Speech Recognition

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Sunday 23 December 2007, Edward Dunagin wrote:
> I had IBM's VoaVoice for Linuc and Xvoice for Linux as well working on
> a Debian system five or so years ago, but I had a system crash and
> lost it. Just trying to get the same working now on my UbuntuStudio
> system.

Yeah, those are the names of the things I wrestled with to no avail.  The 
problem now is that all of that is obsolete, and/or unobtainable.

For example, the ViaVoice Linux mini-FAQ said in 2005:

  Rupert Kolb asked IBM about the status of Linux ViaVoice in March 2005. The
  answers were: IBM: ``ViaVoice is no longer supported by IBM. You may contact
  Media Gold GmbH, or ScanSoft Germany GmbH''. Media Gold GmbH: ``We have
  nothing for Linux''. ScanSoft Germany GmbH: ``We can't offer a program for
  Linux''. [1]

Then there's the Speech Recognition HOWTO from 2002 [2] which offers more 
promises of things that were, but no longer are.

Finally, I think I pinned my hopes on the Sphinx project, which purported to 
be an open source speech recognition application.  But this warning from 
their web page is an apt assessment of the status quo as of maybe a year ago:

  Note however that Sphinx is not a final product. Those with a certain level
  of expertise can achieve great results with the versions of Sphinx available
  here, but a naive user will certainly need further help. In other words, the
  software available here is not meant for users with no experience in speech,
  but for expert users.[3]

And so on, and so forth.  I probably followed more leads last time, but none 
of them went anywhere.

But if you've got this smell in your nose, don't let me talk you out of 
smashing your head into some brick walls for yourself.  If you're anything 
like me, you're going to try anyway, no matter what anyone says to discourage 
you. So have at it my friend, and good luck!  Maybe you will figure out 
something that I didn't.

1. http://volker.dnsalias.net/linux/viavoice-faq/node4.html)
2. http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Speech-Recognition-HOWTO.html)
3. http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/html/cmusphinx.php
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre