helped for the Mac version. I'm afraid I don't have a suggestion for the PC. Have you googled the error?


----------



## OW

Well it's certainly worked for me. After over twenty hours at it I'm very grateful for that so thank you very much


----------



## Hoop

Now it's up to $131 on amazon.
Someone at Nuance got wind of this thread.


----------



## Pauline Creeden

LOL. Now I've found that using my Dragon for this forum makes me post more often…


----------



## Jane Killick

Does anyone dictate while out walking outdoors? Does anyone record into their iphone?

I'm looking for a recommendation for a headset. I could use Bluetooth or a cable with an adapter. The main issue about being outdoors is the potential for wind noise.

I looked at the Dragon app, but that does the actual transription on the go. Instead, I would want to record using a recording app and transcribe later. 

I have a digital recorder in a drawer somewhere, but don't really want to be carting that around, when I already have my iphone.

Any thoughts would be welcome.


----------



## over and out

I use my phone without a headset while walking outside and it works just fine.  Keep in mind though that you are using data if not in a wifi area.

I have been just using the free app on my iPhone.  It works great but has limited features vs. the full version (which I have now ordered).  If you want to give it a try before taking the plunge I recommend using the free app.  I was convinced pretty quickly, but it's nice just to try it out first as it's a different way of "writing"  and might not suit everyone.


----------



## over and out

Jane Killick said:


> Does anyone dictate while out walking outdoors? Does anyone record into their iphone?
> 
> I looked at the Dragon app, but that does the actual transription on the go. Instead, I would want to record using a recording app and transcribe later.


I should add that I talk into my iPhone and then email it to myself - that is the part that uses the data. Then I cut and paste the email into my ms.


----------



## Jane Killick

Colleen Cross said:


> I talk into my iPhone and then email it to myself - that is the part that uses the data.


I would be doing something similar. Possibly uploading to Dropbox.

I'm actually looking for a hands free option so I can swing my arms when walking, hence the headset. I know the iphone comes with a hands free kit, but I suspect the microphone on that is not good enough while outside. Plus, how do I secure it without putting those little bud things in my ears? (Which are painful)

So still looking for a hands free microphone. Glad to hear that other people walk and dictate, though.


----------



## over and out

I agree those earbuds are painful (and always fall out)! I use a different brand (more comfortable headphones) than the standard iPhone ones. It has a built in mic, but I prefer just talking into my phone instead. Sorry but I don't have a specific recommendation for handsfree.


----------



## Brevoort

Jane Killick said:


> So still looking for a hands free microphone.


Have a look at the Olympus ME-52W Clip On microphone. I use it while walking about, while driving, while hiking, and during slow runs. It has excellent noise-cancelling capabilities and is directional so you can arrange good voice pick-up. Costs about 23$ on Amzn. Make sure to get one with the connecting cord so you can stuff your phone in your pocket and be handsfree. No earbuds needed.


----------



## Jane Killick

Brevoort said:


> Have a look at the Olympus ME-52W Clip On microphone. I use it while walking about, while driving, while hiking, and during slow runs.


Interesting. This is a lapel / tie-clip mic. Do you find you can position it near enough to your mouth?


----------



## Brevoort

Jane Killick said:


> Interesting. This is a lapel / tie-clip mic. Do you find you can position it near enough to your mouth?


Yes. The ideal distance for these kind of things, (widely used in television news) is about a spread hand's breadth from the bottom of the chin and with the mic itself pointed directly at the mouth. Make sure that there is no clothing rubbing on or covering the microphone.


----------



## Jane Killick

Thanks! That's an interesting idea.


----------



## Diane Patterson

Since I have a lot of extra space on my phone, I bought a small tie clip mic (this one, in fact: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058MJX4O/), connected it to my iPhone, and I bought the .99 iTalk Record app. (The Dragon Dictate app stops every 60 seconds to transcribe.) It's easy to transfer the .aiff files to my Mac and upload them into Dragon Dictate. (I bought the mic because I don't want to wear the earbuds for a long time, and if I'm driving I don't want to wear a headset and I don't want to use the car's built-in mic.)

In case anyone out there a)has a phone and b)doesn't want to buy a separate dictation recorder!


----------



## HAGrant

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> To recap, it's been one week since I purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4 for Mac because primarily of my injuries from poor posture in my neck. I also use a Sony IC recorder to dictate my stories all over, often in my car, and have my computer transcribe them. When I first started, I managed 550 words dictated in about 20 minutes. Using my IC recorder to record two 11 minute files today I'm happy to report I'm up to 1190 words!!


I'm glad you're having a good experience. I've had the opposite.

I just purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 13 for PC. It types mostly gibberish. In addition, the gibberish takes forever to appear on screen.

I spoke simple test sentences like "My name is Holly. I am sitting on the couch with the cat. The dog is sleeping on the floor." Dragon couldn't handle those sentences. It typed some of the words, repeated words and left words out -- like half the sentences. It ignored instructions like CAP, period and new line.

I'm American and chose that type of voice. I don't have speech defects. I followed the installation and microphone instructions. This isn't worth the hassle. I asked on the Amazon product page if it gets better and somebody else who bought it said "No." Buyer beware, at least for Dragon 13.


----------



## HAGrant

oakwood said:


> I would say "Hello my name is Mike" and it would write "Hollow ice pike" or something
> 
> Turned out to be 2 things:
> 1) slow computer (PC)
> 2) bad mike (not me), mine needed adjustment in the pre-load levels in windows.
> 
> make sure you do microphone testing first and do a normal sound recording with you speaking (any sound recorder program), play it back. What's it sound like? It's the only way to be 100% sure your microphone is correctly leveled and positioned to avoid puffing into it all the time.
> 
> If Dragon can't hear you ok it'll try to figure out/ make best guesses.. and this slows it down massively to the point of being like riding a potholed mountain road instead of cruising freeway style
> 
> Since adjusting it, I'm very happy with Dragon 13 and seeing much better results than my previous version.


Thanks for the suggestions. I'm trying not to scream right now.

My PC is only 4 months old and isn't slow, so that isn't the problem.

I just tested the Dragon microphone with an online Spanish course I'm taking -- I sometimes record myself talking (and can review it back). The sound with the Dragon microphone is horrible. It sounds like I'm talking from the bottom of a tin can three miles away. Worse, now my regular microphone won't work for my class. Dragon somehow changed my computer.

ETA, oops, no, my other microphone was on mute and works fine. I pulled the plug on Dragon anyway, uninstalled it, and contacted Amazon for a refund. I want to be the person above who can dictate several thousand words an hour, but it's not going to happen with this software.


----------



## Lydniz

The microphone isn't very good, it's true. Interestingly, I find that if I rattle off something like "We'll send you a monthly statement to tell you what the minimum amount you need to pay is and when the payment is due," read from my credit card statement at speed and without being careful, the program can cope with it perfectly, but if I ponder what I'm writing then it tends to start having trouble. That says to me I need to train myself in dicating rather than training the program.


----------



## hero1626

Diane Patterson said:


> Since I have a lot of extra space on my phone, I bought a small tie clip mic (this one, in fact: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058MJX4O/), connected it to my iPhone, and I bought the .99 iTalk Record app. (The Dragon Dictate app stops every 60 seconds to transcribe.) It's easy to transfer the .aiff files to my Mac and upload them into Dragon Dictate. (I bought the mic because I don't want to wear the earbuds for a long time, and if I'm driving I don't want to wear a headset and I don't want to use the car's built-in mic.)
> 
> In case anyone out there a)has a phone and b)doesn't want to buy a separate dictation recorder!


Does this mic work with the iphone as is?
This Amazon thread mentions external connectors are also needed when using the iPhone.
http://www.amazon.com/ECMCS3-style-Omnidirectional-Stereo-Microphone/forum/Fx33JWUWLBQNQMQ/-/2/ref=cm_cd_ql_psf_ql_pg2?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B0058MJX4O&cdAnchor=B0058MJX4O&cdSort=best


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

for those who are struggling with Dragon, I completely understand. I tried using Dragon two different times before and couldn't quite get it to work for me. In fact, I'm not sure if I would be as successful with it now if I had not already written through  typing five other stories last year. I don't mean that to say you need massive writing experience in order to dictate, but I'm in a situation where the formula for my series is pretty well set. I'm already 5000 words into the next installment and I know I'm going to blink this week and the whole thing will just be done.

For those tapping into the potential of dictating that I had stumbled on, high fives all around. I am finding that after taking about two weeks off for the holidays and unplanned flu bug, I'm a little slower in my dictation that I was at the height of writing By Consequence of Marriage.  for example, I dictated 34 minutes worth of material in the car today as I had to run an errand this morning and only had  1238 words raw.  Made sparkly,  it ended up being 1354 words. That took about another 30 minutes to do so it is a rate of 1350 per hour.  That's certainly not a bad rate, but I know I can do faster. I am about to dictate quite a few scenes and hopefully end up with a good chunk of the few thousand  to edit and make sparkly. And then my head  will really spin around because my novellas are only 35,000 words total. Hopefully by the end of the day, I'll be past the 10K mark.


----------



## HAGrant

I think the version I bought, PC for Windows 8.1, is defective. I tried the Dragon microphone on another program, as I said before. My voice playback sounds tinny, distant and hard to understand -- really awful, so I'm not surprised that the dictation part of the software is struggling to interpret the sounds.

I'm sending it back for a refund. This is my experience. Other people obviously have had a different experience. The good I take away is the value of talking out a first draft, so I'll be looking into some other product.


----------



## Diane Patterson

hero1626 said:


> Does this mic work with the iphone as is?
> This Amazon thread mentions external connectors are also needed when using the iPhone.
> http://www.amazon.com/ECMCS3-style-Omnidirectional-Stereo-Microphone/forum/Fx33JWUWLBQNQMQ/-/2/ref=cm_cd_ql_psf_ql_pg2?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B0058MJX4O&cdAnchor=B0058MJX4O&cdSort=best


The tie clip mic I bought works with the phone as is -- it has the "headphone" plug we're all used to for phones. (Is that an RCA plug? I used to know these things.) I plugged it in, started talking...worked no problem.

I bought a Sennheiser headphone/mic combo that ended in separate headphone/mic plugs, and for that I did need to buy an adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Headset-Buddy-Smartphone-Blackberry-01-PC35-PH35/dp/B00ENFA3GO/


----------



## Diane Patterson

I am still working on training my Dragon – in fact I'm speaking this post. Is anyone else finding that Dragon crashes quite frequently? I have Dragon Dictate for Mac, a MacBook Pro (retina), and Yosemite. I don't know whether Dragon is buggy or if it's interacting with something incorrectly. (By "frequently", I mean I've had to restart it three times already today.)


----------



## Pauline Creeden

ゴジラ said:


> Only problem: Making corrections via spoken commands has stopped working. I can't say "correct [word]" or even "select [word]" anymore. It just...doesn't do anything. Completely ignores me. I can still use commands like "select all" and "microphone off," so it's like just those two commands have gone missing. I have NO idea how to fix that. I don't like editing by dictation anyway, but it means I can't teach Dragon anymore. :/


I noticed that Dragon will listen for Dictation or Commands - or Dictation and Commands. I have mine set on both. If you have it on Dictation only, it will ignore commands - perhaps that's the problem?


----------



## Heather Hamilton-Senter

Dragon 12.5 Home continuously crashes Microsoft Word. Does anyone know the solution to this?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Heather Hamilton-Senter said:


> Dragon 12.5 Home continuously crashes Microsoft Word. Does anyone know the solution to this?


Dictate in the window thing they provide and copy and paste. It might be a ram issue if your computer is older. Sorry not more help, I don't use Windows.


----------



## TBD

Heather Hamilton-Senter said:


> Dragon 12.5 Home continuously crashes Microsoft Word. Does anyone know the solution to this?


This is my resource for Dragon questions. I'd ask here 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/25795099715/


----------



## Heather Hamilton-Senter

Thanks - brand new, fast computer so it's frustrating. Cut and paste might be the best option.

I belong to that facebook group but hadn't explored yet. Off I go!


----------



## Diane Patterson

Has anyone figured out how to make text bold or italic? I looked in the manual, and I looked online, and I've tried all of the commands that I've found, and none of them work. (I'm using Dragon's own text editor for writing, because I got very tired of Dragon crashing in other applications.)


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I just say bold word or italicize word or phrase


----------



## Chad Winters

you can speak a sentence and then say "bold that"
i think it works with italicize as well but have never tried


----------



## Diane Patterson

Augh! This is frustrating that it is not working! I say "my phrase," then "select my phrase," and then "bold that." I end up with text reading "bold that." 

Sometimes Dragon makes me very frustrated, even as I'm amazed at how many words I can spit out just by yakking away.


----------



## Heather Hamilton-Senter

Don't you just say 'bold that' immediately after the last phrase you said rather than having to select it?


----------



## Jac1106

Yes, I just say BOLD/ITALICIZE THAT. No need to say SELECT.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Yeah that won't work for me Diana. On my mac, I have to say Bold Word or preface what I will say with Bold whatever. It's different. *Thank you* Here I had to click on the bold icon, but tested it on my Mac and I have to say the word or phrase, then say bold and the word or phrase. I have not been able to get Command that to work at all. Same with capitalization. I have to say Wonderful (that was wonderful, then capitalize wonderful) in order to get capitalization to work. Cap that doesn't work for me.


----------



## Diane Patterson

I have now gotten "select the phrase" followed by "bold that" to work. No other phrases (including the ones in the Dragon manual work). So, thank you!

"Cap" does work for me. 

This process is definitely frustrating.


----------



## thesmallprint

Even after reading the success stories on this fine thread, I can't bring myself to buy it. The poor reviews on Amazon (there are many) are scathing, and the frustration of some users seems to border on rage.  Bugs, crashes and awful customer service by Nuance seem the most frequently cited issues.

I would not buy another product with so many viciously bad reviews, so I'm staying away from Dragon.


----------



## HAGrant

I just returned the Dragon software I bought from Amazon (NaturallySpeaking 13 for PC). It was terrible and I believe had a defective microphone. I understand that lots of people posting here have good experiences with it, but not me -- and I followed the instructions and have experience with dictating.

FYI, if you buy this product from Amazon and want your money back:

I bought the CD, not the download. They will refund software purchases if the box is unopened and returned to them via UPS. They give you the label for free shipping to their returns center. However, they do not refund purchases if you open the box. They can't resell them.

They made a one-time exception for me and will give me a refund, which I appreciate, especially because I didn't ask for special treatment. Some one-star reviews for this product on Amazon said buyer beware about the download, because you can't get a refund for that.


----------



## Marcus Richardson

For what it's worth I've read a lot more negative reviews about DNS 13 than DNS 12 (or 12.5).  I went with 12 premium and it installed just fine on my Win 8.1 machine (and after some tweaking, even my bare bones laptop which barely has the minimum requirements to run DNS....without a DVD drive).  Once 12 is installed it updates a few times and you end up with 12.5.  I love it and would never go back now.  I'm cranking out stuff on my phone (a generic voice to .mp3 app works great...just upload to drop box then open drop box on the computer and transcribe at my leisure) or digital recorder.  Sometimes when I have a few minutes, I'll even write by hand, record the date, then read it to the computer when I have time.  With a the snippets of my story floating around it was a little confusing at first but I'm starting to develope a system now to keep it a organized and it's really got things flowing nicely.

Best of luck to those having issues....hang in there, it's worth it!


----------



## williamvw

If you or one of yours is a student, be aware that there's a student/teacher edition of DNS 13 Premium currently selling for $86.24: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MTX9SAO. This applies to both the download and disc version.


----------



## OW

Does anyone know if you have to set up different profiles for recorders etc?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I do. I have one for my headset and one for my sony ic recorder. Different microphones would produce different tones when you talk which could affect accuracy.


----------



## Heather Hamilton-Senter

My husband is a college prof so I'm thinking of getting the educational version of premium so I can do transcription. How does it work, exactly. Do I speak into a recorder the exact same way I would the mic, using the words for 'open quotes' etc..... And then the file somehow is accessed by the program?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Yes you talk into the recorder like the computer. Then, with the recorder connected to the computer, you select transcription then the file. Dragon runs the file. It's not as accurate as when you talk into the computer, but it lets you write away from the computer. This week with everywhere outside a blanket being cold, I've dictated about 6,000 word today snuggled in bed. I'll have to edit them but I'm still further ahead than zero I'd be at if I couldn't snuggle in bed and talk my story. I can no longer type on a laptop in bed it kills my neck.


----------



## Chris1962

DNS is the gold box deal on Amazon today ... $34.99 for 13.0 Home and $79.99 for 13.0 Premium http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox ... 17 hours left


----------



## Heather Hamilton-Senter

Chris1962 said:


> DNS is the gold box deal on Amazon today ... $34.99 for 13.0 Home and $79.99 for 13.0 Premium http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox ... 17 hours left


Thanks!


----------



## williamvw

For those interested in a digital recorder, I just ordered this: http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-WS-822-Recorder-Built---Memory/dp/B00NO5U52Q/. One of the links upthread led me to a review of recorders, and this Olympus series was like the #2 choice for this sort of work. With this being under $60, I figured it was worth a shot. Depending on how things go, I may add a wired headset later.


----------



## Hoop

Chris1962 said:


> DNS is the gold box deal on Amazon today ... $34.99 for 13.0 Home and $79.99 for 13.0 Premium http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox ... 17 hours left


Thank you Chris! Pulled the trigger and downloaded my copy, finally.


----------



## rebelblue

I downloaded DNS when I saw it was the deal of the day for Amazon Goldbox. it was 65% off so I spent about $84 after taxes. Not a big discount. (Big should have been bad). I've been playing with it for a few hours now, I've read through to reading selections for training purposes, and it's getting better slowly. The hardest part is getting the words to flow as fast when I speak as they do when I type. I suspect once I find my way around that problem Dragon will be much faster and easier than typing. Some commands including quotations in parentheses work typing here, others do not. Note that if you're not careful when you're using it and you have a Internet browser open it will try to control that browser. Trust me I found out the hard way. Once I become proficient and I learned how to keep four kids two dogs and two cats quiet(usually I think I'll wait till their sleeping) I think this will have been a great by. I'm letting the typos stand just for examples purposes. Good luck to everyone I hope their DNS are as effective as the potential that seems to exist.I really hope that with practice this will speed up typing considerably because I have very short moments of quiet time and I need quiet to write even when I am typing instead of speaking.


----------



## Gina Black

Is anyone successfully using Dragon Dictate 4.0.6 with Yosemite (10.10.1) and a USB microphone? IF *yes*, what microphone are you using? 

I have just struck out on the Samson Go Mic which isn't working with any of my Macs even though its supposed to be compatible. :sigh:


----------



## Diane Patterson

Gina Black said:


> Is anyone successfully using Dragon Dictate 4.0.6 with Yosemite (10.10.1) and a USB microphone? IF *yes*, what microphone are you using?
> 
> I have just struck out on the Samson Go Mic which isn't working with any of my Macs even though its supposed to be compatible. :sigh:


I used it with a Blue Yeti mic for a while, but it's more convenient for me to have the headset with mic, so I'm using a Sennheiser now.


----------



## Gina Black

Diane Patterson said:


> I used it with a Blue Yeti mic for a while, but it's more convenient for me to have the headset with mic, so I'm using a Sennheiser now.


Diane, can you tell me which Sennheiser it is? And confirm that it's working with the most recent Mac OS?

Thanks so much.


----------



## Diane Patterson

Gina Black said:


> Diane, can you tell me which Sennheiser it is? And confirm that it's working with the most recent Mac OS?
> 
> Thanks so much.


I tried it with my Sennheiser 580s (when using the Blue Yeti, since that was the setup I had with those two). When I moved the Blue Yeti off my desk, I got the Sennheiser 151 headset (with mic attached), but the ear cups turned out to be too small for my ears if I was going to wear it all day. My son liked them, though, so I passed that headset off to him and bought the Sennheiser 320 gaming headset, which has much bigger ear cups. (Both the 151 and 320 required the Headset Buddy adapter that allows me to plug the headset into the single mic jack on my Macbook Pro, so be warned -- if your computer only has one 3.5mm jack in, you need the adapter.)

I have discovered a problem with the 320s though -- while it's fine for using Dragon and listening to music (iTunes) while working, if I use them to listen to Netflix played in a browser they are TOO QUIET. I can't figure what's going on with them. So now I have my 580s for when I'm just watching Netflix and my 320s for working.

Yes, I have too many headphones.


----------



## Diane Patterson

Diane Patterson said:


> I have discovered a problem with the 320s though -- while it's fine for using Dragon and listening to music (iTunes) while working, if I use them to listen to Netflix played in a browser they are TOO QUIET. I can't figure what's going on with them. So now I have my 580s for when I'm just watching Netflix and my 320s for working.


And since I didn't want to leave you with the impression there's something messed up with a Sennheiser product, I finally did a search, discovered other people were having the problem, and (in my case, at any rate) it was explained by the volume control on the headset being turned down too low.

"But there's no volume control on this....oh, look at that, there is one."

I turned it all the way up and I could hear Netflix just fine.  So now I can put the other ones away.


----------



## DaniO

Gina Black said:


> Is anyone successfully using Dragon Dictate 4.0.6 with Yosemite (10.10.1) and a USB microphone? IF *yes*, what microphone are you using?
> 
> I have just struck out on the Samson Go Mic which isn't working with any of my Macs even though its supposed to be compatible. :sigh:


I bought the Samson Go Mic too. I got it to work on my Macbook Pro by adjusting the input in System preferences - sounds, but it wouldn't work with Dragon. I'm going to send the microphone back.

I'm using Dragon Dictate 4, but I'm still using Mavericks. I don't want to update to Yosemite yet. It feels like i only just updated to Mavericks! Every time the third party software I use finally become compatible to the latest Mac OS Apple seem to release another.

The Plantronics headset I have had for a while works well so I think I will stick with that.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001W85SGK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage


----------



## anotherpage

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Hi all!
> 
> I'm still on lunch break. I have 6 minutes to post this. That's okay, me and my headset I have aptly named Toothless can do this! In fact, just now when I dictated toothless, it made the name lowercase, and I was able to use my voice to go back,select that word and tell it to make it capitalized. It did that and we're moving on.
> 
> To recap, it's been one week since I purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4 for Mac because primarily of my injuries from poor posture in my neck. I also use a Sony IC recorder to dictate my stories all over, often in my car, and have my computer transcribe them. When I first started, I managed 550 words dictated in about 20 minutes. Using my IC recorder to record two 11 minute files today I'm happy to report I'm up to 1190 words!!
> 
> I've taken copious notes about my sessions to dictate and my sessions to edit those words. I am consistently over 1000 words for 20 minutes of dictation. However, that total increases significantly when I dictate for longer periods of time I think because I become more comfortable telling the story. In 40 minutes, I have consistently dictated 2500 words plus. But what about editing?
> 
> On average it takes me half of the time it took to dictate the words to edit them into a polished state I consider draft material for my editor. My editor is my business partner and she reads over it, makes changes, and runs through autocrit. We do use a copy editor for our final drafts to look for typos.
> 
> So here's where I'm over the moon, jumping for joy, and screaming from the rooftops: two hours of dictation this week equated to over 7000 words of raw material. It took me two more hours total, to edit all of that material. And while that's an average of 1750 words per hour, that's higher than the words per hour I can type physically without even going into what I have to pay later in pain to do so. So even if you're not a victim of stress-related injuries, training your own Dragon might still be a good idea to shoot your productivity into the stratosphere.
> 
> Taking on a Dragon is not something you should do lightly. I tried twice before when I had no motivation to really make it work and failed. But, since Toothless and I have become best friends forever more, I've heard from other authors who've given it a try and found it works similarly for them. Make sure you're willing to give it a week or two to adjust to writing a new way. Keep telling yourself the words you write in the words you say all come from the same place: your brain. It takes a little bit of practice, but I think within a week you'll find yourself flying high as a kite with your own Dragon!
> 
> **My lunch period is over  I have to go dictate more/edit more. I promise I won't keep giving Dragon updates. In reality, I won't need to, you'll just see my author page filled with books I talked out loud.  But I thought one week of working with my Dragon was a good status report to share.


Elizabeth when you are dictating are you adding in things like, new paragraph, quotation, period, commas, new lines etc?


----------



## anotherpage

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I have to go pick up my daughter, I forgot today is a half day. GRRR.
> 
> I felt like an idiot the first time I tried it years and years ago (like version 6 back in the mid 2000s). In 2012, I started off just dictating IDEAS. Since I always get plot bunnies and ideas for a project when I'm driving, it was frustrating to never be able to write them down. Now I just turn on my SONY recorder and stick it in the cup holder and off we go and I talk to myself.
> 
> This time around, I expected to be SLOWER talking my story out. Ha! Yeah, we speak waaaaay faster than we type. Way faster. Those 11 minutes files for example? Probably 25% is silence. You can talk with huge gaps in between thoughts and the Dragon just ignores it. So when you're recording you FEEL super slow. When it transcribes, you're like "Holy hell, how did I say that many words??" I did research and realized most people speak about 100 word per minute, auctioneers 300 words per minute. The FASTEST I've ever written typing was 1250 words in an hour, creating words. I type fast, but typing words I have to come up with, 20 words per minute is what I can manage. Dictation I'm transcribing 54 words per minute, coming down to about 30-40 wpm if you include editing time.
> 
> ok gotta jet!
> 
> P.s this was typed. I think I make more mistakes when I type lol


 30 to 40 wpm that would be too slow for me. I type at around 75 wpm. But again without knowing what you are writing ( no outline ) or the next part of your story. Whether you are using dragon or typing you can be sitting there for quite some time. I tried dragon twice and found it was slower than typing for me.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Yes, I say my punctuation when I dictate. At the micro level, it seems like dictation is slower (that 30 to 40 wpm with dictating and editing). The difference though is stamina. I can do 6,000 to 8,000 words in a DAY with NO adverse affects on my joints, back, or fingers. The only place I feel slightly taxed is mentally. If I type that, the next day, I can barely move due to postures issues (typing I do about 1200-1500 in an hour, so 6,000 words is about 4 solid hours of typing). Dictating, 6,000 words is six 15-minute dictation sessions, or about 1.5 hours talking, and then another 1.5 hours to edit it. That's cutting my computer time down to less than HALF of what I'd need to do typing, and still produces 33 words per minute (6000 divided by 180 minutes). 

Another benefit is this method also cuts down on the second editing pass work. Because I talked the words, when I go in to make them sparkle, the end result is better than a first draft typing. So I dictate, I make it sparkle, then my first editor goes in and reads over it. And that chapter is done until the final copyedit. I do work from an outline.


----------



## Gina Black

Diane Patterson said:


> I tried it with my Sennheiser 580s (when using the Blue Yeti, since that was the setup I had with those two). When I moved the Blue Yeti off my desk, I got the Sennheiser 151 headset (with mic attached), but the ear cups turned out to be too small for my ears if I was going to wear it all day. My son liked them, though, so I passed that headset off to him and bought the Sennheiser 320 gaming headset, which has much bigger ear cups. (Both the 151 and 320 required the Headset Buddy adapter that allows me to plug the headset into the single mic jack on my Macbook Pro, so be warned -- if your computer only has one 3.5mm jack in, you need the adapter.)


Wow. I thought that microphones had to be USB to be recognized by Dragon. But those all go to that adapter which is definitely not USB. So now I'm even more confused.



Carrie_Cox said:


> I bought the Samson Go Mic too. I got it to work on my Macbook Pro by adjusting the input in System preferences - sounds, but it wouldn't work with Dragon. I'm going to send the microphone back.
> 
> I'm using Dragon Dictate 4, but I'm still using Mavericks. I don't want to update to Yosemite yet. It feels like i only just updated to Mavericks! Every time the third party software I use finally become compatible to the latest Mac OS Apple seem to release another.
> 
> The Plantronics headset I have had for a while works well so I think I will stick with that.
> 
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001W85SGK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage


Thanks for the link. I'll check into it. And I'm glad to know it wasn't just me on the Samson. It actually registered on my MacBook Pro too, although it turned out I was sounding like a Cyborg. The MacBook Air and Mac Mini didn't hear it at all, although they both saw it in sound preferences.


----------



## williamvw

OK, I'm now getting into learning Dragon's editing controls. What a powerful piece of software!! I can see how, once you master all of its possibilities, you might hardly ever touch a mouse and keyboard again. HOWEVER. I bounce between three PCs over the course of the week. I'm pretty sure that I can install to all three without setting off the piracy alarm, but what about all of the training I've done on the first system? Is there any way to migrate all of that customization to the other systems without having to retrain them from scratch?


----------



## Chad Winters

you can back up your profile, and then install the backup on another device, but it won't automatically sync changes between the computer. I think you can do a network profile that you can keep on dropbox or something and point all computers to it.


----------



## TBD

williamvw said:


> OK, I'm now getting into learning Dragon's editing controls. What a powerful piece of software!! I can see how, once you master all of its possibilities, you might hardly ever touch a mouse and keyboard again. HOWEVER. I bounce between three PCs over the course of the week. I'm pretty sure that I can install to all three without setting off the piracy alarm, but what about all of the training I've done on the first system? Is there any way to migrate all of that customization to the other systems without having to retrain them from scratch?


Likely, this won't work because each computer will have differences that will affect the profile... different mic, ambient noise, etc ;-)


----------



## Chad Winters

Dragon profiles have several components, only one part is the audio source. You can set up several audio sources within your profile, but if you start with a backed up profile it will have your macros and preferences, etc and you just add a new audio source, I have done this many times with different hardware over the years


----------



## williamvw

Hot damn! I just did my first session of using Dragon and dumping text into Scrivener from Dragon's little dictation box (which is kind of a bummer since you can't dictate straight into Scrivener in Windows, but whatever). Even fumbling around with extra editing on missed words, fixing formatting, etc., I still did 1000 words in 45 minutes. Normally, that takes me 70 to 80 minutes -- and that's on my first try while using my notebook's integrated mic. I can't wait to see what practice and an Andrea Electronics headset (shipping today) bring!


----------



## TBD

williamvw said:


> (which is kind of a bummer since you can't dictate straight into Scrivener in Windows, but whatever).


Yes you can. You do lose some of the functionality, but not a lot ;-)

Tools/Options/Misc -- Untick the box near the bottom that says *Use the Dictation Box for Unsupported Applications*


----------



## williamvw

AdearaAllyne said:


> Yes you can. You do lose some of the functionality, but not a lot ;-)
> 
> Tools/Options/Misc -- Untick the box near the bottom that says *Use the Dictation Box for Unsupported Applications*


D'oh! On it -- thanks!


----------



## OW

Does anyone have any advice regarding headsets for a digital recorder?
I bought both recently to go 'mobile' as I wanted to be hands free. Both work like a dream but unfortunately not together as I planned as the headset has a USB connection and thee recorder a jack. So I now use the headset with my machine, which is fine though still want to go hands free with my recorder. So I'm currently looking for compatible headsets with a jack connection (Would prefer to go wired), has anyone had any issues with using a headset with s recorder? Might it reduce clarity/accuracy at all?
Many thanks


----------



## Marcus Richardson

OW said:


> Does anyone have any advice regarding headsets for a digital recorder?
> I bought both recently to go 'mobile' as I wanted to be hands free. Both work like a dream but unfortunately not together as I planned as the headset has a USB connection and thee recorder a jack. So I now use the headset with my machine, which is fine though still want to go hands free with my recorder. So I'm currently looking for compatible headsets with a jack connection (Would prefer to go wired), has anyone had any issues with using a headset with s recorder? Might it reduce clarity/accuracy at all?
> Many thanks


I bought a USB headset for dictating at the computer and use the headset that came with Dragon 12 for my digital recorder (Olympus WS-821). The recorder has dual jacks that match the dual plugs on the Dragon provided headset. Lets me play fetch with the dog and dictate hands-free. Works great!


----------



## williamvw

OW said:


> Does anyone have any advice regarding headsets for a digital recorder?
> I bought both recently to go 'mobile' as I wanted to be hands free. Both work like a dream but unfortunately not together as I planned as the headset has a USB connection and thee recorder a jack. So I now use the headset with my machine, which is fine though still want to go hands free with my recorder. So I'm currently looking for compatible headsets with a jack connection (Would prefer to go wired), has anyone had any issues with using a headset with s recorder? Might it reduce clarity/accuracy at all?
> Many thanks


I purchased the download of Dragon 13, so I needed a headset. I also purchased the Olympus recorder (WS-822) with dual analog ports and wanted a headset I could use for both PC and recorder. I wanted something rated at Nuance's top score (six dragons) but affordable and compact with solid user reviews behind it. Ultimately, after a couple hours of research, I ordered this: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VW20AW. It lands tomorrow. If you're curious, I'll post some initial impressions.


----------



## Brevoort

williamvw said:


> I purchased the download of Dragon 13, so I needed a headset. I also purchased the Olympus recorder (WS-822) with dual analog ports and wanted a headset I could use for both PC and recorder. I wanted something rated at Nuance's top score (six dragons) but affordable and compact with solid user reviews behind it. Ultimately, after a couple hours of research, I ordered this: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VW20AW. It lands tomorrow. If you're curious, I'll post some initial impressions.


For the price that headset is quite good; much better than the Dragon supplied microphone which works acceptably but not by much. In my opinion, you've made a good choice.

Another good one, but at a slightly lower price point, is the Koss CS100. Again, much better than the Dragon one.


----------



## RuthNestvold

You guys have convinced me to give it a try. I just ordered a set with DNS and recorder. I will test it a bit before I take the additional plunge of a headset.


----------



## Victoria LK

Well, I'm getting used to my dragon, but I have found one little fault with the program; it doesn't understand CAT!!!
I was dictating away and one of my cats must have thought that I was talking to her. Next thing I know she's up on my lap, trying to take my headphones.  As she struggles, she is meowing at me and the dragon keeps saying "please say that again".
(Just to put a light heart spin on the postings!)


----------



## williamvw

OK, so I changed the option, and now I can dictate straight into Scrivener. But it seems that some of the functionality gets lost along the way. For example, the command "select <word>" no longer works. When I go back to DragonPad, it's fine. I'm guessing that I'll eventually settle on DragonPad and make do. Or is there some other way to get the native editing capabilities in a non-supported app?


----------



## TBD

williamvw said:


> OK, so I changed the option, and now I can dictate straight into Scrivener. But it seems that some of the functionality gets lost along the way. For example, the command "select <word>" no longer works. When I go back to DragonPad, it's fine. I'm guessing that I'll eventually settle on DragonPad and make do. Or is there some other way to get the native editing capabilities in a non-supported app?


As far as I know, there isn't, which is why I mentioned it in my post ;-) In my case and *at the moment* I am ignoring those issues <fingers in ears> Lalalalala lol I watch as I dictate and I manually *fix* as I go. NOTE - fixing is NOT editing ;-)


----------



## OW

Thanks Marcus and William.

Also does anyone now about training different profiles? I originally set one up for my internal mic and was training that, then I got a headset and read that the advice was to have different profiles for different input sources so set up a new one for that. That trains pretty much the same so I'm good there. Though when I got a recorder, I set up a third and have no idea how I am supposed to train that. At the moment the accuracy is pretty bad even though it is set fully to accuracy over speed, whereas the others are set to speed over accuracy, yet the accuracy is still much better. 

Any ideas?


----------



## Lydniz

OW said:


> Thanks Marcus and William.
> 
> Also does anyone now about training different profiles? I originally set one up for my internal mic and was training that, then I got a headset and read that the advice was to have different profiles for different input sources so set up a new one for that. That trains pretty much the same so I'm good there. Though when I got a recorder, I set up a third and have no idea how I am supposed to train that. At the moment the accuracy is pretty bad even though it is set fully to accuracy over speed, whereas the others are set to speed over accuracy, yet the accuracy is still much better.
> 
> Any ideas?


I just trained a recorder yesterday. It's the same as training any other input: you read out one of the given texts then get it to transcribe into Dragon. There should be a wizard that takes you through it.

I did my first day's writing using Dragon today, and it's tired me out! The whole thinking through what I want to say before saying it is exhausting. I hope I get used to it, as I was reasonably pleased with the results overall. I note it doesn't give me the self-discipline to write more, but I can certainly see the potential for writing faster generally.


----------



## OW

That's really helpful thanks. I'll give it a go


----------



## OW

Also does anyone know whether you should be reading out punctuation and commands when reading the training scripts, or just the words?
Thanks


----------



## RuthNestvold

My package with the Sony digital recorder and Dragon 12 set arrived today, and I immediately started testing and training it to see what it could do. I tried both an old headset we had lying around as well as the built in microphone, and both worked surprisingly well, although when I was doing the corrections in the DragonPad, I could hear quite a difference with the old headset. DNS still it figured it out with amazing accuracy. 

The word counts are incredible. The results are not. *g* 

I flounder like crazy when trying to tell a story into a microphone. Looks like training my dragon is going to be a lot easier than training *me*.  

But during my Dragon training sessions, I went over to brainstorming and plotting, which works a lot better for me. I'll continue with that for the time being. Maybe, eventually, once I'm used to speaking ideas, I will learn how to speak scenes. 

Still, cool toy, even though it isn't going to skyrocket my word counts in the near future, since I still have to learn how to dictate story.


----------



## williamvw

OW said:


> Also does anyone know whether you should be reading out punctuation and commands when reading the training scripts, or just the words?
> Thanks


I'm finding that it comes pretty naturally after you practice doing it for a few days. You'll learn the pause rhythm that Dragon wants to hear, and then it flows more smoothly.


----------



## Lydniz

OW said:


> Also does anyone know whether you should be reading out punctuation and commands when reading the training scripts, or just the words?
> Thanks


First time, for my headset, I did it without. Second time, for the voice recorder, I did it with. I have no idea whether it made any difference.


----------



## KevinMcLaughlin

I made a dragon badge, if people would like to use it please feel free? The dragon is a Creative Commons licensed image.


----------



## Heather Hamilton-Senter

I have Dragon Home 12. I'm able to get Dragon Premium 12 for a very good price (I want to transcribe dictation.) - will I miss anything particularly between Premium 12 and Premium 13?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

KevinMcLaughlin said:


> I made a dragon badge, if people would like to use it please feel free? The dragon is a Creative Commons licensed image.


Thats' RAWRSOME!!~ 

So inspired, I finally took the time to put all of my badges to my profile.


----------



## OW

That badge is great - thanks 

I'm trying to train my recorder profile, but Dragon keeps crashing when I'm transferring the file


----------



## Gwen Hayes

I have taken the plunge. I'd love to see this thread stay active because I love hearing how others are using their Dragon. And tips and tricks would be great. 

I'm curious about the "teen" accent choice. Since I write half/half YA and adult romance, I wonder if I speak teen more eloquently than adult.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I'm curious about teen too. My 5-year-old can't be picked up by dragon at all. it's probably they way she speaks (very high pitched and not always the best enunciator).


----------



## Victoria LK

love the new dragon badge. how do I add it to my profile?


----------



## 57280

For those wondering about Dragon and Yosemite on MAC:  I looked into it and it appears it's not supported. Buggy, crashy mess--if you can even get it working. (Anybody having any success there?)

But here's some good news: I have a new MacAir, and have been using the built in native speech to text program. It works well, although you can't teach it. But it's still faster than me typing. I use it directly into Scrivener.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I use dragon on Yosemite it was buggy at first but once I updated after installing I was fine.


----------



## Leanne King

Yep, no worries using dragon on a Yosemite Mac here either.


----------



## Victoria LK

Ok I must be blind, or the old age is getting ahead of me!  I've spent the last hour looking for the code to the badge for dragon WITH a dragon.
Help?


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Code for the Dragon badge:

[nobbc]



[/nobbc]


----------



## Victoria LK

Thanks so much! It worked, now I feel like one of the "cool kids"


----------



## OW

oakwood said:


> That's the same recorder I'm using! Very happy with it. (In US 822, EU 832).
> 
> I had the Sony PX333 for a couple of days but went for the Oly for more features mainly more audio format options (for recording other than speech).
> 
> For those interested, here's a mini review:
> 
> What I like most with the Olympus 822/832 is the integrated USB, built-in battery charger and level indicators.
> Feather light, almost blows out of your hand in wind. Integrated speaker is clear but awful tinny. Screen is very small LCD (with back-light though). Single battery AAA (can choose alkaline or rechargeable) lasts a long time. Lots of recording options including presets and manual choices which is great. Built-in microphones good. It has 3 microphone sensitivity settings which is handy if you intend to use external mics. Can record CD quality, stereo. Body is pure plastic and wouldn't stand any abuse so it feels a bit delicate to handle outdoors.
> 
> You can use it as a mp3 player, and as a storage device.
> 
> What are the cons? Not much for me although would have been nice with bigger screen and a better speaker, But that's nitpicking. The recorded sound quality is excellent.
> 
> It has a preset for DNS but I get slightly better results with transcription with doing manual setting mp3, 128 kbs, maybe the lapel mic is why, dunno.
> 
> I use mine with a external 10 buck lapel microphone which works great. Got it from here
> http://www.micronic.co.uk/store/item/344/gold-plated-3.5mm-tie-clip-lapel-lavalier-microphone
> with a fluffy hat which keeps wind out when I use it during walks.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I clip it on the sunshade while driving which helps reduce motor sound. Sticky pad holds the recorder.
> Another one I might be trying http://www.amazon.com/AZDEN-EX503-Omni-Directional-Lavaliere-Microphones/dp/B000BSMKPY/
> (want 2, with 1 always in car)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The integrated USB connector.. if you have a recorder with USB (like this one, or sony 440) I suggest using a USB extension cord to avoid wear on PC and recorder connections.


Do you happen to experience any problems training your recorder. Mine works fine when I dictate and transcribe, but when I try to transfer the training text it crashes every time.


----------



## williamvw

OW said:


> Do you happen to experience any problems training your recorder. Mine works fine when I dictate and transcribe, but when I try to transfer the training text it crashes every time.


I've had no problems on my Windows 8.1 notebook. In fact, I don't even get to the end of the sample text before Dragon stops me and says, "Thanks, that's great. Move along." However, making subsequent changes and fine-tuning the recognition engine's accuracy takes a TON of processing time, and I'm running on a fourth-gen i5 processor backed by an SSD. Is this where you're crashing? If not, I'd suspect some sort of software glitch. Sometimes, uninstalling and reinstalling will fix such problems.


----------



## OW

williamvw said:


> I've had no problems on my Windows 8.1 notebook. In fact, I don't even get to the end of the sample text before Dragon stops me and says, "Thanks, that's great. Move along." However, making subsequent changes and fine-tuning the recognition engine's accuracy takes a TON of processing time, and I'm running on a fourth-gen i5 processor backed by an SSD. Is this where you're crashing? If not, I'd suspect some sort of software glitch. Sometimes, uninstalling and reinstalling will fix such problems.


Hi there, thanks for the reply. No, training by recording directly into my laptop is working fine for me so far. It's training a voice recorder/Dictaphone by transcribing which is the problem. I can transcribe normally fone, though if I am in the training window and transferring the training script, everything crashes.


----------



## Ampersand_56

This thread has been so much fun. I read the first Dragon thread that was on here a few months ago and it convinced me to give it a try for a new project. I loved it once I got it trained, but then a book release, formatting, the holidays, etc got in the way and I've been away from it for six weeks. 

Today was my first day working on my next book and I missed my dragon so much! It took me a bit to get back into the flow of dictating. I felt especially slow since this was my first day back in so long. But I managed 2500 words in two hours. Not a terribly fast pace, but not too bad wince I was so rusty and it was the first chapter of a new book. 

One thing I remembered from last time: If you're having trouble getting Dragon to remember a word, no matter how many times you 'correct' it, try going into 'Vocabulary Training' and finding (or adding) the word to your user list. Then input the phonetic spelling. I write fantasy/paranormal romance and I have quite a few made up words that Dragon didn't like. After correcting Dragon about twenty times today I remembered this trick and the next time it wrote the words perfectly. 

Thanks everyone for adding to this thread - It's kept me excited about my dragon while I waited to get back to writing. Now I just have to train myself to write without watching the screen and I'll be tripling my word count in no time


----------



## Gwen Hayes

I forgot to tell Moira (my Dragon) to go to sleep when I answered the phone. I just set the headset down and paced the room while I was on the phone. The next time I looked at my screen, she had started a game of Solitaire. 

Which means she is a) a girl after my own heart or b) sent from Skynet


----------



## Book-Marketing.org

For people who have used both Dragon 12 and 13, can you explain the core difference? I am kind of confused what I should opt for.


----------



## Lydniz

Gwen Hayes said:


> I forgot to tell Moira (my Dragon) to go to sleep when I answered the phone. I just set the headset down and paced the room while I was on the phone. The next time I looked at my screen, she had started a game of Solitaire.


That is brilliant. 

I am pretty impressed with Dragon's abilities so far. However, as I suspected, I'm discovering that it's not my typing speed that limits my output, but the ability of my brain to come up with ideas, so in that sense it doesn't look as if I'm going to be producing work in any greater quantities. I'm evidently not a splurge writer. I'll press on with Dragon for a bit, though.


----------



## Gwen Hayes

oakwood said:


> I trained myself to become better by reading my already existing stories. Feels like it has been beneficial in loosening me up a bit. My previous dictation would be really strict, like a tin-can robot - which blasted quite a bit of creativity and gave me a sore throat.  Now it's a bit more conversational- which is what I guess I need to be more comfortable.


That's a great idea. A great way to both train the dragon and get used to dictation.


----------



## Gwen Hayes

Dragon support is not great.

I sent an inquiry about importing other Nuance voices into the program in addition to the two there are to choose from. They didn't understand that--so I explained that I have a different program in which I was able to purchase and download Nuance voices into--and I'd like to do that same thing with this one. 

They didn't understand that either. They keep trying to tell me I can't use both programs at the same time. I keep telling them I don't want to. I just want to import a Nuance voice that I use for proofreading into the Dragon program that is made by Nuance and uses Nuance voices. I would not be opposed to repurchasing a Nuance voice if the one I bought is not compatible. I just want that voice. 

I tried copying and pasting Moira into the voices folder with Serena and Samantha, but she's still not a "choice" for playback. Which is sad. She has a lovely Irish accent that I find very soothing. And she makes me laugh when she says things like, "Jay-Zed."

First world problem, I know.


----------



## Victoria LK

I've picked up quite a few tips, and I thank everyone who posted! I really like using it (haven't thought of a name yet) buy I've determined that to achieve the best results, I am going to have to purchase a wireless headset.  The reason? The minute I pull out the one I have now, my cats show up to play.  For some reason they think that anything that dangles is fair game.  I've had to go back to my WIP and delete an awful lot of "get down", "leave that alone" and "don't chew on that"


----------



## A.W.Hartoin

How's everyone doing with their dragons? I'm thinking of giving it a try. Is there any difference between getting the Mac disc or the download?


----------



## over and out

I have been using it a few weeks and love it.  I got the physical product since the download doesn't include the headset.  Having said that, my computer's mic is working fine so I haven't used the headset at all.  However I will use it with a portable recorder when I take it on walks (step 2).


----------



## Gwen Hayes

It's getting easier. I'm still tethered to my computer using a usb headset. I didn't want to invest in wireless one and digital recorder until I knew this was something I could stick with. 

One thing I've found is that if I could change myself into a plotter (which I try to do several times a year) I think it would be easier. Part of my stage freeze comes from not knowing what happens next. But if I can pants while I type, I can do it while I speak. I just need to keep trying.


----------



## williamvw

Gwen Hayes said:


> Part of my stage freeze comes from not knowing what happens next. But if I can pants while I type, I can do it while I speak. I just need to keep trying.


I'm in a similar boat with the process. I'm allowing myself a few weeks to get comfortable with using headset-and-PC. Once I get the flow and feel for that, then I'll add in the portable recorder. But I figure there's no point in doing the recorder until I can keep myself from either stumbling two or three times every sentence or stalling as I try to misuse edit commands I can't see. (Example: "go to end of line" vs. "go to the end of the line" (which doesn't work) vs. "go to end" in order to get back to where I left off after deleting a word.) I suppose some people simply barrel through and mop everything up during editing, but I have a REALLY hard time not correcting as I go.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

How's everyone doing?

I'm getting back to my old school roots with my Toothless. Tonight I started an entirely new profile and trained it, because over the last month or so I've dictated in less than ideal conditions with both my headset and my portable recorder, and then mixed the two  by transcribing the portable recorder on the headset profile because I was too lazy to change it and long story short, my Dragon profile got a bit sloppy in figuring out what it is that I was saying. This is all transcribed by the way, and I've only made one correction.

I also took the opportunity to go into the vocabulary editor and finally learned how to train it to figure out how I say a word. I did have analyze my manuscripts again, so it had all of my character names, and I am pleased to say that I can now say Lady Catherine de Bourgh and it spells it correctly !!  No more Lady Catherine de Burke (ha! Had to type that, it wouldn't get that I was saying "Burke" so I must really say de Bourgh wrong LOL). 

The other thing I've been testing is listening to music in my headphones of the headset while I dictate. At first I began only listening to instrumental or classical music, but I just dictated an entire scene listening to the latest Fall Out Boy album.  Right now I'm dictating and listening to Paramore.  

But what about speed? Well, I am happy to report editing/correcting as I dictate into the computer on this profile, I managed 1674 words in one hour. That's on par with what I type when I am creating words from scratch. Especially as that copy is clean enough to go right to my editor and not need another pass by me like the stuff I dictate to my digtial recorder needs.

So I am sitting at digital recorder raw words is 1100 in 20 minutes, but then I have to spend at least another 10 minutes cleaning it up. So 30 minutes = 1100.

On my headset I'm at 1600 so far in 60 minutes, but I think I can improve on that number as I'm getting more comfortable adapting dictating to my original way of writing with music playing at the same time.


----------



## Amanda Hough

Just had to share. I had NO interest in using this software but Elizabeth's initial post intrigued me. So, I got it. I have been practicing for a few weeks but not really buying in to it.

When I write I tend to over think each word. I am a really fast typist but I write so slowly. 
And then this week happened. I wrote 15,000 words yesterday! I got in the groove, sat back with my coffee and talked. Simply wonderful.
You give a lot of good advice, Elizabeth, but this one ... this one is golden.

Amanda (the woman who will make her deadline!)


----------



## A.W.Hartoin

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll start with the download and see if I can do it at all. My wrists are killing me after this last book, so it's worth a try.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Amanda Hough said:


> Just had to share. I had NO interest in using this software but Elizabeth's initial post intrigued me. So, I got it. I have been practicing for a few weeks but not really buying in to it.
> 
> When I write I tend to over think each word. I am a really fast typist but I write so slowly.
> And then this week happened. I wrote 15,000 words yesterday! I got in the groove, sat back with my coffee and talked. Simply wonderful.
> You give a lot of good advice, Elizabeth, but this one ... this one is golden.
> 
> Amanda (the woman who will make her deadline!)


Amanda, I saw your post last night and it made me very emotional. When I discovered the potential of writing pain free and at speeds I could only dream about by typing, I was stunned. Getting into the groove of dictation is the key. I keep telling myself it's okay it still feels awkward, it should, because I've been typing since elementary school and dictating seriously for all of 2 months. 

I am aiming to dictate just 3.75 hours a day in February and see where my word count falls.  Congratulations on that 15k! That's great! I was doing 7 and 9k a day in December to also make my deadline. LOL. I'd love to work up to the stamina to maintain that pace. Then Nora Roberts, watch out!  LOL


----------



## Justawriter

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Amanda, I saw your post last night and it made me very emotional. When I discovered the potential of writing pain free and at speeds I could only dream about by typing, I was stunned. Getting into the groove of dictation is the key. I keep telling myself it's okay it still feels awkward, it should, because I've been typing since elementary school and dictating seriously for all of 2 months.
> 
> I am aiming to dictate just 3.75 hours a day in February and see where my word count falls.  Congratulations on that 15k! That's great! I was doing 7 and 9k a day in December to also make my deadline. LOL. I'd love to work up to the stamina to maintain that pace. Then Nora Roberts, watch out!  LOL


Elizabeth,
Do you notice any difference in the writing that you dictate vs. type? I've wondered about that, as it feels so unnatural to me to talk my story instead of letting it just come from my fingers. When I type I don't have to think about the words, they just come.....when I tried dictating it was totally different and uncomfortable. Is that something most experience and you just have to get used to it? Or did the dictating come easily from the get-go? I love the idea of it, just wondering if you get into that same 'zone' where you don't have to think, the words just come.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I'm a talker in real life. And perhaps that plays into it. It took dictating and me really evaluating my story-telling roots to realize from childhood I listened to my father's sea stories with rapt attention. Before dictation, I would often bug family members and friends with my story ideas on the phone.  

It's not easy for me to immediately dictate. I have to FORCE myself to start. Once I start though, it comes. And pain is the biggest motivator for me, I don't want to hurt anymore and hours of typing do that. But dictating doesn't. 

As far as my writing goes, I find my dialog is MUCH better when I dictate, but my prose is 50-50. About half the time I add more into the surrounding text, in other times my dictation did a great job at describing the setting etc. Lately, I've been testing to listening to a soundtrack while I dictate to the computer (seeing the words as I dictate vs transcribing), and that seems to be the closest I can get to my methods when I typed my stories.

All I can say is it takes commitment. It takes a mantra of "I'm going to make this work." IF you crack it, you'll not be sorry.


----------



## SimonPotts

I ran across this thread a couple of days ago and I was really excited. I went out and purchased a copy of DragonDictate straight away.

I only got around to trying it last night, but given that I'm dictating this post right now to say that I'm impressed is an understatement. I am an MASSIVE fan of outlining before I write, so I usually have a fairly good idea of what I'm going to say before I start typing up a draft. I can see that with my style of writing dictation will definitely help me with getting a first draft down much quicker.

So thanks OP for starting this thread, I probably wouldn't have thought of this otherwise.

Cheers!


----------



## OW

I'm really enjoying using mine and seen some good results. However I remain frustrated with issues experienced uploading files to train my recorder. I still see a lot of mistakes when I transcribe, despite having the settings at the highest accuracy as opposed to speed. But when I try to upload a training file the Dragon crashes as soon as the green bar is complete. Which is annoying because I have good results when using a direct connection to my machine, despite doing little training and having the accuracy settings n the opposite direction (I dictated this post). The main disappointment lies in the fact that my main requirement for the Dragon was to be able to be mobile, so if I could improve the accuracy when transcribing I would be ecstatic.


----------



## Lydniz

SimonPotts said:


> I am an MASSIVE fan of outlining before I write, so I usually have a fairly good idea of what I'm going to say before I start typing up a draft. I can see that with my style of writing dictation will definitely help me with getting a first draft down much quicker.


Yes, I had another go yesterday. As long as I have an outline jotted down I can get loads done really fast, but trying to dictate ideas on the hoof is beyond me. I think my brain must be in my fingers.


----------



## Diane Patterson

PamelaKelley said:


> Do you notice any difference in the writing that you dictate vs. type?


I haven't dictated nearly as much as some here, but I find the writing definitely is different. Maybe it's something that adjusts as you use it  When I dictate, I find I have to look at the words on screen as they appear, or I forget where I was. I also get a better feel for the flow if I look at the words appearing on screen. I haven't quite adjusted to the "dictate a whole bunch, upload it to Dragon Dictate later" model. I also find that dictating leads to more of a bare-bones full draft, rather than a full figured draft. But that's okay, that's what second drafts are for!


----------



## SJ Kelley

Elizabeth's experience and the stories of others here inspired me to pick up Dragon (I read all 18 pages of posts... Eek!) I bought Dragon12 yesterday and can't wait for it to get here. I run Linux and Dragon 13 doesn't seem to work in wine, the program that let's me run windows applications, so I'm hoping 12 upgraded to 12.5 will work. 

I'm curious to hear how everyone is doing with their Dragons now that some time has passed. Have you stuck with it? Has dictating become easier for you with practice?


----------



## Avril Sabine

SJ Kelley said:


> Elizabeth's experience and the stories of others here inspired me to pick up Dragon (I read all 18 pages of posts... Eek!) I bought Dragon12 yesterday and can't wait for it to get here. I run Linux and Dragon 13 doesn't seem to work in wine, the program that let's me run windows applications, so I'm hoping 12 upgraded to 12.5 will work.
> 
> I'm curious to hear how everyone is doing with their Dragons now that some time has passed. Have you stuck with it? Has dictating become easier for you with practice?


Good luck with your new dragon. I'm still using mine and wouldn't get anywhere near as much done without it.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I'm about to go dicate while I empty the dishwasher and then take a walk as it's GORGEOUS outside!


----------



## SRWitt

I used DNS on my PC for the past few months and had good results with it. I recently switched over to doing everything on a Mac and found something interesting/maddening about Dragon Dictate that I'm hoping some of the more experienced users may know how to fix. It just refuses to type the profanity that I'm saying. There's a lot of profanity in my books - a lot a lot. Does Dictate just not have the same dictionary as DNS and I'll now have to enter all my profanity into the Dictate dictionary? Or is there some clean-reader switch I'm missing?


----------



## OW

Mine refuses to let me train by transcribing, everything else is dandy.


----------



## dmsinclair

I've been keen to switch over to Dragon, and I'm all set up for it. But with two kids in the house my transcriptions tend to come out like this:
"It was a dark and stormy dad can I have a drink night. A shadowy figure crept along the dad who are you talking to icy road."

Still, this thread has inspired me. I will see what magic a closed door can work!


----------



## Avril Sabine

dmsinclair said:


> I've been keen to switch over to Dragon, and I'm all set up for it. But with two kids in the house my transcriptions tend to come out like this:
> "It was a dark and stormy dad can I have a drink night. A shadowy figure crept along the dad who are you talking to icy road."
> 
> Still, this thread has inspired me. I will see what magic a closed door can work!


Thanks for the chuckle. My kids told me that they need a spoiler warning if I'm going to use my Dragon where they can hear me. Which usually has them scurrying for their rooms or headphones as they don't want to ruin the story for themselves.


----------



## A. N. Other Author

Just a quick bump to go alongside my question posted separately (more people might see this one), does anyone know of any major differences between the Basics version of Dragon and the Home or Premium ones? I can find plenty of comparisons between Home and Premium, but the Basics package seems to only exist on ebay.


----------



## Justawriter

It's funny how when you have to do something your ability to do it changes. The first time I tried dictating I had a really hard time with it and just assumed that it probably wasn't for me. But, pretty bad wrist pain made me try it again. I'm just using the built-in dictation that comes on the mac and it seems to work pretty well. So, I am wondering, is Dragon that much better? Can you really"train" it so that it doesn't have as many errors? Now that I've been dictating I'm surprised by how much I really like it. In fact, I'm dictating right now!


----------



## A. N. Other Author

I spent an hour with the windows version and it didn't like me at all. Even when I slowed speaking to less than my typing speed. Couldn't get certain words no matter how many different ways I pronounced them, eg, screamed kept coming out as screened.


----------



## dmsinclair

ADDavies said:


> I spent an hour with the windows version and it didn't like me at all. Even when I slowed speaking to less than my typing speed. Couldn't get certain words no matter how many different ways I pronounced them, eg, screamed kept coming out as screened.


What kind of microphone are you using? I've found that it makes a HUGE difference.


----------



## A. N. Other Author

I'm using one optimised for Lync. Perhaps that's the problem. The Dragon software comes with its own mic.


----------



## Brevoort

ADDavies said:


> ( . . . ) does anyone know of any major differences between the Basics version of Dragon and the Home or Premium ones?


The Basics Edition is a re-branded Essentials and both are discontinued. They are pretty much what Home is in version 12 and on.

Nuance, over the years, has renamed several of their products, some several times, and in doing so have removed all references to the previous incarnations from the website making it difficult to tell one version from another.

The differences in the current line up (Home, Premium, Pro, and Legal) are outlined in this PDF Nuance document.

There are two main, and for me, very important features that are in Premium and not in Home.


The ability to have several recording profiles (e.g. Headset at desktop, Handheld recorder, different people, etc)

The ability to use a handheld recorder and then import the digital files into Dragon for transcription.
Have a look at see what you need.


----------



## anotherpage

I tried it, it's no good for me.

I can type faster, and the darn thing is a pain to train.


----------



## A. N. Other Author

Thanks for the replies. Looks like someone has a ton of the old branded boxes on eBay. They're around $40 now. Not sure if that's just the UK site. Maybe I'll play with the windows one a bit more to see if I can get comfortable with the technique.


----------



## harker.roland

Hi Everyone. What an inspiring thread! I've read all 18 pages over the last 3 days and am excited to report my own results. I took the plunge and got a copy of Dragon 4 for Mac and use my iphone 6 with earbuds to dictate in the car to and from work. On a typical day I am able to spend 1-2 hours writing at the end of the day with a pace between 500-800 words. Yesterday, my first day with the dragon, I output 2200 words accross 55minutes of audio using Dragon's transcription feature!!!! I took part of that and make 1500 words of polished manuscript in an hour and a half.

I do have some questions/ issues with training, mainly that I cannot playback the file to know if the words I transcribed into the Dragon Notepad arecorrect or not. Has anyone been able to figure this out yet? Also, how do I "teach" properly? Do I have to speak the corrections, or am I ok to type them in the notepad?

I know some of the words are wrong, but don't want to change them unless I know for sure.


----------



## Tyler Danann

Adam Poe said:


> I got Dragon over a year ago and only used it twice ... for maybe 15 minutes both times. I should probably take it out and work on it some more. Maybe I could write some scenes while out walking. Can you train it to ignore heavy breathing I wonder?


Good lord!

Do you take your laptop with you while out walking??!!


----------



## doolittle03

First: I saw this thread many times, never read it because I thought: Heck no. Not for me. 
Second: Wrist is numb. Back is out of alignment. I have no life.
Third: Word count goal of 3K a day leads to copious sobbing.
Fourth: Read thread. Ponder its meaning. Pick out some side bit of info and do some investigating.
Fifth: I have Vista. Vista has Speech Recognition software preloaded. Make husband buy me a headset microphone. Take tutorial. "Write" 4100 words in 3 hours.
Sixth: Leave the house to walk the dogs.

Headset: $25
Quantum leap in productivity: Priceless

THANK YOU, ELIZABETH!!!  I'm not using a Dragon but this thread has changed my life. Speech-to-text writing. *swoon* THANK YOU everyone who contributed to this thread. Best. Thread. Evah.  

(I should add that I'm working on the third novella installment of a series so I have the world already built and the characters in place. Meaning I don't sit here wondering what happens next. (Too much.))


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Dragon may not be for everyone, it's not easy to learn a new way to write. Those of us with pain and injuries have no choice but to make it work, as Tim Gunn says.  

I think there's some confusion about how I get my speeds. I have tried over and over to dictate and WATCH it and I too am slower. I have to close my eyes, usually listen to music in head phones, and speak into my digital recorder. Then, I plug that digital recorder into my computer and transcribe. That has hands down netted me 3,000 words an hour raw, about 3,000 words every 1.5-1.75 hours including editing time. I also reclaim lost time with my digital recorder, I write waiting 20 minutes to pick daughter up from daycare. Yesterday, I dictated 1839 words driving to and from Home Depot. For those with a commute trying to increase productivity dictation might work.

Also, dictation ALWAYS seems slower than regular typing unless you do the side by side comparisons. I KNOW dictation is better and faster for me, and I am still struggling to make it my default method. I have to MAKE Myself use the tool. But I don't have compressed nerves when I do use it.


----------



## harker.roland

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I also reclaim lost time with my digital recorder, I write waiting 20 minutes to pick daughter up from daycare. Yesterday, I dictated 1839 words driving to and from Home Depot. For those with a commute trying to increase productivity dictation might work.


Can't agree with this enough. I have been using my Dragon for almost a week now and between the drive to and from work hit about 1500 words that edited during my 'normal' writing time become ~2000 words a day. Yesterday I had a 10 minute drive to run some errands at got 400 words.


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## Magda Alexander

I did the recording thing on the way to a meeting. Recorded 3,769 words over a 40-minute drive. And then downloaded it when I got home right into Dragon Pad. It's awesome!


----------



## Lydniz

How do you all concentrate on writing books when you're driving? I can mull over plot points but I could never dictate. Not least because half the transcription would consist of things like "Get off the road, you fucking knobber!"


----------



## harker.roland

Lydniz said:


> How do you all concentrate on writing books when you're driving? I can mull over plot points but I could never dictate. Not least because half the transcription would consist of things like "Get off the road, you [expletive]ing knobber!"


Hi Lydniz.

Not that I am an authority on the topic less than a week in but I have found that I start with general ramblings about the scene and then am able to pick-up steam and really get into it by the end. YMMV


----------



## dahillauthor

Dragon 11 on the PC (haven't bothered upgrading to the latest version because it works just fine).

I only use it for first drafts. It's great to get my initial ideas down quickly. I find it awkward for editing, but when I'm working on a first draft that's a good thing. Stops me from rewriting the same thousand words a hundred times instead of writing a hundred thousand words!

Two pieces of advice:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Make sure you have a good computer because it is processor intensive. On a slow computer there will be a very frustrating lag between speaking and seeing the result on the screen.
[*]Close the door, or you'll feel very self-conscious!
[/list]


----------



## Romanticreed

I can't afford this, however, I started using Siri for short notes. It's not great, but I'm writing a story without many details today. When I get into the rewrite, I will fix all the mistakes! And speaking of mistakes, I don't even care whereas with typing I correct as I go.


----------



## Avril Sabine

Lydniz said:


> How do you all concentrate on writing books when you're driving? I can mull over plot points but I could never dictate. Not least because half the transcription would consist of things like "Get off the road, you [expletive]ing knobber!"


The same way I manage to concentrate on carrying on a conversation with someone when I have a passenger. If it helps, you could try imagining you have someone sitting beside you and you're telling them a story. After training my Dragon I started using it as I was wandering around the house doing the housework so I had plenty of practice dictating before I ever reached the stage of dictating while driving. But that wasn't deliberately planned. It just worked out like that. And those expletives, they can be deleted out later. : )


----------



## A. N. Other Author

Got my Dragon Basics. It's neat, accurate right out of the box. I was a little worried as my fellow humans often struggle with my accent, but Dragon is cool. 

It's going to take a little time training MYSELF, though. Dictating does not feel natural to me, but I added 200 words an hour with my first test. That's without an outline, plus I messed around a bit, going back, correcting stuff, long pauses to think... When I have more time to practice I think it'll be a huge help. I'm a planner, too, so I'll need an outline to work to, and I should increase quite substantially.


----------



## AisFor

ADDavies said:


> Got my Dragon Basics. It's neat, accurate right out of the box. I was a little worried as my fellow humans often struggle with my accent, but Dragon is cool.


Haha! I like that.


----------



## Overrated

I have been debating taking the plunge. But last week, I was working against a deadline, and I spent the entire week on the keyboard. I'm pretty good - I can type 2000 words per hour - but my hands were ready to fall off by the end of the week. I have an aggressive production schedule, and the thought of another week like that one is not pleasant. 

So I'll have my stuff by Saturday, and I'm going to spend the weekend training it and myself, and see what happens. I am excited to find something that will keep my hands attached to my arms. 

Thanks for this post, Elizabeth. I read the entire 19 pages today, and it's been really helpful!


----------



## Reaper

Thanks for this thread and all of the insightful comments folks! Got my Dragon (13 Home edition) today and have been tinkering about with it.

Have to say, while listening to my own voice makes my skin crawl, I'm quite enjoying it


----------



## Magda Alexander

Lydniz said:


> How do you all concentrate on writing books when you're driving? I can mull over plot points but I could never dictate. Not least because half the transcription would consist of things like "Get off the road, you [expletive]ing knobber!"


I use it for stream-of-consciousness dictation. And I do throw out the occasional "#*##hole," and other sundry remarks directed at other drivers. When I download the dictation I usually have a solid scene. Yes, it has to be cleaned up, but it beats staring from scratch.


----------



## Bob Stewart

Lydniz said:


> I like the sound of it, but I'm not sure I could get on with it myself as I tend to write and rewrite and rewrite each sentence. Wouldn't that get a bit annoying?


I first read Lydniz's post as , "I'm not sure I could get on with myself", and was going to wholeheartedly agree. 

Interestingly, a lot of authors in the old days dictated their works to stenographers or typists.


----------



## Avril Sabine

Harriet Ashburn said:


> I am excited to find something that will keep my hands attached to my arms.


It certainly helps with that. I'm able to write a lot more words a day with a lot less pain. It used to be that on those days I wrote 10k words my hands absolutely hated me. Now, with alternating between typing and speaking my hands don't feel like they want to fall off or my voice like it's going to run out.


----------



## Tracie

I am reading through all of the posts about Dragon and I haven't laughed so hard in a while! Just seeing the little nuances to training your dragons and the other little quirks (added letters, teaching it to swear) has me giggling. Oh, and I ordered mine tonight. Can't wait to see my productivity rocket! Keep the helps and posts coming.


----------



## Tracie

I haven't received the Dragon yet (ordered it yesterday), but Elizabeth's post inspired me to get a digital recorder. I tried it today and got 580 for four minutes of speaking. I listened to what I said and transcribed it myself into the computer. Were they great words? Meh, but they're bones and I'll settle for that for the first time using it. I can't wait to see how it goes when I'm able to use both the recorder and dragon together.

Thanks, Elizabeth.


----------



## Goulburn

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Dictate in the window thing they provide and copy and paste. It might be a ram issue if your computer is older. Sorry not more help, I don't use Windows.


My Dragon Dictate continually crashed word until I realised it was the size of my manuscript that was the issue. 
Now I open a new page to work on and add that page to the large manuscript after I've completed my work.

~​I'm currently reading this entire thread, as my kitten ate my mike. Best advice so far--buy the cat a new toy and bring it out when you use your mike.

I finally selected an Andrea wireless mike from Amazon it was less than half the cost of buying it in AU even with shipping costs, and an Olympus 8GB Digital Voice Recorder (WS-833) with shop soiled pack from eBay. My Dragon Dictate had incredible accuracy before the cat attack. I've been using Dragon Software since... five computers and three dragons ago, it has been a long love affair with my dragons. This Dragon Dictate 4 is the best, as far as accuracy goes, that I've ever used. I'm eager to get my new goodies and work it again.

I tried installing the free app into my ipad mini, it worked but the accuracy was dreadful.


----------



## Reaper

Ryn Shell said:


> My Dragon Dictate continually crashed word until I realised it was the size of my manuscript that was the issue.


I visited this old thread prepare to chug through every post to find out why my Dragon is constantly crashing Word, delighted to have a potential solution at the very end of the thread! Cheers Ryn, I'm going to give that a go right now.


----------



## valeriec80

First day trying to draft with Dragon.

So far... slower than typing, but it's my first day, so I'm going to give it a week and see if it gets better. I did two sessions talking into Dragon itself, facing away from the computer. I can do about 1000 words in 20 minutes, but then it takes 10 minutes to clean it up, so that's a wash. I can type 1000 words in 30 minutes with no clean up time.

I also did one session on my porch talking into my phone while my little guy was napping. 

I didn't really notice any difference in quality of recognition between transcribing the recording and talking directly to the computer, although I've heard it said that it's less accurate?? 

Don't know.

Anyway, I'm still optimistic! I seriously can't handle having Dragon correct every mistake, however. I told myself I'd do that for a week, but... GARGH. I can do it for about fifteen minutes before I just want to strangle the stupid computer. Does it really make the recognition that much more accurate? How long of correcting before you saw an improvement? It's so much easier just to type through the corrections. And oodles faster too. I only managed to do it briefly this morning, and then I gave up and typed.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I think using Dragon to correct SOME of the mistakes is important, like when it misheard you. You don't want to use it to fix things you just didn't say right, or text you want to change. Have patience and use it to correct af few times, then just type. If you see a drop in your accuracy,  you can always start using it to correct things again. 

I personally have found it's BEST use is to minimize my typing time and making a vomit draft. I like to dictate just my thoughts, as messy as they come, don't worry about what it LOOKS like, and then do a line-by-line edit later. That way I only have to do some copyediting later and it's a great draft, ready for beta readers.


----------



## Avril Sabine

valeriec80 said:


> I seriously can't handle having Dragon correct every mistake, however. I told myself I'd do that for a week, but... GARGH. I can do it for about fifteen minutes before I just want to strangle the stupid computer. Does it really make the recognition that much more accurate? How long of correcting before you saw an improvement?


The more you correct it the more accurate it becomes. I found it improved every day. It was initially slow to use, but once trained I found it very efficient. If you don't like to stop frequently, you can go back after several paragraphs and train all the mistakes at once. If you don't teach it then it will continue to make those same mistakes.


----------



## valeriec80

Just finished my fifth day dictating, and I have to admit I'm feeling a little bummed. I mostly started to do this because I wanted to write faster, and that just isn't happening yet.

Today, I did 4K in about 112 minutes. That was broken out into 4 different sessions. Two dictated into my phone and two directly at the computer. I did stop and do some corrections here and there, I will admit. Now, that's a bit faster than I type, because I can usually type 4K in 120 minutes.

But it took me 40 minutes to correct all that dictation. I've got Dragon much, much improved in the accuracy department, but it still mishears tense and he/she and it/the consistently. So, I do have to go through everything I dictated and fix it up.

My question for others: How often do you actually hit speeds of 4K or 5K an hour? If I keep at this, will I get faster? Or is as fast as I am going after 5 days about as fast as I'll be?

I have to admit that it is nice to dictate for other reasons. One is that I dictated about 1200 words lying in bed while my seven-month-old crawled around and chattered to himself. And the other is that I dictated another 1K with him sitting on my lap. I can't do those things while typing, so it is helping me out.

But at this point, dictating is taking me 30 minutes longer than typing.  I'm committed to giving this at least a book, so I will keep going and see if things get better. I'd love to hear any tips that anyone has, though.


----------



## Marcus Richardson

valeriec80 said:


> Just finished my fifth day dictating, and I have to admit I'm feeling a little bummed. I mostly started to do this because I wanted to write faster, and that just isn't happening yet.


It takes time. For me it was almost two months before things clicked and I could reliably crank out 6,000 words an hour with my Dragon. For a long time, I was able to do only 2,000-3,000, which, while faster than I can type, isn't fast enough to justify the expense in time and money. But once I started really feeling comfortable with the process...whew, I wouldn't trade it for anything!

I worked at it as much as possible, on the way home from dropping the kids at school, waiting in line to pick up said kids at school, on the way to the grocery store, walking the dog, etc. I always carry my recorder with me now and any spare moment, I dictate.

Hang in there and keep going!


----------



## valeriec80

Marcus Richardson said:


> It takes time. For me it was almost two months before things clicked and I could reliably crank out 6,000 words an hour with my Dragon. For a long time, I was able to do only 2,000-3,000, which, while faster than I can type, isn't fast enough to justify the expense in time and money. But once I started really feeling comfortable with the process...whew, I wouldn't trade it for anything!
> 
> I worked at it as much as possible, on the way home from dropping the kids at school, waiting in line to pick up said kids at school, on the way to the grocery store, walking the dog, etc. I always carry my recorder with me now and any spare moment, I dictate.
> 
> Hang in there and keep going!


Thanks! This is very encouraging!


----------



## Marcus Richardson

valeriec80 said:


> Thanks! This is very encouraging!


Oh, I almost forgot: for extra practice, I dictate all my texts when sending text messages to friends and family. You use basically the same punctuation commands as Dragon (at least on my android phone).

I didn't think it would do much good at first, but I didn't realize how many texts I send!  Made the transition to full-on writing with Dragon a little easier, I think...


----------



## Evenstar

How interesting to see this thread resurrect when I was reading it! (I've been working through it for nearly a week in between other things).

I've been dithering between Dragon 12 and 13, and between a Sony recorder and an Olympus. This is because I am getting frustrated with how little work I can do with a baby on my lap (who no longer sleeps all day but wants to sit up and eat my stapler).


----------



## Logan R.

After going through this thread and finally getting a new laptop that I was sure wouldn't melt under the stress of Dragon (my old one could barely handle Scrivener), I finally bought Dragon 4 for Mac last night. So far today I've "written" 4,016 words, only 808 of those being written. Everything else was Dragon.

It took a bit of getting used to at first, but I'm really loving it so far. I get better and better every time. Most of those words were dictated when I was doing something I wouldn't otherwise be able to write while doing so, like driving or walking. The accuracy isn't the best so far, but that's because today was my first day using it. I keep having to stop and the mistakes, but they get fewer and fewer every session, so I'm looking forward to when the Dragon knows me well enough to make little to no mistakes.

Seeing as this is my first day, I'm actually very happy with my speed so far. I did about 800 words in the fifteen minute drive to the gym. I'm excited to see how much faster I can get once I get better at it.

So far what's most exciting, however, is the fact that I don't feel like I've written almost 5,000 words today. I have a ton of creative energy still and feel like I could write another 5,000 words with no problem. I'm going to sit down and dictate my nightly one hour block instead of writing it, so I'm excited to see how many more words I'll be able to get down then.

I was hesitant and fought off purchasing Dragon for a while, but I'm so glad I did. I was afraid I wouldn't be any good at it, but thankfully it just clicked with me.


----------



## Avril Sabine

Logan Rutherford said:


> Most of those words were dictated when I was doing something I wouldn't otherwise be able to write while doing so, like driving or walking.


That is one of my favourite aspects. Yesterday I wrote over 9000 words with my Dragon. About half of them were done while sewing, doing some housework and baking. The last few thousand I became so involved in my story and could barely keep up with the scenes filling my head that I didn't have time for anything else. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near that amount of writing done without my Dragon as it allows me to keep working even when other things need to be done.


----------



## Douglas Clegg

Thanks to Elizabeth Ann West, I returned to dictating (after a haphazard and unsuccessful use of it) and this time, found that I could get my rough draft down so fast it shocked me and -- after writing for a living for about, oh, 27 years -- I learned a valuable method of creating. 

My first day out, in 40 minutes, I had 5,000 words, all workable. Even better, I had outlined an entire novella that I imagined only an inkling of ahead of time. 

I found just getting every word and thought about this story out of my head, dictating even if I'd reversed course on what I'd dictated five minutes before, got the juices flowing so I could get the story down on the page (via Dragon for Mac.) I go back and forth between dictating and typing, but all my rough drafts are now dictation.

I also found that by investing in the best voice recorder I could afford brought an additional benefit: to justify the expense, I committed to it the way I'd already committed to a much more expensive laptop. 

I'm not writing a book a week or anything, but the hardest and most avoidable task for me, from the very beginning of my career, was just facing the blank page. Or perhaps the blank page past page 30. 

So I'd procrastinate. 

Now, I use my voice recorder as a version of procrastination. I approach it not as "I need to write sentences that I can lightly clean up," but instead figure: get the imagination out of your head as easily as you can (and in any way you can), and then revise afterward when you can see what you've been figuring out without even realizing it. 

So, thank you Elizabeth Ann West for your insights and suggestions. 

Best,

Doug


----------



## Gerald Hartenhoff

Impressive Doug. Thanks for sharing.


----------



## Douglas Clegg

GeraldG said:


> Impressive Doug. Thanks for sharing.


Gerald - Thanks. I didn't discover -- until I decided to quit being shy around the voice recorder -- that I was a mile-a-minute talker. So I've learned to couple some hour-long spurts of dictation with walking around our patio or on the treadmill when the weather's bad, so I can also adjust the lifestyle problem of spending most of my existence at a desk.

And I just throw it all out there, and somehow the Dragon transcribes about 90% of it correctly, but it's easy to fix. I barely trained my dragon. I've also discovered that once I say something out loud, it's more imprinted in my memory than if I just think it.

Some dictation days aren't so fast, but they're still faster than sitting with the computer and not knowing which direction to take.


----------



## Indigo W

Okay. I did it. Dragon v4.0 for Mac is downloading now and my new Olympus voice recorder is ordered and due for delivery before the weekend. 

I admit that I am very nervous about dictating, but hopefully determination will win out. I've got a one year old daughter with baby girl number two due in October and a giant old house that requires constant maintenance, so writing time has been increasingly difficult to find. I'm up with the sun in the mornings, but I spend that time with my husband while we drink our coffee and walk the yard before the baby wakes up and he heads off to work, it's our quiet, centering time together and I can't give that up for writing. So the only free quiet time I have are the 3-4 hours when baby is napping. And those hours are inevitably sucked up by cleaning, laundry, working on hubby's business, and that sort of thing. 

So I've been mulling over Dragon Dictate and stalking this thread every now and again since it started in December, and I've finally decided to go for it. Hopefully this will help me multitask my free hours and the hour I spend taking the baby for a walk every day into some sort of respectable daily word count. Fingers crossed! And thanks to everyone who shared experiences, tips, etc on this thread, you all are invaluable sources of information and inspiration!


----------



## valeriec80

Man.

Gargh. 

All these people go so FAST with it. Today, it took me twenty minutes longer to get my 4K than it would have if I'd typed it. (140 minutes, and that's with a 50 minute cleanup type.) And every time I get my accuracy up, it seems to plummet the following day, as if Dragon forgets everything overnight. (And I'm definitely saving my profile!)

I had these dreams of doing 8K in two hours.

I'm beginning to think I just can't think that fast or something.

I've dictated 28K on this book thus far and been at it for seven days. I'm committed to keep at it for the rest of this book, but I gotta say that it's discouraging that I'm not going faster.

I think I will pout.

Okay, I guess I do have to admit that while I'm dictating, I'm also watching an infant, so maybe that's distracting me or something. And I haven't typed since the beginning of June, when he was like completely different and lower maintenance, so it's possible I'd be going even slower if I was typing.

Still. Any tips for talking faster? Thinking faster?


----------



## Evenstar

valeriec80 said:


> Man.
> 
> Gargh.
> 
> All these people go so FAST with it. Today, it took me twenty minutes longer to get my 4K than it would have if I'd typed it. (140 minutes, and that's with a 50 minute cleanup type.) And every time I get my accuracy up, it seems to plummet the following day, as if Dragon forgets everything overnight. (And I'm definitely saving my profile!)
> 
> I had these dreams of doing 8K in two hours.
> 
> I'm beginning to think I just can't think that fast or something.
> 
> I've dictated 28K on this book thus far and been at it for seven days. I'm committed to keep at it for the rest of this book, but I gotta say that it's discouraging that I'm not going faster.
> 
> I think I will pout.
> 
> Okay, I guess I do have to admit that while I'm dictating, I'm also watching an infant, so maybe that's distracting me or something. And I haven't typed since the beginning of June, when he was like completely different and lower maintenance, so it's possible I'd be going even slower if I was typing.
> 
> Still. Any tips for talking faster? Thinking faster?


Do you outline?


----------



## valeriec80

Woot! Good news today.

First of all, I figured out why Dragon is sucking every day when I go back to it. Apparently, it's supposed to be running this accoustic-something-or-other every night, and it can't because the computer is hibernating and I close Dragon after each session. But--easy fix. I can just run it myself at the end of every work day. 

Second of all, I did increase my speed. Even though I write a scene-by-scene outline, I decided to try what is recommended in 2K to 10K, which is to write out a little blow-by-blow for each scene before actually writing them. I did that last night before bed. Aaand...

3400 words in an hour!! Yay! Bunch of sessions,  so it was like 15 minutes here, 8 minutes there, and I thought it was actually going badly, because I was running the accoustic thing, and that took like half an hour of my morning, and I thought I was going to beat my computer down, but, in the end, I was actually faster. (And I typed the other 600 words to meet my goal while Dragon was out of commission.)

Still a 50 minute cleanup, but my noise-cancelling headset is currently at the post office, so hopefully, with that, I'll get better accuracy while dictating outside.

Hooray!


----------



## valeriec80

So... funny story.

I thought that my dictation was inaccurate because I was outside. Turns out that the mic I was using was not being picked up by my phone. So, the recordings were from my phone's mic, which was sitting in the cup holder on the stroller I was pushing. Heck, I'm amazed that it picked anything up at all!!

Anyway, after using a proper mic for my phone today, cleanup time went down to a half hour from 50 minutes. BIG drop.


----------



## Indigo W

My first day of dictation was less than ground breaking. I dictated directly into my mac for a 5, 15, and 25 minute sprint and only got 641 words total. I wasted a lot of time waiting for my words to appear and then couldn't seem to resist stopping to fix all the ridiculous misunderstandings for fear that I wouldn't know what I meant to say when I went back to clean it up later. So, day 1 was more a practice in patience than in writing.

Day 2 is off to a much better start. My recorder arrived yesterday evening so first thing this morning I did a 20m sprint and got just under 800 words. Woot! Not where I want to be, but considering I'm a pretty steady 1000-1200 wph typing kinda girl, I think it's a great start! It did take another roughly 20 minutes for Dragon to process and transcribe the file and for me to go through the initial correction training process. I spent an additional 40 minutes muttering obscenities into my coffee cup while I went through and sorted out all the additional misunderstandings that slipped through Dragon's correction filters. 

So, 80m total for what ended up being about 1200 words. Again, not great, I could do that pretty easily in under an hour while typing, but I think Dragon and I will only get faster as it continues to learn my voice better and as I continue to become more comfortable telling my story out loud. Dragon lives to see another day!!

Valerie, I tucked my recorder in my stroller cupholder this morning, but I couldn't bring myself to record anything! I felt so self conscious walking down the street trying to pump myself up to talk out loud. Do you find it comfortable to dictate while you walk outside?


----------



## valeriec80

Indigo W said:


> Valerie, I tucked my recorder in my stroller cupholder this morning, but I couldn't bring myself to record anything! I felt so self conscious walking down the street trying to pump myself up to talk out loud. Do you find it comfortable to dictate while you walk outside?


I live out in the middle of nowhere, so yeah. If I thought I was going to run into people, it might be intimidating.


----------



## Evenstar

I too will be putting my recorder in the cup holder of the stroller. I figured that with the headset mike on I would look like I was chatting on the phone? Is that not the case?


----------



## Randall Wood

So,

UPS just dropped off my new Dragon 13 premium, Olympus WS-822 and a KOSS CS100 headphone/mic. I am Jack's raging endorphins.

Ten minutes later the kids come home from camp and I can't play with my new toys till Monday.

F**k me harder.


----------



## Guest

I had to delurk and join the forum to comment on this thread. Elizabeth Ann West, you are so awesome! I owe you big time!

A few months ago, I tried dictation after reading about Kevin J Anderson. Too cheap to spring for the Dragon software, I tried about thirty minutes of dictating with the native Apple program. Yeah. That did NOT go well. I told myself that I just couldn't tell a story out loud, that I had to type it because I'm such a visual person. I'm a really fast typist and writer. Once I convince myself to actual do the butt-in-chair-and-freaking-write thing, I can get up to 4500 words in an hour - after which point I cannot write for three days from the wrist pain.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. Chris Fox's book 5000 WPH mentions this thread. I read through the whole thread, opened my mind to the possibility of becoming an oral storyteller, clicked the coupon/link a few pages into the thread and managed to get Dragon 4 (Mac) for $86 including tax doing basically nothing. That first day, I trained it using the "medium" training essay (a Mark Twain piece). Then I dictated a few hundred words while sitting at my computer (ahem, my laptop was on a chair next to the bathtub). It was sort of accurate. Then I realized I needed to be closer to my computer's microphone. I corrected the words as I went along, got frustrated, and walked away from Dragon for a week.

Then I came back to it, doing the following things, and now I feel like my entire writing life has changed.

1) Using an external recorder for transcribing later into Dragon (computer closed so I couldn't see the words pop up on the screen which really slows me down), I read off of the first pages of one of my own books into the recorder. It was maybe 10 minutes of audio. I used that because I knew that if I said a word that Dragon didn't understand, I could go back and actually read on paper, word-for-word what I meant to say and then say to dragon "Correct X word" and change it. If I did the spitball, write-from-my-brain for the training, I knew that there was no way I would remember what word I'd meant to say.

2) I uploaded the audio file, put it into Dragon, and corrected it. The second time I did this, the accuracy must have been 99%. It was incredible. Remember, at this point, I'd used Dragon a grand total of about forty minutes over two separate days.

3) This is the most important thing: Dragon predicts what you are trying to say by using the context of surrounding words. On the Dragon training, it tells you to speak clearly and to speak your sentence, then pause, much like a newscaster would on television. THIS made all the difference. It didn't slow me down, but it kept going at a rhythmic pace that Dragon could understand.

4) As far as getting over the "But...I can ONLY type a story! I can't hear my own voice!" thing, I find that closing my eyes doesn't work. Instead (once again in the bathtub), I put a towel over my head and held the recorder up to my mouth. That way it sort of narrowed my vision and dampened the echo of my own voice in my head. Later, I laid down on my bed with a pillow over my eyes and sort of shut out the world around me. This worked WONDERS. I just disappeared into the story.

5) "Clean up." Like I said above, my Dragon is already at least 98% accurate. Yesterday I recorded two different thirty minute sessions and transcribed them separately. At first, I went through correcting things, but then I realized that Dragon is already accurate enough for me, so I just copy-and-pasted into Scrivener and told myself I'd edit later when I do my big final edit. This is still saving me time because the way I write is by getting it all down on the page as quickly and cleanly as possible. Then I let it hibernate for a week. Then I go back to it, chapter by chapter, clean-up, tighten the story, proofread and edit all at once. So cleaning up transcription errors will add almost nothing to my time at the computer.

6) This is probably also helpful: I have access to a really high-quality recorder (an Olympus LS-10 that my dad was no longer using) that my husband set up a long time ago to record WAV files (he's a musician). That definitely helps, I would guess. But I'm also getting really, really good accuracy with my Macbook Air's microphone. YMMV.

I told myself that I didn't care how fast dictating was compared to my typing speed, because I was doing this for reasons other than speed. The first is my aforementioned wrist problem. The second is that my husband and I are planning to move to an area where we can actually be outdoors most of the year coming up this fall. That means hiking and mountains! I would LOVE to walk and write at the same time. Third, I have a really, really hard time being productive at the computer. Some days I feel like I'm searching for the "end" of the Internet and I've nearly found it multiple times. Ha! So, all that to say, I want to be away from the screen but also still be able to write. And the fourth, as I mentioned above, is that I really enjoy taking a bath mid-day and writing while I do it. I've tried to type in the bathtub (seriously), but again: ergonomics.

So what were my results yesterday, transcribing about an hour's worth of audio? I nearly fell off of my mattress when I put my numbers into Chris Fox's spreadsheet. These are my results after only one hour of oral story telling (so no practice, really), speaking clearly and rhythmically into an external recorder (so I don't see the words pop up on the screen as I talk).

5600 words per hour. 5600! After only one hour of doing this (and a lifetime spent typing). All while sitting in the bathtub and then later while horizontal on my bed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being so generous with your knowledge Elizabeth! I am truly grateful.

*TLR: One hour with Dragon and an external recorder and I'm up to 5600 words an hour without injuring my body and everything is candy and rainbows.*


----------



## valeriec80

JP Friday said:


> 1) Using an external recorder for transcribing later into Dragon (computer closed so I couldn't see the words pop up on the screen which really slows me down), I read off of the first pages of one of my own books into the recorder. It was maybe 10 minutes of audio. I used that because I knew that if I said a word that Dragon didn't understand, I could go back and actually read on paper, word-for-word what I meant to say and then say to dragon "Correct X word" and change it. If I did the spitball, write-from-my-brain for the training, I knew that there was no way I would remember what word I'd meant to say.
> 
> 2) I uploaded the audio file, put it into Dragon, and corrected it. The second time I did this, the accuracy must have been 99%. It was incredible. Remember, at this point, I'd used Dragon a grand total of about forty minutes over two separate days.


Okay, this is effing BRILLIANT. Totally doing this over the weekend. Hoping for good stuff when I come back to writing on Monday. Haha!


----------



## Guest

valeriec80 said:


> Okay, this is effing BRILLIANT. Totally doing this over the weekend. Hoping for good stuff when I come back to writing on Monday. Haha!


*blushes* Once a decade I get a really good idea; I think this one was it!

Let me know how it goes!


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Awww! I am so happy to help everyone find a way to write easier. Speed is great, but the ergonomics are a literal life saver. Chronic pain is sooo not cool. And don't thank me, thank the people at Nuance! They made the wonderful product.


----------



## Evenstar

JP Friday said:


> I had to delurk and join the forum to comment on this thread. Elizabeth Ann West, you are so awesome! I owe you big time!
> 
> A few months ago, I tried dictation after reading about Kevin J Anderson. Too cheap to spring for the Dragon software, I tried about thirty minutes of dictating with the native Apple program. Yeah. That did NOT go well. I told myself that I just couldn't tell a story out loud, that I had to type it because I'm such a visual person. I'm a really fast typist and writer. Once I convince myself to actual do the butt-in-chair-and-freaking-write thing, I can get up to 4500 words in an hour - after which point I cannot write for three days from the wrist pain.
> 
> Fast forward to two weeks ago. Chris Fox's book 5000 WPH mentions this thread. I read through the whole thread, opened my mind to the possibility of becoming an oral storyteller, clicked the coupon/link a few pages into the thread and managed to get Dragon 4 (Mac) for $86 including tax doing basically nothing. That first day, I trained it using the "medium" training essay (a Mark Twain piece). Then I dictated a few hundred words while sitting at my computer (ahem, my laptop was on a chair next to the bathtub). It was sort of accurate. Then I realized I needed to be closer to my computer's microphone. I corrected the words as I went along, got frustrated, and walked away from Dragon for a week.
> 
> Then I came back to it, doing the following things, and now I feel like my entire writing life has changed.
> 
> 1) Using an external recorder for transcribing later into Dragon (computer closed so I couldn't see the words pop up on the screen which really slows me down), I read off of the first pages of one of my own books into the recorder. It was maybe 10 minutes of audio. I used that because I knew that if I said a word that Dragon didn't understand, I could go back and actually read on paper, word-for-word what I meant to say and then say to dragon "Correct X word" and change it. If I did the spitball, write-from-my-brain for the training, I knew that there was no way I would remember what word I'd meant to say.
> 
> 2) I uploaded the audio file, put it into Dragon, and corrected it. The second time I did this, the accuracy must have been 99%. It was incredible. Remember, at this point, I'd used Dragon a grand total of about forty minutes over two separate days.
> 
> 3) This is the most important thing: Dragon predicts what you are trying to say by using the context of surrounding words. On the Dragon training, it tells you to speak clearly and to speak your sentence, then pause, much like a newscaster would on television. THIS made all the difference. It didn't slow me down, but it kept going at a rhythmic pace that Dragon could understand.
> 
> 4) As far as getting over the "But...I can ONLY type a story! I can't hear my own voice!" thing, I find that closing my eyes doesn't work. Instead (once again in the bathtub), I put a towel over my head and held the recorder up to my mouth. That way it sort of narrowed my vision and dampened the echo of my own voice in my head. Later, I laid down on my bed with a pillow over my eyes and sort of shut out the world around me. This worked WONDERS. I just disappeared into the story.
> 
> 5) "Clean up." Like I said above, my Dragon is already at least 98% accurate. Yesterday I recorded two different thirty minute sessions and transcribed them separately. At first, I went through correcting things, but then I realized that Dragon is already accurate enough for me, so I just copy-and-pasted into Scrivener and told myself I'd edit later when I do my big final edit. This is still saving me time because the way I write is by getting it all down on the page as quickly and cleanly as possible. Then I let it hibernate for a week. Then I go back to it, chapter by chapter, clean-up, tighten the story, proofread and edit all at once. So cleaning up transcription errors will add almost nothing to my time at the computer.
> 
> 6) This is probably also helpful: I have access to a really high-quality recorder (an Olympus LS-10 that my dad was no longer using) that my husband set up a long time ago to record WAV files (he's a musician). That definitely helps, I would guess. But I'm also getting really, really good accuracy with my Macbook Air's microphone. YMMV.
> 
> I told myself that I didn't care how fast dictating was compared to my typing speed, because I was doing this for reasons other than speed. The first is my aforementioned wrist problem. The second is that my husband and I are planning to move to an area where we can actually be outdoors most of the year coming up this fall. That means hiking and mountains! I would LOVE to walk and write at the same time. Third, I have a really, really hard time being productive at the computer. Some days I feel like I'm searching for the "end" of the Internet and I've nearly found it multiple times. Ha! So, all that to say, I want to be away from the screen but also still be able to write. And the fourth, as I mentioned above, is that I really enjoy taking a bath mid-day and writing while I do it. I've tried to type in the bathtub (seriously), but again: ergonomics.
> 
> So what were my results yesterday, transcribing about an hour's worth of audio? I nearly fell off of my mattress when I put my numbers into Chris Fox's spreadsheet. These are my results after only one hour of oral story telling (so no practice, really), speaking clearly and rhythmically into an external recorder (so I don't see the words pop up on the screen as I talk).
> 
> 5600 words per hour. 5600! After only one hour of doing this (and a lifetime spent typing). All while sitting in the bathtub and then later while horizontal on my bed.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you for being so generous with your knowledge Elizabeth! I am truly grateful.
> 
> *TLR: One hour with Dragon and an external recorder and I'm up to 5600 words an hour without injuring my body and everything is candy and rainbows.*


Thank you for this post, that is incredibly helpful!


----------



## Midnight Whimsy

I've been struggling with productivity lately and feeling like I have to drag out each word. Normally I write about 1000 words per hour, and my goal is 3000 a day. Lately, it's been hard.

I made the rather impulsive decision this morning to buy Dragon 13 and give it a whirl. After going through the set up and teaching it some specific character names and terms (I write urban fantasy), I got right into it and dictated 1800 words in 1 hour 20 minutes. Read through and clean up was about 20 minutes, no longer than my usual read through after typing. Pretty good! And, surprisingly, I didn't feel really drained after, which I often do after a couple thousand words of typing. I'm definitely going to use it all next week and see how things go.

I did find some things frustrating though. When I really got into the swing of things, I seemed to go too fast for it--it was missing small words like "at" and "to", or using "I" instead of "if" and other little mistakes. Will it get better at this as I go along? Is there something specific I have to do to "train my dragon" or does it just learn as I use it?

The other problem I was having is some of my character names are a little odd. One is Lyre. I taught the word to the program, but it only uses it half the time, instead using "liar" everywhere. Is there a way to tell the program to always use "Lyre" and I'll correct it when I want "liar"? And last question -- those with amazing word counts, are you dictating punctuation or adding that in after? "Open quote" and "close quote" every two seconds got old fast, haha.

Any other pointers for a newbie would be welcome. 

M.W


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

One suggestion was name them easy names for dragon to understand like "Susan" then go Ctrl f and replace Susan with lyre. Another is have it analyze your documents that have the character names in it then it will anticipate you are saying the names more.


----------



## Reaper

Great tips everyone! 

I'm still struggling with my computer freezing and being 'stuck' when using it. I tried opening a blank document because I read that working in a large file might be causing the lag, but that's not proved to be effective. And my machine is well within the operating criteria. (Despite this, a message in the Dragon bar saying "Recovering from low system resources" flares up, even though nothing else is running but Word).

Anyone else struggling with this?


----------



## valeriec80

Steven McKinnon said:


> Great tips everyone!
> 
> I'm still struggling with my computer freezing and being 'stuck' when using it. I tried opening a blank document because I read that working in a large file might be causing the lag, but that's not proved to be effective. And my machine is well within the operating criteria. (Despite this, a message in the Dragon bar saying "Recovering from low system resources" flares up, even though nothing else is running but Word).
> 
> Anyone else struggling with this?


Try dictating into the dragonpad and then copy-pasting? Back when I used Word, I used to try to dictate directly into Word, but I always found the dragonpad faster and more accurate, so I stopped.

You also might try googling. There are lots of resources on the web about dragon as it's used in things like medical transcription and stuff. Maybe you've got some bulk you can dump, like if you have a bunch of user profiles you don't use or something??


----------



## Reaper

valeriec80 said:


> Try dictating into the dragonpad and then copy-pasting? Back when I used Word, I used to try to dictate directly into Word, but I always found the dragonpad faster and more accurate, so I stopped.
> 
> You also might try googling. There are lots of resources on the web about dragon as it's used in things like medical transcription and stuff. Maybe you've got some bulk you can dump, like if you have a bunch of user profiles you don't use or something??


I've only got one profile, but I'll definitely make more use of the.dragonpad and see if it improves. Cheers!


----------



## katrina46

I just bought Dragon today and started a thread because I didn't see this one. I'll be curious as to how accurate it is and how much time it takes me to train it. It wasn't cheap, so I really hope it earns it's money back.


----------



## Indigo W

I too would be curious to know how long it took you Dragon veterans to get yours properly trained...today was day 3 for me and I'm still having some frustrations with the transcription accuracy.


----------



## DashaGLogan

I'm jealous. I need to be in my silent nonspeaking shell to be able to write. I'm much better with my fingers than I am with my tongue. Don't know why.


That sounded weird. *giggles like a teen*


----------



## Douglas Clegg

I didn't take much time training my Dragon, but part of that is because I'm pretty fast at cleaning up any mistakes it makes and I'd rather dictate than spend a ton of time training it.

On the other hand, I dictate first with a really good recorder (a Phillips with big side switches and a large screen on the front, good voice capture). That may help. I started with a little bit less of a good recorder (it was an Olympus 820 or 822 I think) and it was also fine, but I needed the larger switches and buttons because I was worried I'd erase something accidentally...plus I notice when I invest more in my work equipment, guilt keeps me committed to using it.

So outside of training Dragon for Mac v. 4 very briefly, I just clean up the mistakes. My main commands when dictating are for periods and paragraphs, mostly. Sometimes commas. I don't worry about quotation marks because for me it'll interrupt the flow of dictating. It's easy enough for me to figure out where the quotation marks go when I'm revising.

For me, dictation is getting that "vomit draft" down -- the roughest of roughs, so I have something to work with -- and also a way to get a little exercise into the work day. I have an exercise bike in my office outfitted with a laptop-sized tabletop and now with the voice recorder, I walk at some point in the day where I'm still getting work done.

I've found that when I want to incorporate fresh air, a stroll or hike, get some sun, dictation is a great way to use the time, get a little change of scenery -- and keep writing.

I don't dictate for hours every day. I go for about 40 minutes to 1 hour of dictation. Then, I transcribe and revise and work on whatever needs to be worked on with the laptop. In fact, I'm not sure I'd want to dictate for more than an hour or so a day -- I can't stand my own voice. But I love pushing the story out and getting everything but the kitchen sink into that first draft of it so I have something to edit and work with.

I wish good luck and success to anyone trying this. I used to think I'd have to speak perfectly formed sentences in order to dictate. Now, I don't care how it comes out. No one will see (or hear) it but me and the whole point is to make the writing process flow a bit better. And exercise a little bit more. And toss out procrastination.


----------



## Avril Sabine

DashaGLogan said:


> I need to be in my silent nonspeaking shell to be able to write.


The longer I've used my Dragon, the easier it has become to 'talk' my manuscripts. I still type as well. It's probably half talking and half typing. Mainly because I can neither type nor talk for the amount of hours I sometimes write, so I alternate between the two methods.


----------



## valeriec80

Indigo W said:


> I too would be curious to know how long it took you Dragon veterans to get yours properly trained...today was day 3 for me and I'm still having some frustrations with the transcription accuracy.


Have you had it analyze a bunch of your writing yet? It'll come up and some point and prompt you to do this, but you can find it under one of the menus if you look. That generally helps a ton.

Also, launch accuracy training--it's the accoustic whatchamajig. Helps.

Good microphone helps too.


----------



## Donna White Glaser

I already had DNS 12 Home but with the weather so gorgeous I hated staying inside to write. This thread inspired me to upgrade to DNS 13 Premium and a voice recorder. Thanks!


----------



## Evenstar

Please could someone respond to this:

I bought DNS 12 Premium and I have heard that DNS*12.5* is very glitchy and NOT to upgrade, but the installation disk in the box, though it says 12 on it, when inserted it only offers installation of 12.5!

Is this normal or am I being forced to upgrade when I don't want to or something?


----------



## Avril Sabine

Evenstar said:


> Please could someone respond to this:
> 
> I bought DNS 12 Premium and I have heard that DNS*12.5* is very glitchy and NOT to upgrade, but the installation disk in the box, though it says 12 on it, when inserted it only offers installation of 12.5!
> 
> Is this normal or am I being forced to upgrade when I don't want to or something?


I have 12.5 and have been very happy with it.


----------



## Indigo W

valeriec80 said:


> Have you had it analyze a bunch of your writing yet? It'll come up and some point and prompt you to do this, but you can find it under one of the menus if you look. That generally helps a ton.
> 
> Also, launch accuracy training--it's the accoustic whatchamajig. Helps.
> 
> Good microphone helps too.


Do you mean vocabulary training and voice training? I've got a better microphone coming in the mail today, so hopefully that will help


----------



## Avril Sabine

Indigo W said:


> Do you mean vocabulary training and voice training? I've got a better microphone coming in the mail today, so hopefully that will help


Under the 'Audio' menu there is a 'Launch Accuracy Tuning' as well as 'Improve recognition of a word or phrase' and 'Read text to improve accuracy'.


----------



## thesmallprint

Sorry if this has been answered earlier in this lengthy thread: doesn't the Mac's inbuilt dictation 'engine' use Dragon software? I read somewhere that it does. If so, it could save a lot of cash if you already have a Mac


----------



## Indigo W

Avril Sabine said:


> Under the 'Audio' menu there is a 'Launch Accuracy Tuning' as well as 'Improve recognition of a word or phrase' and 'Read text to improve accuracy'.


I'm not finding an "Audio" menu, are the menus the same on the Mac v4 (this is what I'm using) as the other versions? I also might be staring right at it and just being oblivious...


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

The built-in Mac dictation is good for seeing if you LIKE dictation, but it is not nearly as powerful as Dragon. And it doesn't transcribe. For me, that is the real money making part of Dragon that just kills typing, I can WRITE anywhere. And that means every 10-15 minutes I have to wait somewhere could be 500-700 words. Do that a few times a day, wham!, you have 2,000-3,000 words.


----------



## thewitt

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> The built-in Mac dictation is good for seeing if you LIKE dictation, but it is not nearly as powerful as Dragon. And it doesn't transcribe.


What do you mean by this?

I can turn on "Dictate" in any app on the Mac and just talk to my Mac. It happily types what I say. Recognition is very high, with fewer typos than when I type... If you download the offline support file, you don't need to be connected to the Internet.

The only problem I have with dictation in general is I don't tell the same story when I talk and when I write.

The Mac built-in dictation has no problem transcribing what I speak however.

Here's an older article comparing the Mac to Dragon - just for reference.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2066026/mavericks-dictation-vs-dragon-dictate-how-good-is-os-xs-built-in-tool-.html


----------



## TBD

thewitt said:


> What do you mean by this?
> 
> I can turn on "Dictate" in any app on the Mac and just talk to my Mac. It happily types what I say. Recognition is very high, with fewer typos than when I type... If you download the offline support file, you don't need to be connected to the Internet.
> 
> The only problem I have with dictation in general is I don't tell the same story when I talk and when I write.
> 
> The Mac built-in dictation has no problem transcribing what I speak however.
> 
> Here's an older article comparing the Mac to Dragon - just for reference.
> 
> http://www.macworld.com/article/2066026/mavericks-dictation-vs-dragon-dictate-how-good-is-os-xs-built-in-tool-.html


Edited to Clarify -- When I first started with Dragon, it took me a while to sort things out... Dictation and Transcription are two different processes in Dragon. Because there is only one version of Dragon for Mac, this is not an issue for Mac users. ;-) This IS an issue for Windows users and may be a deciding factor when choosing which DNS version to purchase.

With Transcription, you bring in/import an audio file from a different source -- say a small hand held recorder -- and Dragon will TRANSCRIBE the audio. NOTE - Dragon for the Mac has this option, but for Windows, you need Win Premium. Win Home doesn't have the capability.

With Dictation, Dragon writes from the audio that comes directly thru the computer you are using -- whether you are using a built-in mic or you have a different mic plugged in. This means that it works with different apps on the Mac and many different software packages in Windows...

Hope this makes sense ;-)


----------



## Douglas Clegg

thewitt said:


> The only problem I have with dictation in general is I don't tell the same story when I talk and when I write.
> 
> http://www.macworld.com/article/2066026/mavericks-dictation-vs-dragon-dictate-how-good-is-os-xs-built-in-tool-.html


Timothy,

That is such a good point. I think we have at least three "voices" inside us -- the one for social interaction, the inside one that probably connects to dreams and imagination, and another one that's mostly quiet but comes out in crisis mode -- either as rat brain or as superhero, depending on the crisis. (Note: I may be wrong. I just like thinking this.)

One initial problem of dictating is crossing the wires of social interaction's voice and the imagination's voice. And I firmly believe that happiness in life comes with bringing the imagination out more and more, which may be why some writers and artists and comedians and others may sound crazy at times (although I'd argue against that judgment.) See: Black Swan, the movie, for the dark side of this.

When I dictate, I just worry about moving the story (plot, character) forward; the writing itself will find its spot in revision. I think dictation (for me) makes a technical draft. I even put footnotes of sorts into the dictation -- right in the middle of action or a scene. Things like: "his mother stole his allowance for years when he was a boy, and now he hides money from his wife." Or, I guess, they're asides to myself for later revision and expansion.

For me, a voice recorder and getting far from my desk really helps me just go off in dictation mode.

Again, you've really hit on a solid problem that at least I had when facing dictation. I just pushed myself away from the fear of my horrible first draft in order to get the story out.


----------



## valeriec80

Got 1,000 words in 16 minutes today!!

It's getting better and easier. So glad I stuck with it. This is my tenth day dictating.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

WOOHOO Valerie! I am sitting at my sister's house right now and she is writing her first story next to me!!! It's about to get real as soon as the two Schilling sisters are publishing! LOL. I have a feeling I'll be introducting her to Dragon come Christmas.   (Schilling is my maiden name).


----------



## Douglas Clegg

That is great news, Valerie. Voice recorders are wonderful tools to move the writing forward and get away from the desk.


----------



## Jessie Jasen

Elisabeth - I read your first post and I'll share my experience. Sorry if it overlaps some of the comments already posted, I don't have the time to go through the entire thread today. 

I did extensive research about a year ago on writing with dictation. I discovered that one of the writers who used this method was Barbara Cartland back in the 1970s. She would dictate her novels to a stenographer who then transcribed everything. I recorded myself dictating, did some calculations, and came up with the result that I can dictate up to 7,000 words in an hour with some practice.

I then went on to experiment with dictation software. I used Mac dictation with Siri, since it came for free with my Mac. The max. number of words I could pull off in a minute is about 60 words, which pretty much corresponds with your experience, if I didn't miscalculate your numbers.

The reason why I looked into dictation is the same as yours - permanent back and neck issues. Dictating certainly helped to relieve some of the problems I had, but I didn't yet want to give up on typing. I continued my research and discovered that many people who use QWERTY keyboard layout suffer from problems with carpal tunnel and muscle strains in shoulders and the neck. My pains were so extreme that I couldn't write longer than a few hours per day - and would have to stop, take a break for a couple of days until my muscles relaxed, and then continue writing. I was in sheer agony.

But I wasn't giving up. I went on to research and I found a way that has alleviated my pains, and thank God, I'm now pain-free.
I switched my keyboard to *Dvorak*. Switching it meant that I had to re-learn how to type. I started with 8 wpm, but can clock 40-43 wpm now - more than I could ever write using QWERTY. The excruciating pains I had in my left arm, shoulder and neck disappeared within 48 hours.

Next thing I did was buy a pair of inversion boots and a chin-up bar. I use them to hang upside down every second day at least. It relieves the spine and the muscles of tension created by sitting for long hours. I can't praise it enough. 5 min. of hanging upside down and I feel like a newborn, ready to tackle my day. 

Other thing I began is jogging and doing yoga regularly. Especially the position where you lie on your back and put your legs behind your head helps to stretch the neck and the back area. When I do it regularly, I feel no pain whatsoever.

I hope this will be of help and congrats on discovering dictation!


----------



## Indigo W

Jessie Jasen said:


> Elisabeth - I read your first post and I'll share my experience. Sorry if it overlaps some of the comments already posted, I don't have the time to go through the entire thread today.
> 
> I did extensive research about a year ago on writing with dictation. I discovered that one of the writers who used this method was Barbara Cartland back in the 1970s. She would dictate her novels to a stenographer who then transcribed everything. I recorded myself dictating, did some calculations, and came up with the result that I can dictate up to 7,000 words in an hour with some practice.
> 
> I then went on to experiment with dictation software. I used Mac dictation with Siri, since it came for free with my Mac. The max. number of words I could pull off in a minute is about 60 words, which pretty much corresponds with your experience, if I didn't miscalculate your numbers.
> 
> The reason why I looked into dictation is the same as yours - permanent back and neck issues. Dictating certainly helped to relieve some of the problems I had, but I didn't yet want to give up on typing. I continued my research and discovered that many people who use QWERTY keyboard layout suffer from problems with carpal tunnel and muscle strains in shoulders and the neck. My pains were so extreme that I couldn't write longer than a few hours per day - and would have to stop, take a break for a couple of days until my muscles relaxed, and then continue writing. I was in sheer agony.
> 
> But I wasn't giving up. I went on to research and I found a way that has alleviated my pains, and thank God, I'm now pain-free.
> I switched my keyboard to *Dvorak*. Switching it meant that I had to re-learn how to type. I started with 8 wpm, but can clock 40-43 wpm now - more than I could ever write using QWERTY. The excruciating pains I had in my left arm, shoulder and neck disappeared within 48 hours.
> 
> Next thing I did was buy a pair of inversion boots and a chin-up bar. I use them to hang upside down every second day at least. It relieves the spine and the muscles of tension created by sitting for long hours. I can't praise it enough. 5 min. of hanging upside down and I feel like a newborn, ready to tackle my day.
> 
> Other thing I began is jogging and doing yoga regularly. Especially the position where you lie on your back and put your legs behind your head helps to stretch the neck and the back area. When I do it regularly, I feel no pain whatsoever.
> 
> I hope this will be of help and congrats on discovering dictation!


Weird question for you - have you ever tried dictating while inverted?? I'm oddly curious to know if there might be any difference in the "story telling muscle" upside down versus right-side up. Good thing I don't have a chin-up bar, I'd probably manage to get myself into the ER before the end of the day 

Congrats on beating the pain! And thanks for the health-motivation boost! I need to get back into yoga, it made me feel better physically and also seemed to loosen up my mind and get me in a more creative and fresh state of mind.


----------



## valeriec80

I suspect that the answer to this is just "deal with it," (or buy a 'spensive mic maybe?) but...

Any specific tips to combat the following issues?

-Dragon constantly misses the first word of sentences. It's not every sentence. More like every fifth or tenth.
-Dragon can't hear the difference between him and them, or she, he, or it. It is always and forever putting the wrong word in, and it drives me nuts!
-Dragon is crap with tense, often putting -s when I want -ed and vice versa.

Thanks in advance if anyone knows any tricks or tips! 

(BTW, I also noticed a jump in speed when i switched to Dvorak, and a reduction--but not a cessation--of pain.)

Oh, one other thing. Those of you who use a voice recorder for dictating, do you have a mic attached to it or just use the built-in one? Especially outdoors? Like, if you were going to go for a walk and your hands were full, say pushing a stroller, how would you talk into your voice recorder?


----------



## Indigo W

Valerie, I use my recorder, an Olympus VN-722PC, every morning outdoors. Dragon had a horrific time with accuracy over all the early morning wildlife noises so I bought the "Olympus ME-52W Noise Canceling Microphone" for something like 13-14 bucks and now I have no problems whatsoever. It comes with a cord and a clip too so you can tuck your recorder in a cupholder or pocket and clip the mic to your shirt so you can be totally handsfree too. The clip is a bit big, but it works. I also had troubles with Dragon picking up tenses and pronouns but that seems to have improved with the new mic as well. Hope this helps!


----------



## Donna White Glaser

I got my recorder yesterday and I've been playing with it. It's a Sony PX333.  Nifty little thing. I'm used to using DNS, so saying comma and open quote/close quote, etc isn't alien to me, but I've come up against an obstacle I wasn't thinking about. Namely, I tend to lose my train of thought if I'm not looking at a screen. Has anyone else had that issue and does it get better? Do I just need to get used to it?


----------



## RomanceAuthor

okay, i just went to the dragon website (i need the pc version) holy moly, there are a lot of options here: http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-product/dragon-for-pc/index.htm

which version do you use? Also, I think i read somewhere in this thread that there's a version that comes with a microphone?

I'm hoping to use it with my iphone too. I saw there are apps for it (but i need the pc version first).

Thanks!


----------



## David Wisehart

Great thread. Thanks, Elizabeth.

I just started using Dragon Dictate 3.0 for Mac, and I think it's going to help immensely.

One thing worth mentioning is that storytelling started as an oral tradition. Writing came later.

Even then, many writers used an amanuensis. For example, the Apostle Paul dictated his epistles (Romans 16:22, "I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter..."), and Milton used several amanuenses for _Paradise Lost_ because he was going blind.

Erle Stanley Gardner used a Dictaphone to increase his productivity, and Agatha Christie used one later in her career. They both had secretaries transcribe the audio, then made revisions themselves.

I feel like I'm going back to the way storytelling was meant to be.


----------



## Escribir

Wow, this thread is so long. I'm not sure if anyone has touched on this problem. Yes, I've used Dragon for years. Just got it for Mac. But in editing, it goes into processing mode after two words. I never had this with any other version. Making me crazy. Has anyone had this happen and what am I doing wrong? I gave up and went back to manual. Headset -- I use a Parrot mic. Works well.  And I'm new to the KB but intend to be more active since the posts are so good! Barbara


----------



## TBD

RomanceAuthor said:


> okay, i just went to the dragon website (i need the pc version) holy moly, there are a lot of options here: http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-product/dragon-for-pc/index.htm
> 
> which version do you use? Also, I think i read somewhere in this thread that there's a version that comes with a microphone?
> 
> I'm hoping to use it with my iphone too. I saw there are apps for it (but i need the pc version first).
> 
> Thanks!


You need Premium. Additional info was posted here

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,203713.msg3048079.html#msg3048079

;-)


----------



## Jessie Jasen

Indigo W said:


> Weird question for you - have you ever tried dictating while inverted?? I'm oddly curious to know if there might be any difference in the "story telling muscle" upside down versus right-side up. Good thing I don't have a chin-up bar, I'd probably manage to get myself into the ER before the end of the day
> 
> Congrats on beating the pain! And thanks for the health-motivation boost! I need to get back into yoga, it made me feel better physically and also seemed to loosen up my mind and get me in a more creative and fresh state of mind.


You mean like Agent Cooper in the first episode of Twin Peaks?  No, I haven't. I only hang for about 3-5 min. at a time, which is too little to start dictating.

You can buy an inversion table and do inversion. It's a safer version of the chin-up bar I use.


----------



## Marcus Richardson

Evenstar said:


> Please could someone respond to this:
> 
> I bought DNS 12 Premium and I have heard that DNS*12.5* is very glitchy and NOT to upgrade, but the installation disk in the box, though it says 12 on it, when inserted it only offers installation of 12.5!
> 
> Is this normal or am I being forced to upgrade when I don't want to or something?


I bought 12 premium and upgraded right away. I think it's 12.5.9 or something like that. But, no problems whatsoever (after I got it installed on my laptop--it doesn't have a DVD drive, of course, so installation was...fun).


----------



## Marcus Richardson

valeriec80 said:


> Got 1,000 words in 16 minutes today!!
> 
> It's getting better and easier. So glad I stuck with it. This is my tenth day dictating.


Hey congrats! That's awesome. I'm almost addicted to dictating now, it's just so much more efficient. I initially had problems with -s and -ed and his/him etc. Couldn't figure out what to do so I decided to slow down and focus on my pronunciation. It was brutal to shift gears but once I worked on my pronunciation, the speed came back.

Doesn't help me when I really get into a story---I tend to speak fast when I'm excited. Makes for interesting transcriptions sometimes!


----------



## Chad Winters

Not sure if I said this already and didn't go back to check but I dictate daily as a doctor for charting for over 10 years now and this is my favorite mic yet. Clips to a laptop screen and has a cardiod function where only picks op noise from the front. Very accurate and only $39. Works better than the $500 one work bought me.


----------



## valeriec80

Thanks, Indigo!!



Donna White Glaser said:


> I got my recorder yesterday and I've been playing with it. It's a Sony PX333. Nifty little thing. I'm used to using DNS, so saying comma and open quote/close quote, etc isn't alien to me, but I've come up against an obstacle I wasn't thinking about. Namely, I tend to lose my train of thought if I'm not looking at a screen. Has anyone else had that issue and does it get better? Do I just need to get used to it?


I put copy-paste my scrivener scene notes into Evernote so that I can look at them on my phone (it's a free download/app, which syncs automatically whatever you put in there). Which helps me stay grounded a bit. I do sometimes forget if i've said something or not, though. Sometimes, my characters repeat themselves and I have to fix that in editing.


----------



## Donna White Glaser

Good idea, valerie80. Thank you!


----------



## RomanceAuthor

TBD said:


> You need Premium. Additional info was posted here
> 
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,203713.msg3048079.html#msg3048079
> 
> ;-)


So sorry, but I looked at the post and I'm still confused. I want a Dragon version for Windows, and I want to be able to dictate on my iphone, while I am away from home (so now wireless connection while I am dictating, but there will be a wireless connection to PC during transcribing). Can I buy Dragon Premium Version 13 and download the "dragon dictation app" (or maybe the "dragon remote microphone") apps on my iphone and do this while commuting?

SOrry if the questions are dumb, but I can't figure it out :-(


----------



## Jac1106

RomanceAuthor, 

Yes, DNS 13 Premium for your pc and Dragon dictation app for your iPhone is the right combo to use if you don't have a digital recorder and you want to dictate while commuting and transcribe later. (The remote microphone app works only while you're connected to wifi).


----------



## elizabethsade

Thanks to this thread popping up, I made the decision to order DNS 13 Premium and a headset (I have a recorder). It'll be here later today and the headset tomorrow. Goal is to switch most of the drafting over to dictation in a valiant attempt to save the welfare of my hands/arms (8 hours of typing at work, and then 3k-5k at home - pain, lots of pain). Bit nervous, but I'm armed with some of the strategies outlined here.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

elizabethsade said:


> Thanks to this thread popping up, I made the decision to order DNS 13 Premium and a headset (I have a recorder). It'll be here later today and the headset tomorrow. Goal is to switch most of the drafting over to dictation in a valiant attempt to save the welfare of my hands/arms (8 hours of typing at work, and then 3k-5k at home - pain, lots of pain). Bit nervous, but I'm armed with some of the strategies outlined here.


Outline and keep track of your session word counts. That's important. You won't believe what you're achieving unless you track it and watch it go up, up, up!


----------



## elizabethsade

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Outline and keep track of your session word counts. That's important. You won't believe what you're achieving unless you track it and watch it go up, up, up!


Outline broken down into scenes is already prepped in Scrivener (thanks Libbie Hawker  ), and I'm subscribing to Wayne's suggestion of editing the entire manuscript twice via wordcounts, but I'll break it down a bit more into dictation sessions. I'm really excited - I think once I get used to it dictation will be pretty natural feeling. I think I'll be tracking sprints/sessions via Chris Fox's app. It seems fitting.

The one thing dictation won't do will be curing my already natural habit of having conversations with myself...oops.


----------



## NerdyWriter

Just brought DNS 13 HOME today! I was sick and tired of Windows speech app because the accuracy was bad for me. So far loving the accuracy of DNS13. I had DNS12, a few years ago, but rarely used it and eventually, I deleted it.


----------



## elizabethsade

So far I spent an hour or so playing with the Dragon and training both the mic and the recorder I have. I'm waiting for the wireless headset I got to charge.

So far, however, I'm very impressed. I've gotten it to analyze a chapter of each series I'm working on - start getting it familiar with character names, etc. However - I start using it to write tomorrow, and it's very intimidating. >< Any tips on how to start a brand-new project in DNS?


----------



## elizabethsade

I am absolutely 500% a convert now omg. It's amazing how much of a difference it's made - and it keeps getting smarter!! I dictated 3150 words today over 36 minutes in 8 microsprints a la Chris Fox. Probably add in another 30 min for corrections, training Dragon, etc - and that's still an awesome start. I'm having to make less corrections as I go because it's actually recognizing character names now (it struggles with Cer). I'm taking a break for dinner and then I'll get started on my other project because I'm not writing fatigued at all. 

Also, before I start dictating, I outline the scene (well, 3-5 scenes) on paper and try to get a good idea of them in my head. The writing's a bit different than what I normally write, but I'm okay with that. It'll change as I get more used to it. I'm also going to slowly work my way up to dictating for longer periods of time - I can go about 5-7 minutes before I lose track of where things ended, especially if I get distracted somewhere along the line.

Still! This is so exciting and I really think it's going to save my hands.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

It really brightens my day every time this thread helps someone new. I know I and others aren't the first to say "try dictation" far, far from it. But I think this thread has chronicled what it takes to get through the frustrations and where the breakthroughs are for people. For some, dictation is never going to be in their comfort zone. And that's ok! But for those who just needed that extra "this is how painful it really can be to get the hang of it" to know where the light at the end of the tunnel is, I'm floored this is here. It took me two tries to finally commit to my Dragon. And it took REAL pain to make that happen. 

I don't want anyone else to HAVE to be in real pain to know this alternative exists.


----------



## elizabethsade

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> But I think this thread has chronicled what it takes to get through the frustrations and where the breakthroughs are for people.


This thread was so, so important for me to not quit - when I set up Dragon, I already had a list of things to do (analyze manuscripts, add in vocabulary words, train names, the importance of correcting) in mind for when I started dictating - I'm 90% sure if I hadn't had that in mind, I would have gotten too frustrated and given up. It's finally recognizing all of my character names and that's because of the help that was posted in this thread.



Elizabeth Ann West said:


> But I think this thread has chronicled what it takes to get through the frustrations and where the breakthroughs are for people. For some, dictation is never going to be in their comfort zone. And that's ok! But for those who just needed that extra "this is how painful it really can be to get the hang of it" to know where the light at the end of the tunnel is, I'm floored this is here. It took me two tries to finally commit to my Dragon. And it took REAL pain to make that happen.
> 
> I don't want anyone else to HAVE to be in real pain to know this alternative exists.


I got lucky in that I have a problem of talking to myself out loud a lot and once I knew I was going to try dictation, I started rambling out short snippets of story (30sec or so) including punctuation and starting to get used to it. So when I did my first sprint, it wasn't quite as foreign as I thought it was going to be. My friend - who also wants to try Dragon thanks to this thread - may never use it for writing. That's just her. But she does want to try it for planning, etc, to take some of the load off of her hands. I'm so glad it only took a semester of minor pain for me to get smart about taking care of my hands/arms/wrists.  It's the downside of typing really fast is that the wear and tear is even worse.


----------



## Sophrosyne

This may be a really stupid question, but what's the advantage of Dragon over just dictating to the computer, using the built-in Mac dictation, or using Scrivener dictation? 

I bought Dragon ages ago, but I can't find the mic or the software anymore, and before I buy it again, I'm really wondering if it's pretty much the same now as the built-ins, or if Dragon has bells and whistles that the built-in stuff can't touch? 

All I remember from my Dragon days is that the Dragon Dictate app on my iPhone worked much better than the program on my computer. Is that still the case, or have things changed?


----------



## elizabethsade

Sophrosyne said:


> This may be a really stupid question, but what's the advantage of Dragon over just dictating to the computer, using the built-in Mac dictation, or using Scrivener dictation? I bought Dragon ages ago, but I can't find the mic or the software anymore, and before I buy it again, I'm really wondering if it's pretty much the same now as the built-ins, or if Dragon has bells and whistles that the built-in stuff can't touch? All I remember from my Dragon days is that the Dragon Dictate app on my iPhone worked much better than the program on my computer.


I've never worked with the built-in program, but I would argue that right off the bat Dragon probably does a better job at understanding speech. It's specifically built and optimized for dictation, not just some sort of program that was thrown into a computer. Second of all, Dragon Premium also has this nifty thing called Transcription - you upload an mp3 file to it and it transcribes it. The built-in programs don't do that. Plus, Dragon learns - you correct it and it learns and makes the mistakes less next time. It's a smart program.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Sophrosyne said:


> This may be a really stupid question, but what's the advantage of Dragon over just dictating to the computer, using the built-in Mac dictation, or using Scrivener dictation?
> 
> I bought Dragon ages ago, but I can't find the mic or the software anymore, and before I buy it again, I'm really wondering if it's pretty much the same now as the built-ins, or if Dragon has bells and whistles that the built-in stuff can't touch?
> 
> All I remember from my Dragon days is that the Dragon Dictate app on my iPhone worked much better than the program on my computer. Is that still the case, or have things changed?


The text-to-speech built into Mac and other operating systems is a good tool. And certainly a great way to start learning if Dictation works for you. What I like about Dragon is the ability to transcribe. On PC that takes a premium version, on Mac, the one Dragon version does it. That allows me to write anywhere, not just dictate tethered to my computer by mic.

With my digital MP3 recorder I can write and record in the car, at the park, at a historic house (did that once for ambiance, man did it work). Etc.


----------



## Nadia Nader

Am I the only one who's feeling very frustrated training my Dragon? I was super excited to read this thread but it misunderstands so much of what I say that I've begun questioning my ability to speak English. It's so much slower than typing. At what point do I give up?


----------



## elizabethsade

Nadia Nader said:


> Am I the only one who's feeling very frustrated training my Dragon? I was super excited to read this thread but it misunderstands so much of what I say that I've begun questioning my ability to speak English. It's so much slower than typing. At what point do I give up?


Have you had it analyze your manuscript? Have you done accuracy tuning? How long have you been using it? When you make corrections, do you do them by voice or by typing?


----------



## Nadia Nader

elizabethsade said:


> Have you had it analyze your manuscript? Have you done accuracy tuning? How long have you been using it? When you make corrections, do you do them by voice or by typing?


No, I haven't had it analyze my manuscript. I did the accuracy tuning in the beginning. I've had it for about three weeks but only used it 8 days. I started with dictation, proceeded to make corrections with voice. When I found that frustrating (repeating the same word 5-8 times) I switched to typing the corrections.

Then I experimented with transcription, thinking maybe seeing the words appearing in front of me was throwing off my game. The transcription came out garbled and it kept asking me to correct but it's so time consuming that I'm just fed up with all the effort. I'm just not seeing enough results to warrant the time suck. At this point, I'm not sure if it's worth investing more time into this experiment. I was just really excited at the prospect of making more words happen


----------



## elizabethsade

Nadia Nader said:


> No, I haven't had it analyze my manuscript. I did the accuracy tuning in the beginning. I've had it for about three weeks but only used it 8 days. I started with dictation, proceeded to make corrections with voice. When I found that frustrating (repeating the same word 5-8 times) I switched to typing the corrections.
> 
> Then I experimented with transcription, thinking maybe seeing the words appearing in front of me was throwing off my game. The transcription came out garbled and it kept asking me to correct but it's so time consuming that I'm just fed up with all the effort. I'm just not seeing enough results to warrant the time suck. At this point, I'm not sure if it's worth investing more time into this experiment. I was just really excited at the prospect of making more words happen


Have it analyze your manuscript - that will import your vocabulary into it, including names, etc. With that and some corrections, mine has names like Sionainn, Lyuli, Antal, etc. (It's still struggling with Cer, but I blame that on me and not it.) I've only been using it for two or three days. I would separate it into two types of corrections - stuff that you said correctly but Dragon heard wrong (often names), those you should correct by voice. Those that you may have mumbled, etc, I would just correct by hand.

What kind of microphone are you using? That could honestly be the biggest problem. If you don't have a good-quality microphone, training isn't going to help.

I would have Dragon run the acoustic tuning - sorry, I think that's what I meant in the first place. Basically it interprets what you've said, and tunes your user profile to that. It helps with recognition, that sort of thing.


----------



## Gina Black

Dragon (on the Mac Mini but not the MBA) stopped working with the Plantronics headset I'd bought for it. So, in desperation I tried the app on my iPhone that turns it into a microphone and it worked SO much better than the Plantronics had when it was working. Plus, that makes me cordless which means I can pace while I dictate. I'd had trouble with the app last time I tried to do this so they must have updated it or something. This is definitely how I'm going to work.

I believe they also have an app for Droid phones. http://www.nuance.com/dragon/remote-microphone/index.htm


----------



## Shawn Kobb

I bought Dragon a few days ago based mostly on this thread. I'm still doing training and so far it seems to work great. I've got a recorder coming in the mail so I can start doing some dictating on my walk to and from work.

I'm curious what people are doing with the text. Are you copying and pasting it into something like Scrivener or Word? I wrote my first two novels in Scrivener and I think I'll use it for the next (though I end up moving it all to Word to work better with the editor), but I'm not quite sure the best way to do it.


----------



## elizabethsade

Shawn Kobb said:


> I bought Dragon a few days ago based mostly on this thread. I'm still doing training and so far it seems to work great. I've got a recorder coming in the mail so I can start doing some dictating on my walk to and from work.
> 
> I'm curious what people are doing with the text. Are you copying and pasting it into something like Scrivener or Word? I wrote my first two novels in Scrivener and I think I'll use it for the next (though I end up moving it all to Word to work better with the editor), but I'm not quite sure the best way to do it.


I correct it in Dragonpad and then copy it into notepad, then paste it into Scrivener (to remove the formatting issues). I use Scrivener because my outlines are in there, broken down into scenes, and my goal is to dictate a scene at a time (roughly ten to thirty minutes of dictation, depending on the scene and how comfortable I am with it).


----------



## Carol (was Dara)

I've been on the fence a long time but this thread inspired me to pick up Dragon. I should be getting it in the mail tomorrow, so stand by for many questions beginning with "How do I...?"


----------



## AnaJ

Gina Black said:


> Dragon (on the Mac Mini but not the MBA) stopped working with the Plantronics headset I'd bought for it. So, in desperation I tried the app on my iPhone that turns it into a microphone and it worked SO much better than the Plantronics had when it was working. Plus, that makes me cordless which means I can pace while I dictate. I'd had trouble with the app last time I tried to do this so they must have updated it or something. This is definitely how I'm going to work.
> 
> I believe they also have an app for Droid phones. http://www.nuance.com/dragon/remote-microphone/index.htm


Seconded. I'm using the app on my Samsung phone and it's been working fine for me. No complaints here. I thought I'd use it to bridge the time until I bought a headset, but now I see no need to buy a headset.


----------



## Magda Alexander

I LOVE my Dragon. At home, I record with the KOSS CS-100 that came with the premium version. On the road I use an Olympus VN-722PC  recorder and the clip on Olympus ME-52W Noise Canceling Microphone to record my voice. At first I just took the recorder on longer trips (i.e., more than 30 minutes), but now I take it wherever I go, even on a ten-minute drive to the grocery store. Once I get home, I download the recording and clean it up right away. And voila, I have a scene. This thing ROCKS!


----------



## Cege Smith

I've been kicking the tires on the whole idea of dictation for months (well, ever since Elizabeth first posted this thread in any case.  )
I've tracked words per hour typing and using the Pomodoro technique for my last 4 books, and I top out at about 3,000 words per hour. With a barebones outline and time on my hands, I can produce a lot of words- but it has consistently been 3,000 words per hour no matter what.

To take my game to the next level, I knew I had to get on this dictation train. I'm still in the early stages because I'm just recording raw words right now (just as I would if I was typing the first draft), but I'm consistently clocking about 100 words per minute. At that pace, that puts me at 6,000 raw words per hour.  

I know already that my editing time is going to increase, but even then it's not going to increase so much that it offsets the massive increase I'm seeing in output. Like Magda- I'm now taking my recorder everywhere. I picked up 1600 words on my short run to Target yesterday.  

This technique is a gamechanger for me- no doubt about it.


----------



## Evenstar

Groan, I'm one of the people it isn't working out for.

It's a great piece of kit if I'm at my desk, but I bought it so that I could dictate while out and about, and the transcripts from that are atrocious. I've done several hours of training and made it analyse all my books, bought an expensive sony recorder and mic, but it still isn't worth the time as yet. I'll give it a little bit longer but I may have to give up


----------



## elizabethsade

Evenstar said:


> Groan, I'm one of the people it isn't working out for.
> 
> It's a great piece of kit if I'm at my desk, but I bought it so that I could dictate while out and about, and the transcripts from that are atrocious. I've done several hours of training and made it analyse all my books, bought an expensive sony recorder and mic, but it still isn't worth the time as yet. I'll give it a little bit longer but I may have to give up


Have you set up different dictation sources for your recorder and your mic? You can do it under the same profile (manage dictation sources). If you train them separately, you're likely to get better results that way.


----------



## Evenstar

elizabethsade said:


> Have you set up different dictation sources for your recorder and your mic? You can do it under the same profile (manage dictation sources). If you train them separately, you're likely to get better results that way.


Darn it, I just knew someone was going to suggest that! Sigh... It just seems such a lot of work


----------



## Gina Black

Evenstar said:


> Darn it, I just knew someone was going to suggest that! Sigh... It just seems such a lot of work


In the long run it's a lot less work. Mine transcribes almost word for word.


----------



## NerdyWriter

Nadia Nader said:


> Am I the only one who's feeling very frustrated training my Dragon? I was super excited to read this thread but it misunderstands so much of what I say that I've begun questioning my ability to speak English. It's so much slower than typing. At what point do I give up?


I know I'm late, but what are your computer specs? The better the specs, the better the experience. I have a hp 15 f162dx laptop and DNS works really well. Also Microphone could be an issue.

One thing messing me up is the "spell that" menu, it won't let me say "choose -#-" for the correct choice that I want. It always misreads the word choose.


----------



## schweinsty

Okay, after re-reading this thread I gave in and splurged and downloaded Dragon overnight. My problem isn't necessarily with typing, as I can manage that pretty well, but I have some neurological issues that affect my concentration, among other things, and have been struggling to make 1000 or 1500 words a day on days I can even write. My first day in today, I did 2200 words on my WIP and wrote a book review and two flash-fanfics (about 500 words total) without breaking a sweat. Dictating with punctuation is much, much easier than I expected it to be. While I dictate faster than I type, it's not drastically so (yet, anyway ), but the ability to focus on things other than my computer screen just made everything so much easier.

I am so giddy right now I can not even.


----------



## Scarlet_M

Argh!  This thread is tempting me so badly!  It's an expensive purchase and I'm sure I'll feel like an idiot saying all my dreadful first draft cliches out loud.  However, I work 10 hour shifts in an office, and work on my books mornings and weekends.  I spend all day typing and I've already spent a few months with wrist issues earlier this year.  This may be an important investment in my health.


----------



## elizabethsade

Scarlet_M said:


> Argh! This thread is tempting me so badly! It's an expensive purchase and I'm sure I'll feel like an idiot saying all my dreadful first draft cliches out loud. However, I work 10 hour shifts in an office, and work on my books mornings and weekends. I spend all day typing and I've already spent a few months with wrist issues earlier this year. This may be an important investment in my health.


I was worried about this too - 'omg I'm going to sound like an idiot' - however, since I use a recorder, I can't see what I've said. Surprisingly I haven't been self-conscious at all about what I'm saying - instead I close my eyes, or look at my outline, and I end up getting lost in the story. I do make a lot of weird verbal typos - often things like comma period or question - period. Quotes everywhere out of habit. But I'm getting there. In pure raw words, I'm averaging about 1500 words per fifteen minutes of dictation. It's awesome.

Like you, I have a day job that requires me to spend most of my day typing - and Dragon was a way for me to avoid wrist/hand/etc issues. So far, it's really helping.


----------



## TBD

Heads up if you are thinking of upgrading your mic... DNS 13 has a number of mics it HATES. I bought a new fancy one -- a Yeti <sigh> -- and ended up returning it when I discovered DNS 13 has an issue with it. Do a search... there is a list out there of mics DNS 13 hates. You should be able to find it ;-)


----------



## Avril Sabine

Evenstar said:


> Darn it, I just knew someone was going to suggest that! Sigh... It just seems such a lot of work


Without individually setting up each device you use your work will be full of errors. I have both a bluetooth headset and a usb headset. I had to train each of them, but the second one I trained was far easier and didn't have as many errors to deal with after the initial setup.


----------



## Avril Sabine

schweinsty said:


> My first day in today, I did 2200 words on my WIP and wrote a book review and two flash-fanfics (about 500 words total) without breaking a sweat.


Congrats!


----------



## SaraD

I was just wondering, how long it took you to get used to Dragon Dictate? 

It seems to work really well for me when I'm doing free writing, but when I'm using it to write to an outline, what I write turns out stilted. It's driving me nuts, because I love the way the words appear on the page, like magic! And I so so want this works me, but at the moment it's just frustrating. I'm really hoping it's worth persevering because this was a big purchase.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Saranne671 said:


> I was just wondering, how long it took you to get used to Dragon Dictate?
> 
> It seems to work really well for me when I'm doing free writing, but when I'm using it to write to an outline, what I write turns out stilted. It's driving me nuts, because I love the way the words appear on the page, like magic! And I so so want this works me, but at the moment it's just frustrating. I'm really hoping it's worth persevering because this was a big purchase.


I've been using it for 8 months and I still feel awkward at first when I dictate my outlines. Sometimes the words do not come out great, but there's words on the page. I can edit words on a page, I can't edit words in my head. Well, I suppose I could, but it wouldn't be progress. 

All I can say is that your brain is where the stories live. Not in the fingers that type. I agree that the cadence feels weird, but try listening to music or closing your eyes. I like to dictate into an MP3 recorder and then have the computer transcribe it. It stunts me to watch the words appear and slows me down.


----------



## valeriec80

Hand up!

Didn't work well for me right off either. I would say it took about three-four weeks to really get things going.

Here are the things that helped me:

-Run Language Model daily
-Run Accoustics once a week (Dragon is scheduled to do this, but it never manages to do it for me, so I always do it manually.)
-Do the super-brill thing and record about 1K of your writing (including punctuation) and then go back in and correct everything to make it perfect, because you know exactly what the mistakes are. (This didn't work as well for me as the person who suggested it. I have better accuracy, but not to the point where I don't need to go over everything I dictate.)
-Stick to one mode of input. For some reason, if I switch back and forth between dictating and transcription, (using different profiles, yes) accuracy in both goes to crap. I stick to transcription. It's more accurate for me than dictating into the computer. Don't know why.
-Analyzing my previous novels
-Correcting in dragon on the keyboard. You can highlight something, click "correct" and interact with the dropdown menu with your mouse. This is ten times faster and it saves you the frustration of Dragon mishearing you AGAIN and the inevitability of trying to spell out everything aloud with spaces. GRR.

Even with all of that, I'm still not in the crazy-fast camp. I'm doing about 3,800 words an hour, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. And Dragon makes all kinds of annoying mistakes, like "side" instead of "sighed" (uses context to figure out meaning, my foot!), and "it/she/he/you." Dragon thinks those words are totally interchangeable. I must pronounce them all the same or something??

But anyway, it's to the point where it's easier and faster than typing for me, enough to be worth it. And I think if I stick with it, I'll get even better. Starting this new book, it's much better than the last.


----------



## Genre Hoarder

I bought Dragon for PC when Elizabeth started this thread, but never made time to train. Finally, I've set aside time to "train my Dragon" and word count climb. Bumping this thread for reference.


----------



## Jane Killick

Brand new dragon for Mac. Even better than before, apparently. Special pre order offer. Apparently.

http://shop.nuance.co.uk/store/nuanceeu/en_GB/pd/productID.324147400/pgm.95939100/offerID.45187376801/Currency.GBP?utm_source=bh&utm_medium=emea-email&utm_campaign=GB-ecom-dgn-launch_upg-201508&utm_content=dfm

This is the UK link. I'm sure there is a US one somewhere.


----------



## countwordsmith

Here's a link for the new Dragon for Mac $99.00
shop.nuance.com/DFM


----------



## Gina Black

Is anyone else wondering if they should upgrade to the new version while the price is low? <so confused...>


----------



## William_Stadler

I'll just add to this forum by saying, I'm probably going to pull the trigger on this. I just need to be sure it can be trained to learn unique fantasy names. If it can't, I'll have to back out.


----------



## elizabethsade

William_Stadler said:


> I'll just add to this forum by saying, I'm probably going to pull the trigger on this. I just need to be sure it can be trained to learn unique fantasy names. If it can't, I'll have to back out.


So far mine understands Sionainn and Lyuli very well. It hits Cer about half the time (it likes to think it's Sara). Antal is often on tall. As long as you train it - and delete anything that sounds vaguely similar from the dictionary (only half joking) - you should be fine. 

If you read through this thread EAW and others talk a bit about getting Dragon to recognize oddly sounding names. It's a process, but it works.


----------



## Sophrosyne

What's the difference between Home, Premium and Professional? Which one are you all using?


----------



## Nick Marsden

I skipped a few pages, so not sure if anyone else has mentioned this.

Windows comes installed with a voice program as an Accessibility feature. I've found it's very good once trained and I've used it for voice command gaming and even played with it's dictation and operating system control functions. It seems to do just about everything Dragon does and comes with a built in tutorial. On Windows 7 and 8, you'll find it under Accessibility on the start menu. On Windows 10 it's under "Ease of Access" in the Start > All Apps menu.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

The only difference between Dragon and some of the built-in options is transcribing. For Windows, you need more than just the Basic Dragon to have transcription. Mac is automatically inclusive of transcription. 

Transcription allows you to write completely unplugged. On a train. In a car. Walking the park. At the grocery store. Etc. Talk into an MP3 record, plug it into the computer and voila! Words wrote without being in front of the computer.


----------



## elizabethsade

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> The only difference between Dragon and some of the built-in options is transcribing. For Windows, you need more than just the Basic Dragon to have transcription. Mac is automatically inclusive of transcription.
> 
> Transcription allows you to write completely unplugged. On a train. In a car. Walking the park. At the grocery store. Etc. Talk into an MP3 record, plug it into the computer and voila! Words wrote without being in front of the computer.


Transcription is what I do almost exclusively - I'm far too easily distractable on an actual computer, so I 'unplug' and just hang out with the recorder and my notepad (that has my next scene/scene I'm recording sketched out).


----------



## DaniO

elizabethsade said:


> Transcription is what I do almost exclusively - I'm far too easily distractable on an actual computer, so I 'unplug' and just hang out with the recorder and my notepad (that has my next scene/scene I'm recording sketched out).


That is the way I use it too. I find it much easier to correct things at the end rather than get distracted by mistakes as I'm trying to think up the story. 
I found Mac Dictate 4 pretty good, but when my husband had to get a home PC for work a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try DNS for Windows. I'm so glad I did. It's so much better.


----------



## hulklogan

grabbed the program based on the feedback from this thread... and ran into a bit of an issue.

I have a BB passport (need physical keys to type), and when I take a voice not I can't seem to get it off the blackberry. What program do you BB users use to record your voice to be uploaded into DNS?

Thanks


----------



## hulklogan

Kay Correll said:


> I use an actual voice recorder to record my notes, not my phone. I use the transcription almost exclusively now. Gets me away from sitting at the keyboard. When I'm out and about. When I take a walk. Or just when I want to be away from my computer. I'm even getting good at not letting the "open quote" "close quote" "new paragraph" stuff get in my way. I don't really think about them when I'm saying them now. I miss some, but that's easily corrected after the transcription.
> 
> What format does your blackberry save voice memos in? If it's a format compatible with your version of Dragon, I would assume you'd have to hook your blackberry up to your computer, or see if there is a blackberry app that would send the file to your computer. (I know nothing about blackberries)


m4a? I think I figured out a way to do this... thanks


----------



## MorganKegan

Hulklogan, Dragon really needs a quality noise-canceling mic for dictation/transcription. That's why so many of us who are getting such good results with the method are using digital voice recorders rather than a phone app. Although if you used a good lapel mic with your phone, I suppose that would do.

I switched over to dictation about a month ago for my new WIP to see if I could up my daily word count. Now, you'll only pry my recorder from my cold, dead hand.


----------



## Vinny OHare

I just pulled the trigger for the update for mac. Can't wait until it is released. I have used it off and on over the years but from what I hear it is going to be much better. Being that I speak Brooklyn it is always a challenge lol.


----------



## valeriec80

MorganKegan said:


> Hulklogan, Dragon really needs a quality noise-canceling mic for dictation/transcription. That's why so many of us who are getting such good results with the method are using digital voice recorders rather than a phone app. Although if you used a good lapel mic with your phone, I suppose that would do.


I'm right now trying to make this choice. I can get pretty good accuracy with the mic that came with my cell phone, but it's not great. I either need to buy a better mic for my cell or buy a voice recorder. The voice recorder is more expensive, but if the mic on the phone doesn't work, then I'll end up buying that plus the voice recorder.

Can't decide, honestly.

Those of you who use voice recorders, do you use the built-in mic, or do you buy a noise-cancelling mic to plug into it? If I'm going to have to buy another mic anyway, I'll probably just get a new mic for my phone.


----------



## elizabethsade

valeriec80 said:


> I'm right now trying to make this choice. I can get pretty good accuracy with the mic that came with my cell phone, but it's not great. I either need to buy a better mic for my cell or buy a voice recorder. The voice recorder is more expensive, but if the mic on the phone doesn't work, then I'll end up buying that plus the voice recorder.
> 
> Can't decide, honestly.
> 
> Those of you who use voice recorders, do you use the built-in mic, or do you buy a noise-cancelling mic to plug into it? If I'm going to have to buy another mic anyway, I'll probably just get a new mic for my phone.


I use the built-in mic. I just rest it on my chest and lean back on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Or close my eyes. I do know of another writer who uses a noise-canceling mic, but she likes to transcribe outside. I'd say if you were going to transcribe in busy environments, with lots of noise, a noise-canceling mic that clips onto your lapel would be your best bet.


----------



## MorganKegan

Most good, compatible voice recorders have built-in noise canceling mics. Check the list of Nuance-certified ones. 

Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk


----------



## hulklogan

valeriec80 said:


> I'm right now trying to make this choice. I can get pretty good accuracy with the mic that came with my cell phone, but it's not great. I either need to buy a better mic for my cell or buy a voice recorder. The voice recorder is more expensive, but if the mic on the phone doesn't work, then I'll end up buying that plus the voice recorder.
> 
> Can't decide, honestly.
> 
> Those of you who use voice recorders, do you use the built-in mic, or do you buy a noise-cancelling mic to plug into it? If I'm going to have to buy another mic anyway, I'll probably just get a new mic for my phone.


My idea behind using the program would be to add little snippets if text when I have time... like driving in the car, walking to the bus, etc. I was hoping that I could just use the mic that came with the phone (headphones) so that I could do it more organically.


----------



## Ansha Kotyk

I'm planning on training my dragon when school starts next week. I want to thank everyone for all the information they've shared. This is really going to help me in the next few weeks!  Especially all of your enthusiasm!!  Thank you Thank you!!


----------



## valeriec80

hulklogan said:


> My idea behind using the program would be to add little snippets if text when I have time... like driving in the car, walking to the bus, etc. I was hoping that I could just use the mic that came with the phone (headphones) so that I could do it more organically.


Yeah, it works fine. The phone mic is totally adequate. Every evening, though, I go through and clean up what I wrote during the day, and I'd just like a bit better accuracy, and I'm thinking a better microphone might do the trick.


----------



## Sandy_Williams

It seems like microphones might be an issue? I've bought the Premium edition, which comes with a microphone. Does anyone know if that one will be good enough? Do you have a suggestion of a good mic/voice recorder? I don't want to set myself up for failure with a poor quality microphone. Thanks!


----------



## Shaun Dowdall

I use a Blue Yeti mic with my PC and the accuracy is much higher vs my phone and microsoft surfaces built in mic. Ive been doing a little research on external mics for phones and there appears to be an endless list of possibilities, but the overall consensus seems to be avoid a mic that plugs in to the 3.5mm jack or bluetooth.

If you have an Android device a lot of these will support USB mics, but you will need an 'OTG' cable. This will let you plug a standard USB into your micro USB port on the phone. If you use an iPhone there are a few different microphones that take advantage of the lightning port on your phone, so these could be worth looking at.

Ive not had a chance to play with any though so I can't point anyone in the direction of specific microphones  Maybe soon though


----------



## Sandy_Williams

Thanks for the info! The Blue Yeti is... a bit more than I want to pay before I figure out if dictating works for me.  But maybe once I get started with the Dragon software, I'll be able to tell if it's the mic messing things up or something else.


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

Sophrosyne said:


> What's the difference between Home, Premium and Professional? Which one are you all using?


Thinking of pulling the trigger on this and was wondering the same question: which one is best?
I'm on Windows.


----------



## elizabethsade

geraldmkilby said:


> Thinking of pulling the trigger on this and was wondering the same question: which one is best?
> I'm on Windows.


Home = can dictate, but can't transcribe.
Premium = can dictate and transcribe; this is the version most of us have, I think (including me).

And I think professional is just premium called something else? But I could be wrong. Dragon's changed the name of the premium version before, and I believe it was from professional to premium?


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

elizabethsade said:


> Home = can dictate, but can't transcribe.
> Premium = can dictate and transcribe; this is the version most of us have, I think (including me).
> 
> And I think professional is just premium called something else? But I could be wrong. Dragon's changed the name of the premium version before, and I believe it was from professional to premium?


Thanks elizabethsade.

I've been reading Chris Fox's 5K WPH book and found it very interesting. I like the engineering approach, "if it can be measured, it can be managed". He suggests using the Dragon, (prompted by this very post I believe), to ramp up word count.

I've tried speech-to-text programmes before, way back when dinosaurs roamed the early computer world. They were very clunky and more bother that they were worth. But I'm sure things have moved on a bit since then.

I like the idea of transcribing from a recording. It means I could get some words down on the drive in and out of work every day. Even if it needs lots of editing, it means getting something done every day.

Anybody tried this, recording while driving?


----------



## elizabethsade

geraldmkilby said:


> Thanks elizabethsade.
> 
> I've been reading Chris Fox's 5K WPH book and found it very interesting. I like the engineering approach, "if it can be measured, it can be managed". He suggests using the Dragon, (prompted by this very post I believe), to ramp up word count.
> 
> I've tried speech-to-text programmes before, way back when dinosaurs roamed the early computer world. They were very clunky and more bother that they were worth. But I'm sure things have moved on a bit since then.
> 
> I like the idea of transcribing from a recording. It means I could get some words down on the drive in and out of work every day. Even if it needs lots of editing, it means getting something done every day.
> 
> Anybody tried this, recording while driving?


I know EAW does it a lot, but I've also dabbled in it. It felt strange at first, and I probably wouldn't recommend starting while you're driving on a busy freeway or something, but for a 20 min drive home on roads you're comfortable with, it'd probably be fine. It was a lot less distracting than I thought it would be. Just make sure you have a solid idea of what you're dictating - there's nothing worse than getting ready to dictate on the drive home, only to be unable to remember where you ended in the morning, haha.

I have to admit, I also came from Chris Fox's book/app, which is what inspired buying Dragon. And I can tell you, based on the sprints I record and just generally tracking my wordcount, I dictate about 100 words per minute. Or about 1500 in a 15 min session.

That's about 6k in an hour.

It does take some more time to edit it - including freezing time, since my laptop does not particularly enjoy the Dragon software. But even including editing time, it's still like 3k-4k usable words in an hour. With very limited strain on my hands. I'm still adjusting to it - part of me is convinced that my writing is just different when dictating, and I would agree that it's a different process, but the outcome is very much the same. And the more I do it, the less editing the sections need. I've probably dictated roughly 15k at this point, and I'm getting better all the time.


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

elizabethsade said:


> That's about 6k in an hour.


Holy Cow!!!

*falls of chair*

That's incredible. I'm so going to give this a go.

I learned a lot about how to write fast between my first book and the second. First one: 3.5 years. Second one: 3.5 months (for first draft). Most of that was simply down to having an outline / beat sheet and writing in a straight line, no going back to edit until first draft was finished.

The only thing about dictating is I keep thinking about the scientist guy in the movie 'The Core'. Even right at the very end he's talking away into his recorder.


----------



## Brevoort

geraldmkilby said:


> Anybody tried this, recording while driving?


I've done it, but with mediocre results.

Depending on the vehicle, road surface, and surrounding traffic, the sound quality going into the recorder can be quite marginal.

My best results come by using a lapel mike such as the Olympus ME-52_ (about 15-25 US$ on Amazon U-S)_ input to a high quality voice recorder _(Sony PCM M-10)_ and hooked to a Sony wired remote so I can pause and restart whenever.

So much depends on the sound environment that I cannot give a blanket, "Works fine, It's okay sort of, or Don't bother". You would really have to experiment.

The much bigger problem in my opinion is driving distraction.

Hands free or not, I notice a fair bit of distraction when I am dictating and driving and I am not comfortable with that in any kind of city or highway driving. Long quiet rides in the country are fine.

I now tend mostly to use it in a vehicle to take quick notes and thoughts without regard to sentence structure or punctuation.

But, the results are superb on long mountain hikes in the Rockies -- except on long, lung gasping climbing sections of course.


----------



## elizabethsade

geraldmkilby said:


> Holy Cow!!!
> 
> *falls of chair*
> 
> That's incredible. I'm so going to give this a go.
> 
> I learned a lot about how to write fast between my first book and the second. First one: 3.5 years. Second one: 3.5 months (for first draft). Most of that was simply down to having an outline / beat sheet and writing in a straight line, no going back to edit until first draft was finished.
> 
> The only thing about dictating is I keep thinking about the scientist guy in the movie 'The Core'. Even right at the very end he's talking away into his recorder.


I will note that that's probably not very typical. XD Even Chris Fox rarely hits 5k. I just talk very fast. In theory you're supposed to start slower and speed up, but I've been hitting 1.5k in 15 min pretty consistently since I started. Admittedly, I had a lot of practice prior to getting Dragon - once I knew I was going to give dictation a try, I started dictating random things while doing random things. In the shower, doing the dishes, reading articles...I'm pretty sure my roommate thinks I'm nuts.

So by the time I trained Dragon and started dictating a story, punctuation didn't feel quite as weird and I didn't have as many stumbling blocks. So. YMMV. Don't be discouraged if you don't hit that fast right away, or even if it takes a few weeks. Any increase in speed is a good thing.


----------



## Avril Sabine

geraldmkilby said:


> Anybody tried this, recording while driving?


When I'm alone in the car I set my laptop up beside me and use my USB headset as the bluetooth one doesn't work as well in the car. For me it takes less concentration than talking to a passenger and since it's at least a 30 min drive whenever I go anywhere that's a lot of words I wouldn't have otherwise managed to write. The only reason I don't 'write' when the kids are in the car is because they complain about spoilers. They also expect a spoiler warning when I wander around the house 'writing' so they can make sure they can't hear anything. I don't blame them. I hate it when someone spoils a book or movie for me too.


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

Well I took the plunge and bought Dragon and I have to say I'm seriously impressed. It's extremely accurate, even on my little Asus Transformer tablet. It gets about 85% of what I say first go. I'm using it to dictate this.

I think more so than teaching it to be accurate it's more about trying to learn how to use it, how to talk to it,  how to communicate with it. It's a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of writing. Almost like writing in a stream of consciousness as opposed to just tapping it out on the keyboard and then going backwards and forwards sorting and sifting through all the words.
I think the main training really is not so much getting the software accurate, it's really about training myself to get the story out onto the page using speech.  

But I can see how it is going to seriously increase my productivity.


----------



## elizabethsade

geraldmkilby said:


> Well I took the plunge and bought Dragon and I have to say I'm seriously impressed. It's extremely accurate, even on my little Asus Transformer tablet. It gets about 85% of what I say first go. I'm using it to dictate this.
> 
> I think more so than teaching it to be accurate it's more about trying to learn how to use it, how to talk to it, how to communicate with it. It's a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of writing. Almost like writing in a stream of consciousness as opposed to just tapping it out on the keyboard and then going backwards and forwards sorting and sifting through all the words.
> I think the main training really is not so much getting the software accurate, it's really about training myself to get the story out onto the page using speech.
> 
> But I can see how it is going to seriously increase my productivity.


 That's awesome! It does take some time to get used to dictating - sometimes my sentences are worded awkwardly and I have to fix them later. But that changes as you keep moving forward. Plus Dragon does an awesome job of guessing via context. It's so much fun to use.

Now, if my computer just froze less while I was correcting the transcriptions...


----------



## indiejane

OK, so I managed to read pages 1-10 & 20-25 of this thread.

My situation: I write almost exclusively (really like 98.9%) in the bedroom of my apartment. I'm kind of a writing hermit so I don't go anywhere regularly except dance class (10-20 min of city driving in LA--no way am I going to try to write/create on that drive). I want to get a Dragon, but right now I'm thinking that I don't have any need for the transcribing feature. I have a Plantronics BackBeat PRO Wireless Noise Canceling Hi-Fi Headphones with Mic, it's bluetooth and high-end--I can go out to the street with it and still be connected to my computer if I wanted. This would seem to give me enough freedom to cook or wander around my apartment while dictating, not recording/transcribing, so I don't have to be tied to my computer regardless.

My actual question: am I missing something? It seems like getting Dragon Home 13 is what I need. This seems so obvious to me that I'm actually questioning whether or not I'm just completely blind to something--you know when something is just _too_ easy, like what's the catch? Dragon Home 13 is a $43.81 download on Amazon vs. Dragon Premium 13 $164.09. Any other benefits to Premium besides transcribing? How many computers can you install Home & Premium on (I write on a desktop and also a laptop that is connected to a TV)?

And thanks to Elizabeth Ann, another excellent thread.


----------



## Sandy_Williams

Any other suggestions for microphones? Or is the Blue Yeti the way to go?


----------



## valeriec80

Sandy_Williams said:


> Any other suggestions for microphones? Or is the Blue Yeti the way to go?


After all that business about the USB mic thing, I've essentially talked myself into buying the $46 Olympus voice recorder that's got a 5/6 from Nuance. Even if I do buy a noise-cancelling mic to stick on it, I'm still not up to the price of the Blue Yeti, lol.

Before I take the plunge, though, I wonder if anyone would be willing to look at something for me? This is raw words from a Dragon transcription on my cell phone. I've bolded the mistakes. It's about eighty gazillion times better than it used to be, but it's still about one mistake per sentence or so. Someone tell me if you think I should get a voice recorder or not. Is this as good as it gets?



> He hadn't wanted to resort*s of* this tactic, but things were getting out of control. He *did** you* ever have the time to get anything accomplished. She was always in his face. *You **could* get rid of her, at least for a little bit, he might do something drastic. He *would* hurt Nora. *For* lots of reasons why* didn't *want to hurt her. The main one of *coarse* was that it would jeopardize his position here in helicon, and that would ruin *Aldiss* plans.
> But there was another reason, *the *niggling reason underneath everything. It was a feeling that was something similar to *give session *used to have for her, the obsession *had* been caused by the spell.


----------



## Jac1106

valeriec80 said:


> After all that business about the USB mic thing, I've essentially talked myself into buying the $46 Olympus voice recorder that's got a 5/6 from Nuance. Even if I do buy a noise-cancelling mic to stick on it, I'm still not up to the price of the Blue Yeti, lol.
> 
> Before I take the plunge, though, I wonder if anyone would be willing to look at something for me? This is raw words from a Dragon transcription on my cell phone. I've bolded the mistakes. It's about eighty gazillion times better than it used to be, but it's still about one mistake per sentence or so. Someone tell me if you think I should get a voice recorder or not. Is this as good as it gets?


I suggest you try using your phone as a remote microphone before springing for another mic or a new recorder. You'll have to do another training session for this -- reading one of the training pieces to the phone-as-mic. See if it will help improve accuracy.

If you haven't done the phone recorder app training yet, I suggest you do that, too. 
Hope I'm remembering the steps correctly: 
1) Record one of the training pieces using the phone recorder app.
2) Go to Profile, Manage dictation sources... click Add Dictation Source (Dragon Recorder App). You'll get the prompt telling you to upload your audio file.

Then do the accuracy tuning thing. If it needs more audio to work with, do a short dictation using any text you like (I don't remember how much is needed) and correct the mistakes.

I have all 3 dictation sources (laptop mic, phone recorder app, and phone remote mic) under the SAME PROFILE, and I'm getting 97% (sometimes higher) accuracy.

Hope this helps.


----------



## valeriec80

Jac1106 said:


> I suggest you try using your phone as a remote microphone before springing for another mic or a new recorder. You'll have to do another training session for this -- reading one of the training pieces to the phone-as-mic. See if it will help improve accuracy.
> 
> If you haven't done the phone recorder app training yet, I suggest you do that, too.
> Hope I'm remembering the steps correctly:
> 1) Record one of the training pieces using the phone recorder app.
> 2) Go to Profile, Manage dictation sources... click Add Dictation Source (Dragon Recorder App). You'll get the prompt telling you to upload your audio file.
> 
> Then do the accuracy tuning thing. If it needs more audio to work with, do a short dictation using any text you like (I don't remember how much is needed) and correct the mistakes.
> 
> I have all 3 dictation sources (laptop mic, phone recorder app, and phone remote mic) under the SAME PROFILE, and I'm getting 97% (sometimes higher) accuracy.
> 
> Hope this helps.


I've already done this, but thanks.  this is just how accurate it is. Maybe it's me and I just enunciate badly or something

Sent from my BLU ADVANCE 4.0 using Tapatalk


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## elizabethsade

valeriec80 said:


> After all that business about the USB mic thing, I've essentially talked myself into buying the $46 Olympus voice recorder that's got a 5/6 from Nuance. Even if I do buy a noise-cancelling mic to stick on it, I'm still not up to the price of the Blue Yeti, lol.
> 
> Before I take the plunge, though, I wonder if anyone would be willing to look at something for me? This is raw words from a Dragon transcription on my cell phone. I've bolded the mistakes. It's about eighty gazillion times better than it used to be, but it's still about one mistake per sentence or so. Someone tell me if you think I should get a voice recorder or not. Is this as good as it gets?


I've dictated probably 20k at this point and now I average about one 'big error' (one where I'm like 'wtf is that') per long-ish (5-sentence) paragraph. Maybe fewer than that, not sure. Some minor errors are in probably every other sentence or so, it depends on what kind of situation I'm in. EAW mentions earlier in the thread that now she can go paragraphs without finding errors.

The more you dictate, the more it learns your style, the better it will recognize what you say.

Have you fed it most of your manuscript to learn from? You can show it documents and it often picks up words from that. I find that it helps a lot. That, and correcting all of the errors - it learns quickly.


----------



## valeriec80

elizabethsade said:


> I've dictated probably 20k at this point and now I average about one 'big error' (one where I'm like 'wtf is that') per long-ish (5-sentence) paragraph. Maybe fewer than that, not sure. Some minor errors are in probably every other sentence or so, it depends on what kind of situation I'm in. EAW mentions earlier in the thread that now she can go paragraphs without finding errors.
> 
> The more you dictate, the more it learns your style, the better it will recognize what you say.
> 
> Have you fed it most of your manuscript to learn from? You can show it documents and it often picks up words from that. I find that it helps a lot. That, and correcting all of the errors - it learns quickly.


Hmm... I've dictated about 
130k at this point. It does keep getting better... Is the general consensus that more training trumps better equipment then?

Sent from my BLU ADVANCE 4.0 using Tapatalk


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## Zelah Meyer

I have deleted this post as I do not consent to the new Terms of Service that Vertical Scope are attempting to retrospectively apply to our content.  I am forced to manually replace my content as, at time of editing, their representative has instructed moderators not to delete posts or accounts when users request it, and Vertical Scope have implied that they will deal with account deletion requests by anonymising accounts, which would leave personally identifying information in my posts.

I joined under the previous ownership and have posted over the years under different Terms of Service.  I do not consent to my name, content, or intellectual properties being used by Vertical Scope or any other entity that they sell or licence my data to.


----------



## DaniO

valeriec80 said:


> After all that business about the USB mic thing, I've essentially talked myself into buying the $46 Olympus voice recorder that's got a 5/6 from Nuance. Even if I do buy a noise-cancelling mic to stick on it, I'm still not up to the price of the Blue Yeti, lol.
> 
> Before I take the plunge, though, I wonder if anyone would be willing to look at something for me? This is raw words from a Dragon transcription on my cell phone. I've bolded the mistakes. It's about eighty gazillion times better than it used to be, but it's still about one mistake per sentence or so. Someone tell me if you think I should get a voice recorder or not. Is this as good as it gets?


About six months ago, I upgraded to a Philips voice tracer microphone and was very impressed at the improvement in the dictation transcription results to the results I was getting transcribing recordings from my iPhone 6 or using the Dragon app on the phone.
I now have an Olympus WS832 and I find it far superior. Transcription from my phone gave me a similar amount of errors as the text you included in your comment. I think getting the best quality voice recorder you can get saves loads of time editing.
It still makes mistakes, but it's far less than when I started out with my phone.


----------



## elizabethsade

valeriec80 said:


> Hmm... I've dictated about
> 130k at this point. It does keep getting better... Is the general consensus that more training trumps better equipment then?
> 
> Sent from my BLU ADVANCE 4.0 using Tapatalk


I think equipment matters up to a point - I have a voice recorder, I don't use my phone. But I also speak very fast (100 wpm) and sometimes slur my words and it's very good at catching most of it. I do think it's worth upgrading equipment if you're not getting the clarity you want, especially if you're just using a phone. But if you don't train it, even the best equipment is not going to make it perfect, yanno?


----------



## indiejane

Purchased Home 13 last night, training started at 4 AM. Fed it three finished books from two of my pen names, trained hundreds of words, did two accuracy training readings, another 1000 words from one of my already published books & made the corrections in the dictation box, and then had about 45 minutes to actually "create." Got about 800 words in (would have been 1000 but my voice accidentally deleted a big chunk--still don't really know how that happened), 200 of those were written from the bathroom, 200 leaning back in my desk chair with my eyes closed, and 400 lying down in my bed. I would have written more I think, but I actually fell asleep with my Plantronics BackBeat Pro headset on (3hr nap--according to my Dragon I don't talk in my sleep). 

Observations: 
1) Saying "open quote" and "end quote" and "comma" "period" "new paragraph" isn't as difficult as I thought. Although, that may be because a few months ago I started seeing dialogue in my head any time I watched a movie or tv episode--yeah, I'm not sure why that started happening, but I'll take it since it's helping. 
2) I was one of those people who feels the creation of a story comes from some combination of the screen, my brain, and my fingers. Don't know if this is accurate, but I find that I'm able to "create" out loud more easily than I thought. Hopefully, this will hold true. 
3) The corrections/errors can be annoying, taking deep breaths, reminding yourself to be patient (and holding onto those word count numbers) seems to be key. Also corrections take way less time than I thought, even if I have something where I'm like--wtf did I say there?

 Questions: 
1) Should I NOT have fed it two different pen name manuscripts under one profile? The writing is _vastly _different, should I keep them separate/train them separately? Anyone?
2) I have a Blue Yeti coming on Saturday (I had already budgeted/planned to get it for other reasons, it's a bonus that it apparently works so well with my new Dragon)--to be clear, I should create a separate profile for my Yeti and train it separately...right? 
3) New profile = doing all this stuff over again (accuracy, vocab, manuscripts, readings, etc.), right?


----------



## elizabethsade

indiejane said:


> Observations:
> 1) Saying "open quote" and "end quote" and "comma" "period" "new paragraph" isn't as difficult as I thought. Although, that may be because a few months ago I started seeing dialogue in my head any time I watched a movie or tv episode--yeah, I'm not sure why that started happening, but I'll take it since it's helping.
> 2) I was one of those people who feels the creation of a story comes from some combination of the screen, my brain, and my fingers. Don't know if this is accurate, but I find that I'm able to "create" out loud more easily than I thought. Hopefully, this will hold true.


1 - I practiced dictating in the shower before I got Dragon. It helped. XD
2 - I felt like this too, and still do sometimes. Then I realize I'm being kind of a snob to myself and I go back to dictating and it's rarely as bad as I feel it is. XD



indiejane said:


> Questions:
> 1) Should I NOT have fed it two different pen name manuscripts under one profile? The writing is _vastly _different, should I keep them separate/train them separately? Anyone?
> 2) I have a Blue Yeti coming on Saturday (I had already budgeted/planned to get it for other reasons, it's a bonus that it apparently works so well with my new Dragon)--to be clear, I should create a separate profile for my Yeti and train it separately...right?
> 3) New profile = doing all this stuff over again (accuracy, vocab, manuscripts, readings, etc.), right?


The different training is for different inputs - it should be able to handle your two writing styles. If you find there's too much conflict, you can train them separately if you want.

Also - I am going to introduce you to a wonderful thing. Keep the same profile - but add a new dictation source. That way you don't have to train it again, but it does recognize that your dictation source is different.  So now you don't have to create a new profile, just a new dictation source.


----------



## valeriec80

Thanks Carrie and Elizabeth. I'm probably going to go ahead and buy the voice recorder. I think I've trained the thing to death, to be frank. 



indiejane said:


> Questions:
> 1) Should I NOT have fed it two different pen name manuscripts under one profile? The writing is _vastly _different, should I keep them separate/train them separately? Anyone?
> 2) I have a Blue Yeti coming on Saturday (I had already budgeted/planned to get it for other reasons, it's a bonus that it apparently works so well with my new Dragon)--to be clear, I should create a separate profile for my Yeti and train it separately...right?
> 3) New profile = doing all this stuff over again (accuracy, vocab, manuscripts, readings, etc.), right?


1-Should be fine. It's not really training writing style per se, just giving it a flavor for vocabulary and syntax.
2-You can actually just add a device under the same profile. This way, you will share the same vocabulary. When you train one device to recognize that you mean Finn instead of thin, all the devices should then recognize it. Others may disagree, but that's how I've done it, anyway. 
3-You DO have to do separate initial training for each device, but just the reading the canned info that Dragon asks you to. If you make corrections, Dragon will apply that to your entire profile henceforth.


----------



## Vinny OHare

I purchased the upgrade for Mac and it was suppose to come out on 9/2.

Just got an email with it as they released it early  Tomorrow I get to train a dragon


----------



## Shawn Kobb

Vinny OHare said:


> I purchased the upgrade for Mac and it was suppose to come out on 9/2.
> 
> Just got an email with it as they released it early  Tomorrow I get to train a dragon


Me too. Got it installed this morning before work, but had to leave before I could do any training. I'm hoping the improvement is as good as they say. My limited initial tests with Dragon 4 left a few too many errors to be desired. Some were bad enough it was tough for me to figure out what I had said. If I have to go back and listen to the audio again, it sort of kills the momentum.


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

Tried it while driving using an audio recorder on my phone and transcribed later. Results weren't great. Tried it again on the way home using a USB headset plugged directly into my Asus tablet, direct dictation. Much better accuracy but the drive was a bit scary.

Will need a lot more practice before I could relax while driving.


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

Here's one for ya...

Couldn't get it to recognise 'period'. Turns out if you set up UK English you need to say 'full stop'.

Duh!


----------



## Vinny OHare

Shawn Kobb said:


> Me too. Got it installed this morning before work, but had to leave before I could do any training. I'm hoping the improvement is as good as they say. My limited initial tests with Dragon 4 left a few too many errors to be desired. Some were bad enough it was tough for me to figure out what I had said. If I have to go back and listen to the audio again, it sort of kills the momentum.


I skipped on 4 because 3 was so bad so either way it will be an improvement. Like I said with my NYC accent (That other people tell me I have lol) It is a challenge for any speech software.


----------



## Vinny OHare

I have it downloaded and installed. At one point on the screen it said 15 minutes to finish setting up the program but it was more like three minutes. So far I am impressed with the accuracy, but every time I finish a sentence a new letter pops up and try to start a new sentence most of the time it is the letter L which makes no sense since there is no L in the Brooklyn dictionary unless you talking about the L line subway.


----------



## valeriec80

Vinny OHare said:


> I have it downloaded and installed. At one point on the screen it said 15 minutes to finish setting up the program but it was more like three minutes. So far I am impressed with the accuracy, but every time I finish a sentence a new letter pops up and try to start a new sentence most of the time it is the letter L which makes no sense since there is no L in the Brooklyn dictionary unless you talking about the L line subway.


This is apparently a known issue in the Mac version of Dragon. I remember hearing about it, but don't remember if I heard of a fix or not. Maybe try googling it? There's a forum out there... http://www.knowbrainer.com/forums/forum/index.cfm... They have this big, huge pdf of stuff that can go wrong in Dragon and how to fix it. Here: http://www.knowbrainer.com/downloads/NatPro_Quick_Tips.pdf


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## Vinny OHare

Thank you I will check it out.


----------



## Zelah Meyer

valeriec80 said:


> This is apparently a known issue in the Mac version of Dragon. I remember hearing about it, but don't remember if I heard of a fix or not. Maybe try googling it? There's a forum out there... http://www.knowbrainer.com/forums/forum/index.cfm... They have this big, huge pdf of stuff that can go wrong in Dragon and how to fix it. Here: http://www.knowbrainer.com/downloads/NatPro_Quick_Tips.pdf


Thank you - that looks really handy!


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## Chinese Writer

To get around the extra letter issue on scrivner, I dictate on the Dragon pad then copy and paste back into the software.


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## Ansha Kotyk

Oh, I put each of my dictation devices under a different profile...ugh.
Okay, I only trained each a little bit. So it's best 1 profile with all 3 devices (phone, recorder(on phone) and mic?)
THANKS!


----------



## valeriec80

Ansha Kotyk said:


> Oh, I put each of my dictation devices under a different profile...ugh.
> Okay, I only trained each a little bit. So it's best 1 profile with all 3 devices (phone, recorder(on phone) and mic?)
> THANKS!


Having not done it both ways, I don't know which is best.

Frankly, unless you're switching back and forth between diff devices a lot, it probably doesn't make any difference. Just use/train the one you like the best, the end.


----------



## Ansha Kotyk

Thanks Valerie! I'm determined to make it work. But whatever makes this process easier I'll take.


----------



## Rue Hirsch

Um...I'm way late to the party on this thread but I just wanted to say that I'll probably never type my prose again. Dictation is the shiznit. I've tried it in the past and couldn't get over the habit of typing my thoughts, but a project deadline was what pushed me to dictate. The first time I did this, I had 1400 words down in a little over 30 mins. I speak into my phone, which is nice because walking around stimulates my creativity and I feel so much more connected to the story. Distractions are minimal, too. The only thing is that when I do it at home, one of my cats follows me around the house as I tell my story like a mini audience. 

Anyway folks, it takes some getting used to but this method has allowed me to be much more productive. I think my dragon's name is Alduin, because he's the baddest dragon ever.


----------



## SaraD

geraldmkilby said:


> Here's one for ya...
> 
> Couldn't get it to recognise 'period'. Turns out if you set up UK English you need to say 'full stop'.
> 
> Duh!


Yeah that caught me out too! I had a very frustrating four hours before I figured that out. Duh! indeed.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Shawn Kobb

I got the new Mac Dragon 5.0 up and running. I haven't played with it too much yet, but it seems to be dramatically more accurate.

I'm still getting the hang of things, but I sat in the park the other day and started the beginning of my next book. I realized without a few notes of prep, it wasn't that effective and I didn't get that much recorded before I gave up for the day. Even still, those four minutes I did record (honestly) were almost 500 words. Not a bad start and a promising sign for things to come as I improve my process.


----------



## SaraD

Shawn Kobb said:


> I got the new Mac Dragon 5.0 up and running. I haven't played with it too much yet, but it seems to be dramatically more accurate.
> 
> I'm still getting the hang of things, but I sat in the park the other day and started the beginning of my next book. I realized without a few notes of prep, it wasn't that effective and I didn't get that much recorded before I gave up for the day. Even still, those four minutes I did record (honestly) were almost 500 words. Not a bad start and a promising sign for things to come as I improve my process.


THIS

Also I've been able to modify the vocabulary to include fantasy names and swear words pretty easily. Not that that was the first thing I tried or anything 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Avril Sabine

SaraD said:


> I've been able to modify the vocabulary to include fantasy names and swear words pretty easily. Not that that was the first thing I tried or anything


It was one of the first things I needed to do after I trained my Dragon, but only because I was in the middle of a story that required it. : )



geraldmkilby said:


> Couldn't get it to recognise 'period'. Turns out if you set up UK English you need to say 'full stop'.


I'm one of those people who loves to read the instructions so I went through and found all the ones I thought I'd need to get me started. The more I've used it the more commands I've learned. There are so many though that it'd be impossible to learn them all at once.


----------



## Vinny OHare

Fixed the issue I had with posting a letter at the end of a sentence. A simple turn on and off did the trick.


----------



## Gina Black

I upgraded yesterday and after a minimal training Dictate 5 (Mac) was working better than 4 ever had. I think we're going to be very happy together.


----------



## Ansha Kotyk

For those of you using your phone (I'm not quite ready to spring for an Olympus recorder) is there one app that you'd say performs better with dictation recording?  I have an android phone, and from what others have mentioned I'm buying a micro usb adapter so I can use the mic-headset that came with the DNS software. 
So right now I'm wondering about which app would be the best option for android. Any ideas? Thanks!!


----------



## carolexi

I upgraded both my PC version and my Mac version yesterday. They are both better than their previous versions but the PC version continues to blow the Mac version out of the water! I wonder why on earth they can't get their act together for the Mac version. Oh well... both are incredible compared to what was out just a few years ago


----------



## Writer&#039;s Block

I've been playing around with it all weekend. I'm doing the first edit on the new manuscript so not a lot of call for dictation. However, I've been using the 'read that back' feature and it's a great why to hone the flow of the story and find all those rough sentences. When I find a section that's needs work I dictate the entire section again and delete the old one. It's a very fast way to edit.

I'm now at a place that needs a full rewrite, too much exposition. It really needs to be told via dialog and action. So I'm working up an under developed set of characters for this very purpose. Normally I would try and work up the current text but I think with Dragon it might be much easier to simply dictate it all. 

If I can get this done then I'm well on the way to getting this book finished.

Now I'm off to research Norwegian fjords... yes, I know it's set on Mars. But you gotta keep the reader entertained.


----------



## indiejane

carolexi said:


> I upgraded both my PC version and my Mac version yesterday. They are both better than their previous versions but the PC version continues to blow the Mac version out of the water! I wonder why on earth they can't get their act together for the Mac version. Oh well... both are incredible compared to what was out just a few years ago


When you say you upgraded your PC version, do you mean you went from 13 to Individual Professional their latest release? or 12 to 13? Since I just got 13, they offer those discounted upgrades to Individual Professional, but of course it expires. If it is more accurate, though, I would be open to the new expense.

Anyone gone from 13 to the newest Pro just released? Thoughts?


----------



## geekgrrl

Just wanted to say thanks to the OP. I've been away from Kboards for a long while. The return visit has been worth it for this thread alone.


----------



## carolexi

indiejane said:


> When you say you upgraded your PC version, do you mean you went from 13 to Individual Professional their latest release? or 12 to 13? Since I just got 13, they offer those discounted upgrades to Individual Professional, but of course it expires. If it is more accurate, though, I would be open to the new expense.
> 
> Anyone gone from 13 to the newest Pro just released? Thoughts?


Yep  went from 13 to the very newest and did notice an improvement-- in features especially but also accuracy. Almost error free which is crazy to me. I would recommend the upgrade, though it's annoying if you just bought it  if I were you, I might contact them for an additional discount or free bump up, if was very, very recently bought


----------



## Vinny OHare

I am also looking for a android app for dictation.


----------



## DAEbookservices

One issue I had was that many apps recorded in stereo which Dragon didn't like.

I've found the app "Easy Voice Recorder Pro" to work well, though make sure it is set NOT to record in stereo under [Settings... Tuning... Stereo].

I couldn't get the "skip silence" feature to work well on my Galaxy Note 4, though the silences don't actually matter in Dragon transcription anyway.

I'd like to hear if anyone has any better app recommendations!


----------



## indiejane

carolexi said:


> Yep  went from 13 to the very newest and did notice an improvement-- in features especially but also accuracy. Almost error free which is crazy to me. I would recommend the upgrade, though it's annoying if you just bought it  if I were you, I might contact them for an additional discount or free bump up, if was very, very recently bought


Thanks for that. I just got Dragon 13 Home (I don't need transcription) like on Wednesday for $43 on Amazon, and I just got a Yeti for completely non-Dragon reasons (came yesterday) which has helped with accuracy a lot. But this is definitely a time investment and if Pro is more accurate, then I'd rather spend the time training it right now and not invest more time on something that isn't the best accuracy tool anymore (accuracy is what I'm after, not all the bells & whistles, they're just bonus).

The update offer is a good one--it's less money all in than if I had purchased Premium 13 this past week for $164ish on Amazon.

Anyone else notice better accuracy with Pro?


----------



## Ansha Kotyk

I have the Pro version 13 for the pc. I've used Dragon a couple times in the past. They were attempts only THIS version is near perfect without training so I'm REALLY looking forward to training my dragon and seeing what it can do. Especially now that I can have it transcribe. I just need to get my recording app set up and I'll let you know how it works out.


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## edwardgtalbot

I have a question - do I need headphones to use Dragon for PC or will just a microphone do? I have an excellent USB mike that I used for podcasting in the past and I could even plug in my mixer and condenser mike that I've used for audiobook recording if that wasn't good enough. I just want to make sure I don't need to listen to dragon tell me stuff.

I am looking at pulling the trigger on Dragon. I am a talker and I have no doubt that I'll be able to write just fine with dictation. I don't really have any time when I'm driving by myself and I spend very little time waiting around for things, so I don't see much gain in terms of filling time that was otherwise unproductive. My typing style is pretty freaky, but it doesn't lead to repetitive use injuries and it's fast. Still, I'd be happy to be sitting and staring at the screen less. 

I have no idea if it will improve either how fast I produce finished product or how good that product is, but those will be my main aims. I have been trying the 5000WPM approach for the past month and I think Chris' stuff is awesome. But while it's more than doubled the speed of a draft, so far it's not really increasing the time from start to finished product because outlining and editing are taking massively longer than before. Dragon may give me the leap I'm looking for.


----------



## bdwilson

This thread has me looking at Dragon for Mac, which I couldn't have imagined a little while ago  I'm not quite ready to buy it yet, because I'm worried I won't be able to adapt (especially to speaking punctuation).

Is the Mac dictation good enough to practice with, or can anyone recommend another alternative? 

I'd just like to get the basics down first, even if the accuracy isn't great.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

Hey Ed, a microphone will work, but the room needs to be quiet. The headphones don't really play anything back to you unless you are doing transcription training, and that can play through speakers. 

BDwilson, yes, testing with Mac Dictation is a good test to see how many words you can dictate per minute etc. another handy test is the dragon app for iPhone if you have one. 

I will say, that unless you have a compelling reason to use Dragon (ergonomics, write and transcribe later in found writing time, increase production) it is not a walk in the park. It really is like that first time you tried to type on a keyboard . . .  awkward. And you have to get over that fear of hearing your own voice talk the story out. However, if you CAN overcome those things, dictation can open up new ways to write.


----------



## edwardgtalbot

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Hey Ed, a microphone will work, but the room needs to be quiet. The headphones don't really play anything back to you unless you are doing transcription training, and that can play through speakers.


Thanks! That's what I suspected.



Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I will say, that unless you have a compelling reason to use Dragon (ergonomics, write and transcribe later in found writing time, increase production) it is not a walk in the park. It really is like that first time you tried to type on a keyboard . . . awkward. And you have to get over that fear of hearing your own voice talk the story out. However, if you CAN overcome those things, dictation can open up new ways to write.


Hearing my own voice talk the story out is a feature, not a bug for me! I'm one of those 2% of writers who has a big ole' "E" as the first letter of my Myers Briggs. But I can definitely see how learning the new approach and pausing and issuing commands could be tough. The last time I tried Dragon was 2005 and it was so not ready for primetime then.

I just pulled the trigger on the $49 DNS Premium 12 version available at Amazon.


----------



## hulklogan

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> The headphones don't really play anything back to you unless you are doing transcription training, and that can play through speakers.


So I dropped my audio file into the program, it wasn't bad at interpreting my words. I can see that I can change the words that were incorrect in the DragonPad, which I hope will 'train' it. But how do I do the transcription training?

I have v13, BTW.

Thanks,
Pat


----------



## elizabethsade

hulklogan said:


> So I dropped my audio file into the program, it wasn't bad at interpreting my words. I can see that I can change the words that were incorrect in the DragonPad, which I hope will 'train' it. But how do I do the transcription training?
> 
> I have v13, BTW.
> 
> Thanks,
> Pat


I don't know 100% what she means by that, but what I do when correcting a transcript is go back to my other microphone dictation source (in the same profile) and use it to correct the words. Every time you correct it, Dragon learns.

That being said, they offered me the upgrade for 99$ and I'm probably going to do it. I've heard a few people talk about better accuracy and they also have a new thing that 'flags' a specific folder - whenever files are put in there, it transcribes them. I'm quite interested in that. Hopefully Dragon will stop confusing names and things...


----------



## Ansha Kotyk

I just finished day 2 of working with Dragon (version 13). I'm in love. So much better than older versions.

Yes, I get that my draft will be a little messier but my drafts are a wreck anyway, a few additional typos aren't going to be a huge time suck. Being able to dictate 1500 in under an hour is kinda cool.  I'm going to work on upping my word count as well. 

I'm thinking a dictation recorder may be on my xmas list this year.


----------



## bdwilson

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> BDwilson, yes, testing with Mac Dictation is a good test to see how many words you can dictate per minute etc. another handy test is the dragon app for iPhone if you have one.
> 
> I will say, that unless you have a compelling reason to use Dragon (ergonomics, write and transcribe later in found writing time, increase production) it is not a walk in the park. It really is like that first time you tried to type on a keyboard . . . awkward. And you have to get over that fear of hearing your own voice talk the story out. However, if you CAN overcome those things, dictation can open up new ways to write.


Thank you very much!

It's the found writing time and increased production that interest me the most, so I'm hoping I can get used to hearing myself talk the story out  And now I know I should stick with it through the initial awkwardness to really see if it'll work for me


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## elizabethsade

bdwilson said:


> Thank you very much!
> 
> It's the found writing time and increased production that interest me the most, so I'm hoping I can get used to hearing myself talk the story out  And now I know I should stick with it through the initial awkwardness to really see if it'll work for me


What I did was start practicing even before I got Dragon. I'd say snippets of a story in the shower, or while cooking, etc, to get used to 'talking' prose and to saying punctuation. It really helped.


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## Vinny OHare

Today was the first day I put it to the test. I have been writing a story about Brooklyn and the subway crimes and it was always stalled at 1st chapter. Today I wrote 3 chapters using dragon 2800 words in what seemed like 15 minutes although I know it was longer. 

I also did a spreadsheet of 30 Facebook post for Discountbookman that will be uploaded to Facebook via Hootsuite.


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## edwardgtalbot

Vinny OHare said:


> Today was the first day I put it to the test. I have been writing a story about Brooklyn and the subway crimes and it was always stalled at 1st chapter. Today I wrote 3 chapters using dragon 2800 words in what seemed like 15 minutes although I know it was longer.


Wow! If you find out you're really writing 2800 words in 15 minutes, I think the rest of us will want to know what substance besides just dragon you're using!!


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## valeriec80

I keep track of my words per hour using Excel, and I routinely dictate 4200-4600 words per hour.

But when I factor in my cleanup time, it's all the way down to about 2300-2500 words per hour.

Working with the voice recorder. It's not that much more accurate than my phone, but this is only the second day. I'm trying to correct like crazy, hoping that I'll be able to really train it, but...

I'm almost done with the second book that I've dictated, and I'm not utterly convinced it's worth it at this point.

Not sure when I'm going to throw in the towel. Maybe in the fall when the humidity dies down and it doesn't hurt to type. Hoping that the magic bullet kicks in for me soon. I've definitely put in the work/time.


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## elizabethsade

valeriec80 said:


> I keep track of my words per hour using Excel, and I routinely dictate 4200-4600 words per hour.
> 
> But when I factor in my cleanup time, it's all the way down to about 2300-2500 words per hour.
> 
> Working with the voice recorder. It's not that much more accurate than my phone, but this is only the second day. I'm trying to correct like crazy, hoping that I'll be able to really train it, but...
> 
> I'm almost done with the second book that I've dictated, and I'm not utterly convinced it's worth it at this point.
> 
> Not sure when I'm going to throw in the towel. Maybe in the fall when the humidity dies down and it doesn't hurt to type. Hoping that the magic bullet kicks in for me soon. I've definitely put in the work/time.


As long as you keep the dictation source that you correct it with and the voice recorder that you record with in the same profile, it should slowly start to get better. I understand your frustration - cleaning time cuts 6k an hour down to about 3.5k max, but slowly, slowly it's getting better. Ironically, I've found sometimes that transcribing the same file twice (after minimal clean-up) results in a cleaner transcription the second time. I was really frustrated with a file one time (there was so much to clean and I gave in like three paragraphs in) and decided to transcribe it again and it really helped.


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## valeriec80

I plugged a mic into the voice recorder--one that I can plug into my computer.

Brilliant!

I'm going to go at this for a few more days, and really look at the data, but I think this is the ticket. If so, I'll recommend them both with Amazon links for people who'd like good accuracy with an outlay of under $75.


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## Chinese Writer

I upgraded to Mac Dictate 5 a couple of days ago. It certainly is more accurate than 4 out of the box. The profiles transfer over fine. They got rid of the Dictate Pad (or maybe I just can't find it). However, the iPhone Dragon microphone is no longer supported with 5. I still need to try the transcription feature.


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## Joseph J Bailey

I just ordered the new version of Dictate as well.

However, in speaking with the sales rep, what got me more excited than the new Dictate functionality is the new Dragon Anywhere app he discussed. The rep said it will give about 90% of the functionality of the full program on your phone. Your profiles and dictionaries with all the special words that you have added will be included.

As a fantasy writer, this will be very nice!

Here is an article on Dragon Anywhere:

http://9to5mac.com/2015/08/18/nuance-launches-cloud-based-dragon-anywhere-ios-app-new-mac-app/

I am excited!


----------



## Chinese Writer

Joseph J Bailey said:


> I just ordered the new version of Dictate as well.
> 
> However, in speaking with the sales rep, what got me more excited than the new Dictate functionality is the new Dragon Anywhere app he discussed. The rep said it will give about 90% of the functionality of the full program on your phone. Your profiles and dictionaries with all the special words that you have added will be included.
> 
> I am excited!


 Yes, I'm waiting for the app as well. Just as I'm waiting for the scrivener app


----------



## LGSG

Ansha Kotyk said:


> I just finished day 2 of working with Dragon (version 13). I'm in love. So much better than older versions.
> 
> Yes, I get that my draft will be a little messier but my drafts are a wreck anyway, a few additional typos aren't going to be a huge time suck. Being able to dictate 1500 in under an hour is kinda cool.  I'm going to work on upping my word count as well.
> 
> I'm thinking a dictation recorder may be on my xmas list this year.


I have the DNS version 11 from a few years ago. Is the new one (13) really so much better than the version 11? I never worked with it enough to get it to work with me, but I'm hoping to try again and at least use it for blogging, which is easier for me to speak aloud than fiction. Is the new 13 so much easier to use?


----------



## Ansha Kotyk

LGSG said:


> I have the DNS version 11 from a few years ago. Is the new one (13) really so much better than the version 11? I never worked with it enough to get it to work with me, but I'm hoping to try again and at least use it for blogging, which is easier for me to speak aloud than fiction. Is the new 13 so much easier to use?


The last version I used was version 9... and I can say there has been a significant change in the accuracy with 13. How far that difference is between 11 and 13? I can't say.

But I'm finding only minor dictation errors with this version (using the mic/headset that came in the box) and with only a few days of training, than with version 9 which I had trained and trained over 3 weeks and just ended up frustrated.

I guess my advice is to work with 11 for at least 2 weeks, if you find that you've trained it per the instructions using a quality mic, and you're still not happy then it might be worth upgrading. I'm very very happy with 13.
Hope this helps.


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## Joseph J Bailey

Guh... I just found out that the Dragon Anywhere app will be a $15/month subscription. 

The Nuance rep that I spoke with only mentioned that the app would be out soon...not that it would come with a monthly fee.

My excitement level has declined...


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## Chinese Writer

Joseph J Bailey said:


> Guh... I just found out that the Dragon Anywhere app will be a $15/month subscription.
> 
> The Nuance rep that I spoke with only mentioned that the app would be out soon...not that it would come with a monthly fee.
> 
> My excitement level has declined...


$15/month?! That's almost highway robbery for the app market


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## Diane Patterson

Yeah, when my phone does pretty good voice-to-speech recognition already and I can do voice recording with other apps... That's a non-starter.


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## Zelah Meyer

I have deleted this post as I do not consent to the new Terms of Service that Vertical Scope are attempting to retrospectively apply to our content.  I am forced to manually replace my content as, at time of editing, their representative has instructed moderators not to delete posts or accounts when users request it, and Vertical Scope have implied that they will deal with account deletion requests by anonymising accounts, which would leave personally identifying information in my posts.

I joined under the previous ownership and have posted over the years under different Terms of Service.  I do not consent to my name, content, or intellectual properties being used by Vertical Scope or any other entity that they sell or licence my data to.


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## AisFor

I've been having a hard time with Dragon Dictate 5. I had version 4 for a couple of months, and it took me a while to get to grips with the oddness of dictating, so I'd say I was still a basic user. Since I've had 5, I feel like dictation is becoming more natural to me, but there seem to be A LOT of glitches with the system. So far, I've had a block of 30 minutes where it's been a fairly smooth process - definitely not error free, but usable - but the rest of the time it's been very hard work. The speech recognition capability seems to drop suddenly and very dramatically, and it will write commands out in words instead of performing the command, and the cursor jumps all over the place when I do corrections. I keep giving up in frustration, and then thinking maybe it's me and my poor dictation, so I go back to it, and then the same thing happens. Meanwhile, a lot of time disappears.... It also has episodes where it crashes frequently (sometimes once every minute). I'm thinking of returning it, as at least version 4 didn't crash. 

Can anyone relate to my experience?


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## Zelah Meyer

I have deleted this post as I do not consent to the new Terms of Service that Vertical Scope are attempting to retrospectively apply to our content.  I am forced to manually replace my content as, at time of editing, their representative has instructed moderators not to delete posts or accounts when users request it, and Vertical Scope have implied that they will deal with account deletion requests by anonymising accounts, which would leave personally identifying information in my posts.

I joined under the previous ownership and have posted over the years under different Terms of Service.  I do not consent to my name, content, or intellectual properties being used by Vertical Scope or any other entity that they sell or licence my data to.


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## Diane Patterson

One command I use when Dragon starts losing its mind is "purge cache." This clears out its buffer (or something -- maybe it's just a magic spell, I don't know). But that seems to get it back on track until the next time it starts putting "S" at the end of all my sentences and randomly ordering words.


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## elizabethsade

Diane Patterson said:


> One command I use when Dragon starts losing its mind is "purge cache." This clears out its buffer (or something -- maybe it's just a magic spell, I don't know). But that seems to get it back on track until the next time it starts putting "S" at the end of all my sentences and randomly ordering words.


Is this on windows or Mac?


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## abgwriter

I received my copy on the mail a couple of days ago, and although I can see the potential, I must say it's a little frustrating. Will the training text really help it familiarize with my voice or that's just bluff?


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## Michael Barbato-Dunn

Zelah Meyer said:


> I'm currently frustrated because I finally have the software up and running (upgraded to Windows 10, installed Dragon, then had to downgrade back to Windows 7 again) ....


Does the software NOT work on Windows 10? 

Apologies if this was discussed on earlier pages; I haven't read the entire thread.

EDIT: I've been lurking on the Writers' Cafe for so long.... I didn't realize this was my first post!


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## Zelah Meyer

I have deleted this post as I do not consent to the new Terms of Service that Vertical Scope are attempting to retrospectively apply to our content.  I am forced to manually replace my content as, at time of editing, their representative has instructed moderators not to delete posts or accounts when users request it, and Vertical Scope have implied that they will deal with account deletion requests by anonymising accounts, which would leave personally identifying information in my posts.

I joined under the previous ownership and have posted over the years under different Terms of Service.  I do not consent to my name, content, or intellectual properties being used by Vertical Scope or any other entity that they sell or licence my data to.


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## Michael Barbato-Dunn

Zelah Meyer said:


> So, if your version of Windows 10 is working for you, I don't see why Dragon wouldn't. When it worked, it worked the same as it does under Windows 7.
> 
> P.S. Welcome out of lurkerdom and apologies for scaring you!


Thanks! I am close to summoning the nerve to order it.

Yes, I'm running Win10 without any problems. But I installed it by wiping the hard drive clean, so that may have helped.


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## Diane Patterson

elizabethsade said:


> Is this on windows or Mac?


I'm on Mac.


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## Michael Barbato-Dunn

After much deliberation about getting my own Dragon, and much reading of this thread, I took the plunge this afternoon. I bought the digital download version of DNS 13 Premium through Amazon. With tax it came to about $125. The download took about 45 min. It installed without issue on my Win 10 machine. I put on my headset/mic, set up my profile and worked through the brief tutorial.

Then I tried it on my own. I sat back, relaxed, and just tried pantsing the start of a new story without touching the keyboard or mouse. I didn't write for very long, but seeing the words appear on the screen as I spoke them was a revelation. The accuracy level of the program before any training was impressive. My uncertainty about whether I could write by speaking rather than typing immediately eased. If felt liberating and natural.

I still have much to learn, and I have still have to train the thing, but I know already DNS will make a huge difference for my writing.

Shout-out to Chris Fox, whose book 5,000 Words Per Hour book made me sit up and take notice of DNS, and of this thread.


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## JRHolmes

Interesting article today (September 19) on Wired about how dictating appears to alter the language structure and usage of the writer.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/thompson-2/

Note that this is more related to dictating shorter messages and texts, but I wonder if any of you have noticed any such change on your part.


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## elizabethsade

JRHolmes said:


> Interesting article today (September 19) on Wired about how dictating appears to alter the language structure and usage of the writer.
> 
> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/thompson-2/
> 
> Note that this is more related to dictating shorter messages and texts, but I wonder if any of you have noticed any such change on your part.


When I first started, definitely - my dictation was a lot different than my normal typing. That being said, the more I dictate and the more I edit, the less difference there is.


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## Diane Patterson

Dictating looking at the screen and not looking at the screen are two completely different things for me. I discovered that I don't even use complete sentences if I'm just walking around town and talking. (The "Aaron Sorkin" method, if you will.) If I'm looking at the screen and watching the words appear, what I "write" is pretty much the same.


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## Gina Black

For those who don't know, Nuance has a Youtube channel that has informative videos for both PC and Mac versions.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NF293Dm10CWLNcyBlNGsw


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## Susanne123

Thanks Gina. Good timing. I'm about to start using Dragon again and the video will help refresh my memory.


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## Zelah Meyer

I have deleted this post as I do not consent to the new Terms of Service that Vertical Scope are attempting to retrospectively apply to our content.  I am forced to manually replace my content as, at time of editing, their representative has instructed moderators not to delete posts or accounts when users request it, and Vertical Scope have implied that they will deal with account deletion requests by anonymising accounts, which would leave personally identifying information in my posts.

I joined under the previous ownership and have posted over the years under different Terms of Service.  I do not consent to my name, content, or intellectual properties being used by Vertical Scope or any other entity that they sell or licence my data to.


----------



## Diane Patterson

Periodically I do a large amount of text using Dragon, and inevitably at some point the cursor goes nuts and runs to a different part of the document. (Or, even better, it starts selecting random sections of the document.) Does this happen to anybody else? Is there any way to stop this from happening?

I find myself saying "Purge cache" just about every other paragraph.


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## Penelope Redmont

I'm so glad I found this thread. I'll be installing Dictate as soon as I get a new computer.

Over the years, I've run Dragon on PCs, and on Macs too. Always started with high hopes, then let it lapse. I stopped trying to make it work for me with Dictate's latest major release. Although I installed it, it wouldn't work at all. 

So new machine, new install of Dictate. This time I'm determined to make it work. My RSI has been getting worse. 

Need to go back and read the entire thread.


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## valeriec80

Diane Patterson said:


> Periodically I do a large amount of text using Dragon, and inevitably at some point the cursor goes nuts and runs to a different part of the document. (Or, even better, it starts selecting random sections of the document.) Does this happen to anybody else? Is there any way to stop this from happening?
> 
> I find myself saying "Purge cache" just about every other paragraph.


Nowadays, I mostly just do transcription (and I try to keep my transcription files under 20 minutes, because I find that the longer it goes on, the more wonky Dragon gets) but when I first had wrist issues, I did talk directly to the screen. I never had the problem you're describing, but I did (and do) find that Dragon got weird when dealing with big walls of text. I don't know what it is, but Dragon seems to be optimized for like short email messages or something.

Are you dictating into the Dragon Pad or into Word or another program? if you're dictating directly into your entire novel document, STOP. Dragon can't handle a big document that's 100+ pages. It will not work well.

You may be able to simply dictate today's stuff into a fresh Word doc or something and then add to the novel, but I find it's always best to go directly into the Dragon Pad. MUCH better accuracy and speed.

Now, assuming you're already using the Dragon Pad, I would just break things up. I'd go ten minutes and then save, open a new document, and do another ten minutes. That's all I got. Maybe someone else knows something?


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## Diane Patterson

Yeah, I have been using Scrivener (with new documents, not into my regular novel), but even with that Dragon a)didn't give me all my commands and b)periodically freaked out, deleted stuff, wrote new stuff in random places, and today's new one: started writing in Chinese. In the middle of other stuff. (Maybe it's better than my writing in English. I have no way to tell.) 

I think I'll write in TextEdit and then paste in.


----------



## jackiegp

Wow, I guess I need to give this another try. I bought the program and the headset and tried to use it, and found it very frustrating to use. I couldn't stand saying, "period. Space. Capitol, etc." in between all the lines of story I was trying to get out, so I gave up on it. I also found that I did all the tests to get it to know my voice, and the first time out, garbley goob... that was all I got. So I was like... ugh...forget it!!! BUT, maybe I need to give it another try...hearing this! Good for YOU!


----------



## elizabethsade

jackiegp said:


> Wow, I guess I need to give this another try. I bought the program and the headset and tried to use it, and found it very frustrating to use. I couldn't stand saying, "period. Space. Capitol, etc." in between all the lines of story I was trying to get out, so I gave up on it. I also found that I did all the tests to get it to know my voice, and the first time out, garbley goob... that was all I got. So I was like... ugh...forget it!!! BUT, maybe I need to give it another try...hearing this! Good for YOU!


You don't have to say space capital, it automatically capitalizes the new sentence.


----------



## Chinese Writer

Diane Patterson said:


> Yeah, I have been using Scrivener (with new documents, not into my regular novel), but even with that Dragon a)didn't give me all my commands and b)periodically freaked out, deleted stuff, wrote new stuff in random places, and today's new one: started writing in Chinese. In the middle of other stuff. (Maybe it's better than my writing in English. I have no way to tell.)
> 
> I think I'll write in TextEdit and then paste in.


I have Mac Dictate 5 and I can only use TextEdit. Writing in Scrivener or Word is frustrating because of the weird freak outs. However, it works almost perfectly in TextEdit.


----------



## Diane Patterson

artan said:


> I have Mac Dictate 5 and I can only use TextEdit. Writing in Scrivener or Word is frustrating because of the weird freak outs. However, it works almost perfectly in TextEdit.


Okay, good to know. This random freakout behavior is why I keep giving up on Dragon.


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## EmilieHardie

I've been absolutely loving this thread. I bought DNS 13 Home and then searched the forums to see other people's experiences. Wrong way around, I know, but there you go. I am regreting not getting the Premium so I can transcribe but I figure I'll upgrade if the price is ever right or when the next version comes out and I can take advantage of upgrade offers, which the current trend suggests will be another year from now.

I am having tense issues and lack of capitalisation at the beginning of paragraph issues, but their slightly annoying at best and nowhere near enough to spoil the enjoyment I get out of using DNS. As a way of paying of forward, here are a couple of tricks that I've been using to really get the most out of it.

1. *Dictating everything* - whether it be forum posts or emails, or even just notes to myself, I found that the amount of practice I get just trying to dictate everything made the process of learning how to dictate that much quicker and smoother. While it does help teach the program about my voice patterns, I found this has been much more useful when it comes to educating me and teaching me how to speak in a way that will get the best results out of the program.

2. *Warm up the program before using it* - just like I don't go for a run without stretching, particularly that is going to be a long one, I never start doing a large amount of dictation without warming up both myself and the program before really getting into it. In particular, I like to read out a newspaper article into DragonPad before I even start writing my novel is, in particular I found that I can shape the DragonPad window so it sits comfortably the side of the Guardian newspaper article. The actual contents are largely irrelevant, for me it's more about reading through text and getting my voice used to set saying the punctuation again. I've also found it can be good at identifying problem areas for the program, because I can compare how the paragraph that I just dictated to what was written down and corrected more easily than I can when I'm dictating straight into scrivener.

3. *Take care of your voice* - I've seen that a lot of people have been converting to dictating software because of injuries, so it's also worth pointing out and remembering that you can also injure your voice to, though it much more difficult to get that sort of permanent damage that can come from really heavy typing. As it is, if I feel my throat starting to get scratchy, I stop dictating immediately and take a good 10 minutes break where I jot down where I want the scene to go and give my voice arrest. I also keep a full water bottle near the computer at all times, and stay hydrated. At some point, I will probably look into what teachers and actors and other professionals that spend all the days talking do to look after their voices and start implementing things like that, but I'm not quite up to that point yet.

4. *Put aside time to use each and every one of the features at least once a week* - whether it is reading to improve accuracy or taking advantage of DragonPad to correct issues or even going through the vocabulary and training words I'm having trouble with, I found that it's extremely useful to know the menu options inside out. In addition, this helps me make sure that I use everything to the fullest and keep the education of my Dragon well-rounded.

5. *Be aware that you will need to do at least some manual editing and schedule your time accordingly* - personally, now that I've gotten DNS to a level where there are actually very few errors, I found that I can edit draft material at a rate of about 400 words every five minutes. Depending on how well I had planned out the writing in advance, that will generally produce something that is penultimate draft or even final polish draft were the material. In addition, much of it is not correcting Dragon's mistakes but rather correcting or expanding upon issues in my dictation and my storytelling rather than in what the program then made of that. Because the soundproofing in my house is a particularly good, I generally try to avoid dictating early in the morning and instead use that time for editing and add comparatively little to my draft. This actually works quite well for me because it means that my head is very much in the game and at the point where I stopped when I get on the bus to go to work and I instead use that time to brainstorm and continue planning. I find that the anticipation of not allowing myself to write any of the actual draft until I get home from work means that it basically just bursts out of me as soon as I get home and I can usually get in a good hour of dictation without too much trouble, but that may be very personal thing.

Anyway, those are just the things that I've found have helped me considerably. I hope that you guys can find at least something mildly useful in that too. Consider it me paying forward for how helpful the thread has been for me.

Note: this common was entirely dictated by Dragon, and I have done no editing on it except to bold a couple of things manually. For some reason, I found that Dragon likes Kboards more than anything else. I have no clue why, but it is slightly better than other programs but only just.


----------



## rachelmedhurst

I've just taken the plunge and got 13 Premium. I was walking the dog today and another idea popped into my head for a book. I'm not as productive as I'd like to be. I'm a pretty fast typer but I have tons of books I want to write. As I walked this thread popped into my mind. I had only read Elizabeth's first post before and decided I would be useless at trying to speak, rather than type, as I'm a pantser.

But something made me come back to the thread today. After reading a lot of it, I've decided to give it a try. I live on my own and write full time, so hopefully this will give me plenty of freedom to get more books out.

Will let you know how it goes!


----------



## elizabethsade

rachelmedhurst said:


> I've just taken the plunge and got 13 Premium. I was walking the dog today and another idea popped into my head for a book. I'm not as productive as I'd like to be. I'm a pretty fast typer but I have tons of books I want to write. As I walked this thread popped into my mind. I had only read Elizabeth's first post before and decided I would be useless at trying to speak, rather than type, as I'm a pantser.
> 
> But something made me come back to the thread today. After reading a lot of it, I've decided to give it a try. I live on my own and write full time, so hopefully this will give me plenty of freedom to get more books out.
> 
> Will let you know how it goes!


It's definitely different as a pantser (I go between the two and have settled in the middle). I tend to do a lot more editing the first few days after a break, since my brain tends to focus more on the characters than on the surroundings like it needs to, but once I 'reset' that, it comes out faster and better. So it's like training a muscle, just like you trained yourself to write in the first place.


----------



## SBJones

EmilieHardie said:


> 3. *Take care of your voice* -- I've seen that a lot of people have been converting to dictating software because of injuries, so it's also worth pointing out and remembering that you can also injure your voice to, though it much more difficult to get that sort of permanent damage that can come from really heavy typing. As it is, if I feel my throat starting to get scratchy, I stop dictating immediately and take a good 10 minutes break where I jot down where I want the scene to go and give my voice arrest. I also keep a full water bottle near the computer at all times, and stay hydrated. At some point, I will probably look into what teachers and actors and other professionals that spend all the days talking do to look after their voices and start implementing things like that, but I'm not quite up to that point yet.


This! Nothing crushes your 10 Kay a day productivity by talking yourself horse correct that hoarse.
/wink


----------



## rachelmedhurst

elizabethsade said:


> It's definitely different as a pantser (I go between the two and have settled in the middle). I tend to do a lot more editing the first few days after a break, since my brain tends to focus more on the characters than on the surroundings like it needs to, but once I 'reset' that, it comes out faster and better. So it's like training a muscle, just like you trained yourself to write in the first place.


Yes! That's exactly how I thought of it. Training a new muscle. I'm lucky that I love to learn new things. Fingers crossed I'm able to let the words flow as quickly out of my mind when I speak. I'm a fast typer but find that I can't keep up the same pace if I do more than a couple of days of 5,000 words. If I can get 5k words with Dragon down a day without getting burnt out, I would be happy. I figure it's worth a try, even as a pantser. We will see!


----------



## elizabethsade

rachelmedhurst said:


> Yes! That's exactly how I thought of it. Training a new muscle. I'm lucky that I love to learn new things. Fingers crossed I'm able to let the words flow as quickly out of my mind when I speak. I'm a fast typer but find that I can't keep up the same pace if I do more than a couple of days of 5,000 words. If I can get 5k words with Dragon down a day without getting burnt out, I would be happy. I figure it's worth a try, even as a pantser. We will see!


If you haven't checked out Chris Fox's book I'd really recommend it - he talks a lot about getting used to writing consistently, and you can apply the same thing to dictation. I'd recommend starting with 5 or 15 min bursts at first, just to get used to it. I can go for an hour now, when needed, but I definitely could not have done that at first. XD


----------



## rachelmedhurst

elizabethsade said:


> If you haven't checked out Chris Fox's book I'd really recommend it - he talks a lot about getting used to writing consistently, and you can apply the same thing to dictation. I'd recommend starting with 5 or 15 min bursts at first, just to get used to it. I can go for an hour now, when needed, but I definitely could not have done that at first. XD


Thanks, Elizabeth, I appreciate that! I've not checked Chris's book out, I will do. I'm the same with typing. I used to do a lot less but built it up quickly over time. Hopefully it will be the same with this!


----------



## rachelmedhurst

Not sure if it's my accent or something but the Dragon hasn't got a clue what I'm saying. At all! I've had to just come away from it because it's winding me up. I don't know if it's something to do with the headset that came with it or my laptop not having good enough sound or what. Just keeps throwing up that it doesn't recognise what I'm saying.

Any advice?


----------



## elizabethsade

rachelmedhurst said:


> Not sure if it's my accent or something but the Dragon hasn't got a clue what I'm saying. At all! I've had to just come away from it because it's winding me up. I don't know if it's something to do with the headset that came with it or my laptop not having good enough sound or what. Just keeps throwing up that it doesn't recognise what I'm saying.
> 
> Any advice?


First thing I would do is make sure that your Dragon is set to UK English, not US English. That could be an issue.

Second thing - have you done the accuracy training with whatever headset you're using? A lot of people recommend going through everything they have. I'm lazy, I didn't, but things mostly work out okay (my gripe is mostly that the cursor likes to start going crazy).

Third I would feed copies of your completed manuscripts into Dragon. That way it learns your grammar structure, words you like, etc. That helps with recognition a lot of the time.

If none of those help, it could be the headset you're using. You can look on Nuance and see how many firethings a bunch of electronics they tested are given. If you do end up getting a new one, that's a good place to look for ones to invest in.


----------



## blemmet

I've been using this book to help me train my dragon and myself. There are 24 days of exercises and at the end of each exercise, you are supposed to apply it by dictating 2,000 words of your own wip. I can tell it has improved the accuracy of my dragon and I am getting more comfortable with dictation each day. Best $5 I've spent in a while. 

http://www.amazon.com/Productive-Authors-Guide-Dictation-Healthier-ebook/dp/B0106J2WCS/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1444234119&sr=1-2&keywords=dictation+book


----------



## rachelmedhurst

Thanks guys!

I've solved the problem.. 'blushes a very deep read'...the connection was loose because I hadn't pushed it all the way in!!! Haha!

I will feed my manuscripts into it too. Thanks for that tip!!


----------



## rachelmedhurst

elizabethsade said:


> Third I would feed copies of your completed manuscripts into Dragon. That way it learns your grammar structure, words you like, etc. That helps with recognition a lot of the time.


Sorry, Elizabeth, please can you tell me how I feed copies of my manuscript into Dragon? Thank you for all your help.


----------



## elizabethsade

rachelmedhurst said:


> Sorry, Elizabeth, please can you tell me how I feed copies of my manuscript into Dragon? Thank you for all your help.


I can't find the exact thing you go to because I'm currently installing the new version of Dragon so my DNS 13 was uninstalled, but there should be a section near the accuracy tuning that lets you give it documents and/or emails? (Or it might be under accuracy tuning, I'm not sure.)


----------



## rachelmedhurst

elizabethsade said:


> I can't find the exact thing you go to because I'm currently installing the new version of Dragon so my DNS 13 was uninstalled, but there should be a section near the accuracy tuning that lets you give it documents and/or emails? (Or it might be under accuracy tuning, I'm not sure.)


Thank you, Elizabeth. I've not had to do this. It seems to have picked it up all okay.

After some practice last night, I sat down this morning to see what I can do. I've managed to dictate almost 5,000 words in 3 and a half hours. When I really concentrate, I can type that but I end up not being able to do anything else for the rest of the day. Those words are with me being really slow and stilted because I'm not used to speaking my stories. I'm currently watching it on screen as I do it. I'm able to pick up mistakes this way too. I will have to try it without looking too, to see if I'm quicker.

Either way, so far, I'm really pleased with how well it's doing. I've not had to do much training with it at all. But then, my way of writing is very simplistic anyway, so that helps.

Fingers crossed, I get faster with more practice!


----------



## elizabethsade

rachelmedhurst said:


> Thank you, Elizabeth. I've not had to do this. It seems to have picked it up all okay.
> 
> After some practice last night, I sat down this morning to see what I can do. I've managed to dictate almost 5,000 words in 3 and a half hours. When I really concentrate, I can type that but I end up not being able to do anything else for the rest of the day. Those words are with me being really slow and stilted because I'm not used to speaking my stories. I'm currently watching it on screen as I do it. I'm able to pick up mistakes this way too. I will have to try it without looking too, to see if I'm quicker.
> 
> Either way, so far, I'm really pleased with how well it's doing. I've not had to do much training with it at all. But then, my way of writing is very simplistic anyway, so that helps.
> 
> Fingers crossed, I get faster with more practice!


Congrats!  I'll cross my fingers for ya. I can't look while I dictate - it completely throws me out of the story and then I fiddle with things and then I don't get much done. Instead I dictate into a recorder and then transcribe it. Takes longer to correct it, but it's either that or get fewer words out. I'm hoping as time goes on that I won't have to do as many corrections.

I had to feed my manuscript to it because I write a lot of scifi/fantasy and it doesn't understand the names, haha. Feeding it the manuscript helped with that.


----------



## Synthia

Got DNS 13 Premium a while back and trained it with three or four of the excerpts, but not with any of my WIPs.  Then, I got really busy in everyday life and dropped the dictation effort entirely. At some point earlier this year, I wiped and reloaded that computer and had the foresight to back up the profile to save all the training.  Fast-forward to this month, and I heard guests on multiple podcasts talking about the drastic increases in productivity using Dragon.  So, I broke out my copy, installed it again on the laptop, and imported the previous training profile. Then, I downloaded "Dragon Recorder" on my iPhone to use transcription.

Wednesday morning, I went for a walk with the iPhone and the earpods. I dictated about 850 raw words in about 30 minutes. But those were in "pants" mode, and between long pauses while walking a 14:30 per mile pace. Then the rubber met the road.

I imported the recording and saved it on the desktop. Then, I created a new input profile on the DNS system for the iPhone, which would take into account the different recording qualities than those used in my original profile (using a headset indoors and without vigorous walking).  After reading a couple of excerpts to start the training, I plugged the walking recording into the Dragon and let it transcribe.  The result was roughly 95% accurate. The errors were caused by the physical activity, as well as the fact that I have made NO corrections or optimizations to the profile yet. 

So, going forward, I will read out a big chunk of a WIP into the iPhone/earpod profile, then feed that manuscript into the Dragon and optimize that profile accordingly. From there, I should be getting much closer to 99% accuracy on the iPhone profile. And once that's done, I should see word counts soar.

It's clear to me that this takes a little effort on the front end to train and fine-tune the system. But once that's done, it's amazing how well it works.  I used the original (headset) profile to dictate some rough draft content this morning, and it created very clean data. And I haven't trained that profile or optimized it since very early this year (around February, I think) on another computer. 

I'm currently writing some nonfiction titles, so it will be very interesting to see how those word counts wind up after another couple of days of tuning.  I'll report back with results later.


----------



## NerdyWriter

Anyone seeing consistent positive results with dictation with DNS?


----------



## elizabethsade

Greggy said:


> Anyone seeing consistent positive results with dictation with DNS?


Yes. I can elaborate more, depending on what you mean by 'consistent positive results'.


----------



## Chinese Writer

So I upgraded to El Capitan for the Mac and the update for Mac Dictate 5.x (sorry, don’t know the Dragon version for the El Capitan update off the top of my head). OMG! Dragon is blazing fast and more accurate than what I’ve been able to achieve before. Before I had to wait for the words to appear on the screen, so there’s always a little lag when I dictate. Don’t have this problem anymore. And as before, dictating in TextEdit gives me the best accuracy.


----------



## harker.roland

Greggy said:


> Anyone seeing consistent positive results with dictation with DNS?


I will say that I am getting consistent and great results moving between typing and transcription with Dragon. I record WIP on my iphone while driving to and from work and then transcribe using dragon when I get home and spend the rest of the night doing some writing sprints.


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I dictated while driving to and from my conference in Louisville. 2.5 hours of dictated material = over 5,000 words.    Steaming right along on my next novel, aiming to be done with the first draft by end of this week.


----------



## valeriec80

emilycantore said:


> Definitely am.
> 
> I struggled for a while because I was working in a studio with overhead fans running. I thought the noise was too low to matter but it really screwed up the transcription. Moved house, different writing studio and suddenly the transcription quality shot through the roof.
> 
> I did 35K over a few days about a week ago. I spent time correcting words so Dragon could learn but now it's at the point that there is no real reason to do it.
> 
> I can easily dictate for four hours straight and hit 12 - 20K words.
> 
> It has radically increased by wordcount to the point that I am looking at completing a 60K novel in three days. Three days!
> 
> I have had to make better outlines and spend more time thinking through my stories.
> 
> Absolutely love Dragon. I'm writing a series right now where the first book was maybe 40% typed and 60% dictated. The rest of them will be 100% dictated.
> 
> The speed I'm hitting means I'll be hiring an assistant to help with my transcription formatting.
> 
> I'd be dictating right now if I didn't have this sore throat! (Stupid viruses)


Man. I'm so jealous.

My last book was such an effing mess when I went to edit it that I've basically thrown in the towel on dictation. Every day after I dictate, I go through and fix all the errors I see, so by the time I get to my first read-through, it's already been gone over once. Even so, the book was in utterly awful shape. I read and make notes on my kindle for my first-pass edit. I had over 500 notes. My last typed book had 90 notes. Most of those notes were missing words. Dragon drops words constantly for me.

But it's not just the wrong words and the missing words and the crap from that. I find that I also need to do lots more wholesale rewrites of dictated scenes than I do of typed scenes. I don't know why this is, but it's true. Now, I don't have hard data on this, as I only dictated two books, but I feel strongly that the back end editing is costing me so much time that it's not worth the miniscule amount of time I save dictating.

I dictate at about 2500 words per hour, once you add in correction time. I type at about 2000 words an hour, and sometimes I can go faster.

Soo... going forward, my plan is to go back to typing, but to do one or two sessions of dictating per day, maybe 1000 words total--always correct those in Dragon, and see if accuracy improves to the point at which I can dictate more again. I may *have* to dictate in the summer regardless because humidity kills my hands and wrists, but...

Blecch. I've done everything I can think of except throw ridiculous amounts of money at this. I guess if I upgraded to DNS 13 and bought a $500 voice recorder, things might improve, but that's not an expenditure I'm willing to make. And anyway, it seems to me that every time I've used this program, it's really never gotten better than the level of recognition I've got now, and I had version 10 before I got version 12. Inevitably, I use it for a while, then decide it's not worth the frustration, and go back to typing.

It's been real, guys, and it's been fun. But it hasn't been real fun.


----------



## Michael Barbato-Dunn

Hello, newcomer here.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this month with a specific plan. I'm using:

a) Dragon Naturally Speaking v13 Premium, recently purchased, barely trained
b) Writing in 25-minute sprints as per Chris Fox's 5,000 Words Per Hour and tracking with his 



.
c) Have done some preliminary outlining using Libby Hawker's Take Off Your Pants

Despite being relatively new to Dragon, I'm pleased so far.

Nov.1: Untimed (writing without sprints, but using Dragon): 1402 words.

Nov. 2: Three sprints.

1. 11am- 11:25: 721 words
(went to an early lunch)
2. Noon--12:25: 619 words
3. 12:30-12:55: 662 words

That's 2002 words in 75 minutes of writing. Nothing exceptional, but I was pleased with the output and wowed by the accuracy of Dragon. It was nailing everything except character and place names.

Nov. 3: Two sprints.

2:30-2:55 -- 966 words
3:05-3:30 -- 755 words

Today's total= 1,721 in one hour.
November total = 3,724 words, on track for 50K.

So I've seen improvement each day. Today I'm going to try four sprints.

I'm dictating in a third floor office of my house, away from my wife and dogs, and using a cheapo Logitech headset microphone. Once I got comfortable, I began dictating with eyes closed, I felt far more focused on the story in my mind than the words on the screen. I didn't feel the desire to go back and change things, or edit. I was just... telling a story. And when I was done for the day, I didn't feel tired at all.


----------



## EmilieHardie

For those who have been considering Premium, both the physical copy and the digital download are currently more that 50% cheaper thanks to the Amazon Bacl Friday week deals. It might be worth checking out if the cost has held you back up until now.

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-NaturallySpeaking-Premium-13-0-English/dp/B00LX4BYV6


----------



## NerdyWriter

I'm at 1800 words per hour with a light outline. I consistently hit that number every time I do a full hour of dictation. I'm going to try to do a more detailed outline and see what happens. I love being able to dictate away from the PC. I use a decent microphone and my android voice recorder on my cell phone then I go on to an online converter to turn my 3gp file to a MP3. So I'm curious how much I would improve my raw file with better equipment, but the raw file is pretty decent so far, as long as I'm clear and speak in full phrases.

12-20k words would really be awesome right now.


----------



## Shawn Kobb

I definitely haven't given up on this idea, but I'm still struggling to implement it.

For my current WIP, I did a few sections using dictation. I recently received the draft back from my editor and she was able to exactly pinpoint those sections as being dictated. That's no good.

That't not a problem with the technology. It's a problem with me using the tech.


----------



## elizabethsade

emilycantore said:


> Quick update - dictated for 256 minutes in one day and cleared 20,011 words!
> 
> They're okay quality, transcription-wise. I'm using the automatic function where you drop the sound files into a certain folder and it auto-transcribes for you. I think this results in a poorer transcription quality (for no good reason I can discern).
> 
> Still, very happy with completing 20K in such a short time.


Congrats. 

I tried the auto-transcribe but I'd have to go back through and fix them anyway...so it's easier just to transcribe them 1 by 1.


----------



## dmburnett

I've used my Dragon off and on for a while now and with my current project, I finally wore out my first headset! Breaking out a second one this week!


----------



## Elizabeth Ann West

I've been reading a new book The Miracle Morning for Network Marketers. Part of my new routine is getting up with my cup of coffee and sitting and dictating a scene. Sometimes it's a scene of a current WIP, sometimes it's not. The nots go into their own Scrivener file to be built on later. I am finding that I can't feel like a failure anymore when I get SOME words done no matter what, on my terms. I am now homeschooling my daughter thanks to the school forcing my hand, which is going WELL, but is still changing my routine quite a bit.


----------



## sela

I just purchased Dragon Dictate for Mac and will be getting it delivered on Monday Nov 30th. I'm excited to give it t try as I dictate my father's memoir. I have notes and want to dictate some chapter outlines based on my hand-written notes rather than trying to transcribe. I'm an erotic romance author so perhaps I'll type my sex scenes instead of dictating.  I have teens in the house. 

What are people's experiences of Dragon Dictate for Mac?

What can I expect?

TIA for any advice or tips.


----------



## Gina Black

My experience of latest version of Dragon Dictate for the Mac is that it's more accurate and easier to train than the last one.


----------



## KylieG

I bought Dragon 13 Premium just yesterday and uploaded it to the laptop. I really am struggling and I need some advice on training. I went through all the tutorials and they were fine. Then I tried recording a sentence. The first three words I read were just dictating a random sentence out of a book I liked. The words were "surprisingly, he found." Anyway, I couldn't get Dragon to understand the word _surprisingly_. Even when I tried to train it specifically with that word, I couldn't get it to work. Dictating was just impossible because even though it understood most every word I said in the tutorial, it was getting half of them wrong.

Are there any tricks to training it? I saw the manuscripts included on the program, but I really didn't want to read such a long excerpt off the tiny screen it provides and you seem to need to read the whole thing for it to work. I think this could be great if I can get it to recognize my voice. Any help would be appreciated.


----------



## elizabethsade

KylieG said:


> I bought Dragon 13 Premium just yesterday and uploaded it to the laptop. I really am struggling and I need some advice on training. I went through all the tutorials and they were fine. Then I tried recording a sentence. The first three words I read were just dictating a random sentence out of a book I liked. The words were "surprisingly, he found." Anyway, I couldn't get Dragon to understand the word _surprisingly_. Even when I tried to train it specifically with that word, I couldn't get it to work. Dictating was just impossible because even though it understood most every word I said in the tutorial, it was getting half of them wrong.
> 
> Are there any tricks to training it? I saw the manuscripts included on the program, but I really didn't want to read such a long excerpt off the tiny screen it provides and you seem to need to read the whole thing for it to work. I think this could be great if I can get it to recognize my voice. Any help would be appreciated.


a) what microphone are you using?

b) Practice. So much practice. Correct it and move on. Don't expect it to be perfect. It won't be.

c) Let it optimize itself every so often.


----------



## KylieG

elizabethsade said:


> a) what microphone are you using?
> 
> b) Practice. So much practice. Correct it and move on. Don't expect it to be perfect. It won't be.
> 
> c) Let it optimize itself every so often.


I'm using the one that came with the DVD. I have others if need be. To be honest, it didn't work well enough to move on. I'm willing to spend time practicing with it, but at this point it certainly couldn't handle a manuscript.


----------



## elizabethsade

KylieG said:


> I'm using the one that came with the DVD. I have others if need be. To be honest, it didn't work well enough to move on. I'm willing to spend time practicing with it, but at this point it certainly couldn't handle a manuscript.


I've dictated probably close to 100k since I started and I'm just now getting to the point where I can go more than two or three sentences without having to correct an error. Admittedly, I talk really fast, slur my words a lot, etc. But. It takes a lot of time and practice.

I would recommend upgrading your microphone if you can. That'll help with quality. And reading more training text, as much as it sucks. Dragon isn't going to know your voice or your speech patterns until you teach it.

Also, if you haven't fed your manuscript into it, I highly recommend it.


----------



## Diane Patterson

elizabethsade said:


> c) Let it optimize itself every so often.


What does this mean?

I haven't been doing much of the "correct that" or "train <text>" commands -- do you use those a lot? I usually just select the words in question, say new ones, and move on. I have zero idea if I'm making life more difficult on myself or not doing it that way.


----------



## Keith Rowland

I'm looking to take the plunge, but was wondering what headsets everyone uses/recommends?


----------



## Michael Barbato-Dunn

I mentioned in this post on November 4th that I was doing NaNoWriMo and would use Dragon for the first time, other than some preliminary tests. I hit 50K words on Friday, a few days early.

Total # words: 50,375
Total # days writing: 24 (Nov.1-27, took three days off, inc. Thanksgiving)
Total number of hours writing: 30
Average words per hour: 1,660

Total # days dictating: 22
Average words per hour dictating: 1713
Total # days typing: 2
Average words per hour typing: 982

Best day was the final day, fueled by having the finish line in sight, when I dictated just under 6K in two hours, with two five minute breaks. So I hit 3K per hour. Not trying to brag; just hope this helps inspire someone considering dictating. It was a tremendous success for me. If I had a good outline, instead of pantsing, I believe I could easily hit 2500-3000 wph regularly.

I have even dictated into a recorder while doing other mindless tasks, so being able to multi-task has been a huge boon. I helped a friend paint his house a two weekends ago and 'wrote' while I painted. And as I mentioned in the earlier post, at my desk I was able to just close my eyes and fall into the world of my story, rather than staring at the screen and feeling the urge to edit. I feel more 'free'... and my story has gone off on tangents I didn't expect. I will probably never go back to just typing unless I'm in an environment where dictating is not gonna work.

The quality of the transcription is very good when I'm just sitting at my computer with the headset mic on. When I'm dictating into a portable recorder, it is less accurate because of more room noise, but only slightly. That drop in accuracy is balanced out by being able to 'write' while I'm doing other things; in other words, the lower accuracy is a price I'm willing to pay because I am getting more done.

As an aside, when looking over the month's output, I found the program had transcribed this:



> The third morning after Charlie Charlie the third morning after his assignment was given, Jovan Steward met...


Charlie is the name of one of our dogs. I was apparently yelling at him to stop barking .


----------



## elizabethsade

Diane Patterson said:


> What does this mean?
> 
> I haven't been doing much of the "correct that" or "train <text>" commands -- do you use those a lot? I usually just select the words in question, say new ones, and move on. I have zero idea if I'm making life more difficult on myself or not doing it that way.


It should be 'launch accuracy tuning' or something. I think it's under the audio button.

You HAVE to use the correct that/train!! That's how Dragon learns. It doesn't assume it's wrong unless you explicitly correct it. When you just replace the words like that, it doesn't know that you're replacing it with the right words. The more you correct it/spell that/etc, the more it learns and the more it continues to understand what you're saying. The accuracy tuning/etc I think solidifies all of that. 

(So yes, oops, you were making life more difficult on yourself!)


----------



## Diane Patterson

Man, no wonder my training process has been going so poorly.  

How do you use "correct that" when you do transcription?


----------



## Hope

Can someone recommend a cordless headset for Mac?  I have bought two so far and they don't work with Dragon.


----------



## elizabethsade

Diane Patterson said:


> Man, no wonder my training process has been going so poorly.
> 
> How do you use "correct that" when you do transcription?


Open up the document, use the 'select that' command to select what's wrong, and then say 'correct that' and it should play it back and pop up the spell menu.


----------



## ketosis

If you don't have Dragon and have a Mac, you can use the dictation function that comes with it. I'm typing everything on this post right now and it works pretty well.


----------



## Hope

loganbyrne said:


> If you don't have Dragon and have a Mac, you can use the dictation function that comes with it. I'm typing everything on this post right now and it works pretty well.


I didn't know Mac had one&#8230;maybe one of my headphones will work with it. Thanks! Now to figure out where that function is&#8230;.


----------



## ketosis

katygirl said:


> I didn't know Mac had one...maybe one of my headphones will work with it. Thanks! Now to figure out where that function is....


I just use the internal microphone that is on the computer itself. Go to System Preferences and then Dictation and Speech which is near the bottom. Turn it on, and I would also recommend turning on the enhanced mode for offline use, though it has a download it has to do for it. Then go to System Preferences and the Accessibility tab and then down to Dictation at the bottom. Hit Dictation Commands and then enable advanced commands. All set!


----------



## Hope

loganbyrne said:


> I just use the internal microphone that is on the computer itself. Go to System Preferences and then Dictation and Speech which is near the bottom. Turn it on, and I would also recommend turning on the enhanced mode for offline use, though it has a download it has to do for it. Then go to System Preferences and the Accessibility tab and then down to Dictation at the bottom. Hit Dictation Commands and then enable advanced commands. All set!


Thank you!! I dictated a couple of sentences and it was perfect! I need to find my headsets-I really want to be able to multitask while I write. Thanks again Logan!


----------



## ketosis

katygirl said:


> Thank you!! I dictated a couple of sentences and it was perfect! I need to find my headsets-I really want to be able to multitask while I write. Thanks again Logan!


No problem! For anyone who uses this, when you do the steps I listed you can say 'Enter That' or 'Press Return Key' to hit return just like you would while typing. Saying the new paragraph messes up formatting.


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## KGorman

Can anyone recommend a recorder for dictating while on a walk? Something with a very good noise cancelling attribute? I've got a wonderful microphone for the computer, but I'd like to go out for walks, and the noise on the surrounding streets is pretty heinous for dictation. My cell phone sucks at it.

Can't order anything online due to location and shipping, but if you give me a name I can probably find it in a shop here.

I'm sure it's been discussed before in this thread, but I don't want to read 30 pages and my search-engine-fu seems to be malfunctioning this morning D:


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## Diane Patterson

The Wirecutter (a pretty good reviewing site) likes the Sony ICD-UX533 a lot.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant

Can anyone compare Dragon 12.5 working with Scrivener vs 13 premium?  (Windows)  From everything I've been able to find, 13 is faster and more accurate but can no longer do things like quotes and the more complex commands in Scrivener (and Evernote) which 12.5 could.

I've used Google Docs voice to text (which is amazing...much better than Windows with the exact same computer and mic), but it doesn't do quote marks and other items. Even with silly words to find and replace, it's still a nuisance, so I didn't want to pay for 13 and find I had much the same problem.  And I don't want to go through the dictate into one software, import into another.


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## WilliamEsmont

Diane Patterson said:


> The Wirecutter (a pretty good reviewing site) likes the Sony ICD-UX533 a lot.


I've been really happy with my 533.


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## Arches

Thank you, Elizabeth, for starting this thread more than a year ago. I've followed it for a long time, hesitating to try dictation because of all the troubles some have experienced. I've kept wondering, though, because I'm beginning to have minor repetitive stress injury issues. When Amazon put version 13 Premier on sale right before Christmas, I took a chance and bought it and a digital recorder.  
At first, I experienced frustration because the program wouldn't install from the CD. Somehow, the CD became damaged although it was in an unopened box. Nuance technical support was very good, and they gave me a downloaded version to use while they sent a new CD. The download worked perfectly for me, although it took 45 minutes to finish with a very fast ethernet connection. Dragon is a huge, complicated program.
I followed the tips people suggested to train the dragon, and that seems to have worked to a marvel. Although I tend to think and speak in disjointed phrases, the program is incredibly accurate with short phrases instead of complete sentences. I'm particularly impressed with how well it uses context to select the right homonyms. 
What I enjoy most, though, is the freedom to think. I'm a fast typist, but I always experienced a lag between thinking and seeing words on the page. With dictation, the lag is almost gone, so I spend more of my time with the ideas and words and less on the act of typing. Best of all, if the words I've thought aren't quite right, it's easy to say "strike that" and dictate something new. This technology isn't perfect, but it's amazingly good.


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## C. A. Mitchell

valeriec80 said:


> Here are the things that helped me:
> 
> -Do the super-brill thing and record about 1K of your writing (including punctuation) and then go back in and correct everything to make it perfect, because you know exactly what the mistakes are. (This didn't work as well for me as the person who suggested it. I have better accuracy, but not to the point where I don't need to go over everything I dictate.)


Trawling through this thread for Dragon inspiration  I'm probably being a sausage, but when you correct after transcribing, do you mean dictating the corrections in the text file, or doing transcription training? If it's the former, then isn't that affecting the dictation profile rather than the transcription profile? Sorry if I've misunderstood...I really want to try this at the weekend so I can bump up my transcription accuracy.


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## maynard

This is an immensely useful thread. Thanks everyone who tried and reported back for their feedback and insight.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

We have a group on Facebook that I help admin, Dragon Riders, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648134245442422/ if anyone wants to join. 

I am tickled this thread helps people 1+ year later. That brings me a lot of joy.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

Boy, you can't let that Elle Casey into anything.  (sooo kidding, I worship the woman for her videos on Scrivener and all of her awesome posts here early on).


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## Moist_Tissue

Has anyone used Dragon Anywhere and synced it to Scrivener?


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## owlie

I'm using Scrivener on Mac OSX Yosemite and Dragon Dictate 4.0, and Scrivener does not work very well at all. It will take dictated text directly (as you can see in the YouTube Videos), but navigating the text soon becomes a problem, and strange characters appear. For my purposes, the two are incompatible.

update: using CACHE DOCUMENT ( Thank you, Leanne King!) while working in Scrivener certainly improved performance and accuracy. But, as others have found, the smaller the writing application, the better the performance.


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## S.B. Williams

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> We have a group on Facebook that I help admin, Dragon Riders, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648134245442422/ if anyone wants to join.
> 
> I am tickled this thread helps people 1+ year later. That brings me a lot of joy.


Glad to hear about the group. Just sent request to join.


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## ImaWriter

Anyone here using DNS 13 on Windows 7? I'd love to hear any experiences, whether you upgraded or started fresh with 13.  

I've been using 12 for 4 years, and I was thinking of upgrading--until I started reading the Amazon reviews. The reviews are horrifying! I have my issues with 12 sometimes bogging down and/or just general weirdness, but on the whole it works very well for me.


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## Mark E. Cooper

ImaWriter said:


> Anyone here using DNS 13 on Windows 7? I'd love to hear any experiences, whether you upgraded or started fresh with 13.
> 
> I've been using 12 for 4 years, and I was thinking of upgrading--until I started reading the Amazon reviews. The reviews are horrifying! I have my issues with 12 sometimes bogging down and/or just general weirdness, but on the whole it works very well for me.


I have DNS 13 on Win 7. Very accurate after training (by force feeding it finished books) No issues. It's my understanding that 13 is a lot better than 12, but I started at 13 so I can't be sure.


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## ImaWriter

Thanks. I think I might wait for a Black Friday deal and just buy 13 outright. Instead of installing/upgrading on top of 12. I think (hope) I can still use my voice profile that way.


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## NAK Baldron

I've got a question for those who've been training their dragon longer. When you launch Dragon how long is it taking for your profile to load? 
At first, for me, it was close to instantaneously. I'm now about two weeks into using it, and I've trained it up several times. I've been sitting here waiting for over five minutes for my profile to load. Is this normal or should I consider this an issue? Any links to fixes would be appreciated.


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## Amelie.B

Can't answer that question as I've just started training my dragon.
But I wanted to comment here because this was the thread that actually brought me to kindleboards 

After reading the whole thread and trying out the windows speach rekognition to see if dictating is my cup of tea, I finally took the plunge. I'm proud owner of dragon 15 and a sony icd px333 with an extern microfone now. So far I'm pretty impressed. the accuracy is pretty good straight of the box, although dragon apparently doesn't like me writing dialogue and doesn't get quotation marks. 

Since I found it very encouraging to read about the experience from others in this thread, I wanted to record mine: after a bit of playing around I dictated a scene in my wip. It took me 40 minuted as I corrected as I went to train dragon a bit and I got 600 words. Not much but 600 clean draft words and a better trained programm. I expect the word count to go up quite a bit. I'm also a real fast talker.

Does anybody else has version 15? how long did it take you to train it? I'm not sure how much time I should invest now to get better results in the long haul.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

3 year later. I'm still dictating and slaying with Toothless. How is everyone else doing?

Oh and paired with Pacemaker's random word count generator, writing is back to being a GAME for me. GOOOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLL


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## JumpingShip

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> 3 year later. I'm still dictating and slaying with Toothless. How is everyone else doing?
> 
> Oh and paired with Pacemaker's random word count generator, writing is back to being a GAME for me. GOOOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLL


I wanted to try dictating, but Dragon doesn't have a trial version, so I found another option (I forget what it's called, but I'll post when I remember). Anyway, I tried to dictate, but that program didn't seem to allow me to go back and delete stuff. I'm not used to voicing my stories and it almost feels like I need to write it out and then read it for dictation--which completely defeats the purpose of dictating the story! lol

So, how do you all do it? I stuttered and tripped over my tongue when I tried.


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## Lauren P.

MaryMcDonald said:


> So, how do you all do it? I stuttered and tripped over my tongue when I tried.


I think it's like anything new, Mary. Practice. As babies, we crawled and stumbled and fell until finally, after much practice, we walked. Using Dragon is a lot like that.

Also, Scott Baker, the Dragon guru, recommends starting by dictating some of your own work that's already written. This helps you get used to speaking your words aloud and also gets Dragon started on learning your own style. Scott has written some excellent ebooks that are full of tips for using Dragon, and I found them invaluable when starting to learn dictation. It only took me a week or two before I found that I could dictate my work as easily as typing it.

One last suggestion: there's a Facebook page, Dragon Riders, where newbies--and long-term users--can seek help with particular problems. The FB page also has lots of informative posts that they encourage newbies to read.

Good luck.


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## Andres

What happens if you have Dragon and then you change your laptop? Can you re-download it? Would I have to re-train it? I haven't bought the software yet. Just thinking about it.  Thanks.


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## Lauren P.

Andres said:


> What happens if you have Dragon and then you change your laptop? Can you re-download it? Would I have to re-train it? I haven't bought the software yet. Just thinking about it. Thanks.


To be honest, I'm not sure. Perhaps Elizabeth might have the answer; if not, I'm sure someone on the Dragon Riders FB page would be able to answer you.


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## Elizabeth Ann West

Usually by the time you change laptops, a new version of Dragon is out anyway.... but yes, you would have to re-download the software and train it. I'm sure there's some way to transfer over the profile etc. but I've never done it.

TBH, it's pretty darn accurate out of the box these days. I don't even train my MAC one anymore. I just plug in the MP3 recorder and go transcribe and like magic, there are words. 

I keep track of my sessions, how long, how many words how long to edit and final word count. Dictation is most often vomit draft for me. I average 1,000 words per 20 minutes. Then I will edit that up and add to it, usually ending up with between 125-165% of the original words. 

So 1 hour of dictation + 1 hour of editing that equals about 4000 words ready to go to my copyeditor and post as a chapter to readers to find snafus. I'm on the slower side these days as I have my hands full with homeschooling (somethign i was NOT doing back in December 2014) and a high school senior. But, 2 hours a day is about what I get to work, so it could still allow me to do a novel a month. 

Right now I'm experimenting with writing 2 genres at once and using Pacemaker to keep life interesting. I don't LIKE to hit the same word count goal day in and day out. 

As for getting the hang of dictation, I would say test out Google Docs dictation. And try dictating your TEXTS. Yep, all smart phones now have the microphone. But really, the BEST speeds come from recording an MP3 file and transcirbing it. When I'm on my game and continuously dictating, I can get to speeds of 2,000 words in 20 minutes. But I have a BAD BAD habit of going days of not writing that I'm trying to fix, and it's harder to dictate when you aren't loose with it.


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## Arches

Andres said:


> What happens if you have Dragon and then you change your laptop? Can you re-download it? Would I have to re-train it? I haven't bought the software yet. Just thinking about it. Thanks.


I've been using Dragon for about a year, and I recently had to switch laptops. Yes, I had to download it again, even though I have a disk version, and yes, it takes forever. The good news is there is a way to copy your profile and reuse it, and it does work.

Overall, this is the most frustrating and impressive program I use regularly. When its mind is right, it works great, but some of the time, it seems brain-dead and makes a lot of ridiculous mistakes. Usually, when that gets bad enough, I cancel the program and restart it. That usually helps, don't ask me why.


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## Jaelynn

Happy y’all bumped this thread! I just downloaded the trial version of the Dragon Anywhere to get my feet wet before I decide whether or not to take the plunge. Thanks for starting this thread, Elizabeth! I’m excited (and nervous) to try it out. 
Baby steps because I will try with my outline first, then later we’ll see about actual books!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## D A Bale

This is such a timely post!  I've been considering dictation writing for some time now, but which version of Dragon is best?  The basic Home version?  Premium?  Professional?  What are the differences?


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## Arches

D A Bale said:


> This is such a timely post! I've been considering dictation writing for some time now, but which version of Dragon is best? The basic Home version? Premium? Professional? What are the differences?


I have the latest professional version for Windows, I believe it's version 15. I upgraded to it at a discount hoping it would be more stable than Home version 13. No such luck. I see no improvement in the way it performs. Some people favor the version which allows you to transcribe from a digital audio recorder. I've tried that, but the transcription is much poorer than when using a wireless microphone with my laptop. So I'd get the cheapest, Home version 13, if I were to do it over again.


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## D A Bale

Arches said:


> I have the latest professional version for Windows, I believe it's version 15. I upgraded to it at a discount hoping it would be more stable than Home version 13. No such luck. I see no improvement in the way it performs. Some people favor the version which allows you to transcribe from a digital audio recorder. I've tried that, but the transcription is much poorer than when using a wireless microphone with my laptop. So I'd get the cheapest, Home version 13, if I were to do it over again.


Thanks, Arches!


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## Brevoort

D A Bale said:


> This is such a timely post! I've been considering dictation writing for some time now, but which version of Dragon is best? The basic Home version? Premium? Professional? What are the differences?


If you are looking for a version of Dragon that is suitable for transcription then v15 Dragon Professional Individual is probably best, which is not saying a great deal.

I have been using Dragon in one form or another since the early 2000's and while I have never loathed a piece of software more than DNS I continue with it because there is nothing else that will work as well for transcription.

All versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking have suffered from the effects of corporate eruptions, financial misdeeds, and a support team that simply does not give much of a damn. Yet it has succeeded in the market place because there is no, none at all, competition.

Now, it is worth keeping in mind that I no longer use Dragon for anything other that the transcription of recorded notes and long stretches of fiction and non-fiction writing. I use no other features and I never record directly into the PC. Accordingly, I cannot speak for how well the program does in other aspects. However, judging from the many negative reviews online it remains a shoddy piece of work that the company never fixes before releasing a new version containing the old bugs.

Version 15 came out about a year and a half ago with a revamped recognition system for transcription which did away with the need for profiles and voice training. Right out of the box I was seeing my handheld voice recorder dictations appear in Dragon with few if any significant errors. It also, for the first time, allowed transcribing more than one speaker at a time without having to do anything special at all. I am able to do interviews with more than one person at a time with little trouble.

The elimination of the need to set up individual Profiles for the different ways you intend to use Dragon is probably reason enough to upgrade to the latest version. No other area generates more frustrations with Dragon users than troubles with their recording Profiles. The new version is smart enough to figure that stuff out on its own and I applaud Nuance for getting things right.

I run Dragon Professional Individual (v15) for PC on a MacBook under Parallels and Win 10. I occasionally use it on my Windows PC without trouble but 90% of the time it is on the MacBook.

That said, as is typical for Dragon software, version 15 was released too early.

One can, as in other versions, ask Dragon to transcribe a note from a recorder in the USB slot or from a folder. That works fine, but if it has errors that you want Dragon to learn about you must correct them in the same work session. One cannot import a transcription, disconnect from Dragon, and then come back expecting to pick up correcting where you left off.

But new to this version is a feature that I believe used to be only available in the medical and legal versions. It is, for want of a better term, a stand alone batch program. This allows the import and transcription of many files at once and if you have set things so the program can use its own .DRA file format for use in DragonPad then you can come and go in different sessions making corrections.

All well and good, except that for a bunch of reasons the Auto Transcribe Agent fails to work, or stops, or sulks and quits without giving you a clue as to what went wrong.

it took me a while at the beginning to realize that to use the auto feature I had to, absolutely must, exit Dragon Naturally Speaking completely, and only then run the Auto Transcribe folder Agent which is a separate and incompatible piece of software.

Once the process is finished, you can restart Dragon and Import the .DRA files into DragonPad. You can also import RTF DOC and I think some others but corrections made in those files will not be retained and learned from in the program.

But one cannot rely on this weird process to work all the time. I've had countless times when everything just seizes only to start working again the next time I start the program.

The company behind Dragon has little interest in providing support. For some ten years I have emailed and called them about issues and either received wrong information, or no information at all. Version 15 has gone about a year and a half without any updates which is pretty typical for this company. I fully expect that when the next version comes out that many of weirdnesses will be retained yet I will have to pay yet again. The support materials on line at Nuance are a mess. A search through the Knowledge Base will return all sorts of stuff relevant to very old and discontinued products, or offer advice that is simply no longer relevant.

It is not at all hard to find many, perhaps hundreds, of reviews similar to mine. And things are much much worse for users of the Mac version, although I recently read that the latest Mac version shows some signs of improvement.

Again, my comments only reflect my usage which is for transcription only. And again, I have to say that the internal software for turning digital audio into print in the latest version is very good. But that's like saying a Ferrari or Lotus are great cars, which is true, but only when they work.

A note on price. Search for discount coupons and price deals. Dragon is grossly overpriced and third part sellers can often offer good discounts. When Dragon Individual Professional, (the latest version) came out I was able to secure an introductory price of less than a hundred dollars. The going retail price is just short of $300.

One other thing. If you want to be able to import and transcribe your recordings do not buy any of the Home versions. That feature is deliberately crippled in Home versions, and I believe Student, and possibly Academic - not sure on the later. Read the detailed features of the version you want to buy with care.

In my opinion, the best book you can buy about Dragon is Scott Baker's *The Writer's Guide to Training Your Dragon: Using Speech Recognition Software to Dictate Your Book and Supercharge Your Writing Workflow*

Available in ebook and other formats

I have no connection etc etc


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## Andres

Thanks to Elizabeth and everyone for all the insightful advice!


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