Fundamentals of Speech Recognition Review

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Fundamentals of Speech Recognition ReviewThis book is a comprehensive and excellent introduction to the ever-expanding
field of Automatic Speech Recognition. Starting with models of speech
production, speech characterization, methods of analysis (transforms etc),
the authors go onto discuss pattern comparison, hidden Markov models (HMMs),
and design and implementation of speech recognition systems, right from
isolated word recognition to large vocabulary continuous speech recognition
systems. Neural networks and their use in speech recognition is also presented,
though somewhat briefly.
Rabiner was the author of the first widely-read tutorial on HMMs, so
naturally the presentation of HMMs is one of the strong points of this
textbook. The theory is developed in detail, but in an easy to follow
fashion, starting with the very basics and with plenty of helpful examples.
The implementation is discussed at great length as well, starting with
the simplest of tasks and progressing to the state-of-the-art (circa 1993).
That isn't to say that HMMs are the only good part of this book - indeed,
practically every topic, whether it be perception, transforms, vector quantization
or dynamic programming, is presented with great clarity. This book really is easy to
learn from, with numerous examples and illustrations.
The field of speech recognition is inherently multi-disciplinary in nature,
drawing upon various areas of study, including Physics, Physiology, Acoustics,
Signal Processing and Computer Science, to name but a few. The authors do a
great job of explaining all these facets, as well as the mathematics that
is an essential tool.

The only caveat is that it's now a little old (published 1993), since the
field has been growing by leaps and bounds - so while the basics remain
the same, things have changed and hence what's said here should not be
taken as the last word on the subject.
Perhaps a new edition is due, and would certainly be most welcome.
However, for an excellent, accessible introduction to this exciting field,
this is still a great choice.Fundamentals of Speech Recognition Overview Provides a theoretically sound,technically accurate, and complete description of the basicknowledge and ideas that constitute a modern system forspeech recognition by machine. Coversproduction, perception, and acoustic-phoneticcharacterization of the speech signal; signal processing andanalysis methods for speech recognition; pattern comparisontechniques; speech recognition system design andimplementation; theory and implementation of hidden Markovmodels; speech recognition based on connected word models;large vocabulary continuous speech recognition; and task-oriented application of automatic speech recognition. For practicing engineers, scientists,linguists, and programmers interested in speech recognition.

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Spoken Language Processing: A Guide to Theory, Algorithm and System Development Review

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Spoken Language Processing: A Guide to Theory, Algorithm and System Development ReviewThis book is a comprehensive overview of most of the major topics associated with speech processing. Divided into five main sections, the book is well structured with a clear division of concerns. The title, "Spoken Language Processing", may be misleading to some as language processing topics only accounts for one section of the book.
The first two sections cover the fundamental theories that should be understood before embarking in-depth into a study of speech processing. This may seem an obvious approach but many texts do not follow this pattern making their use as reference tomes limited. Separating background theory from its use is also useful in that it allows a rigorous approach to its description. Too often texts give a hurried imprecise overview of theories used before launching into a long and complex use of the theory; losing the reader instantly in a quagmire of formulae.
The first two sections of the book deals with background material, material that the reader should at least understand the key concepts of. The first section concentrates on speech in general (including production and perception), probability and statistics, and pattern classification. These last two topics mentioned are both important parts of the book and are dealt with in their own chapters. Both are well written with the right amount of explanation and background. Much of the remainder of the book expects at least some familiarity with the material presented here. These chapters, like all chapters in the book finish with a section entitled, "Historical Perspective and Further Reading". The inclusion of recommended further reading, in addition to the vast number of references appearing in each chapter, make the book as a whole a very good starting point for any work in speech processing.
The second section concerns itself with the DSP topics which relate to speech processing. In this section the reader will find everything from FFTs to multi-rate signal processing and speech signal representations to speech coding. Again the section is well written and the reader is not forced to refer to other texts to understand what is written. If a topic is not expanded upon here then it is an indication that is not dealt further in any great depth in the remainder of the book.
The third section of the book covers speech recognition and is probably the section which will find most use with many readers. This section is very thorough in its treatment of the subject. It starts immediately with a discussion of Hidden Markov Models which is almost exclusively the method employed in the pattern matching stage of speech recognition. Any algorithms that are mentioned are also detailed which really make the book useful. In fact algorithms are presented throughout the book making it a practical reference as much as a theoretical one. This is important because there is a big jump from understanding theory to being able to implement an algorithm to exploit that theory. Other topics covered include an excellent chapter on environmental robustness with one of the best discussions of microphones I have seen. Language modelling and search algorithms are given a thorough treatment. I would like to have seen more detailed information on front-end processing and endpoint detection, as this remains a critical stage of the recognition process. Perhaps the level of detail reflects the fact that this is currently a hot research topic with potential for significant advancement.
Section four, on text-to-speech processing, is a good overview of the field and better than any book I've seen on the subject. It shows numerous block diagrams of what you need to build such a system and gives numerous algorithms in pseudocode. It also dedicates a subsection to each block of the text-to-speech system block diagram, discussing in detail what you would need to do to implement that particular block. Since much of the individual blocks have been discussed earlier in the book, it refers you back to specific earlier sections for details.
The fifth section is a short one on entire systems and shows some case studies, concentrating on what Microsoft was doing at the time this book was published, since that is where the authors' research came from. I would highly recommend that anyone anticipating getting into speech processing have a copy of this classic nearby.Spoken Language Processing: A Guide to Theory, Algorithm and System Development OverviewThis will be the definitive book on spoken language systems written by the people at Microsoft Research who have developed the voic-activated technologies that will be imbedded in Windows 2000 and other key Microsoft products of the future. This is not a Microsoft book, however, this is a book on the science and linguistics of this technology and how to use it in developing and building hardware and software products.

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Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard - DVDR Review

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Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard - DVDR ReviewI tryed the product and it did not understand me ,Most people I talk to have no problem understanding me, so I know its not me. Just verry fustratingNuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard - DVDR Overview

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Ectaco C-Pen 20 Handheld Scanner Review

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Ectaco C-Pen 20 Handheld Scanner ReviewAs a scholar who works with books and other printed sources a lot, I have long been on the lookout for an easy way to scan text into my laptop. I've tried using both flatbed scanners and digital cameras for this purpose, but I've found both to be awkward and time-consuming. That's why I was pleased to discover the C-Pen 20 - it's not perfect, but it does the job quicker and more easily than any of the alternatives.
PROS:
- It's easy to use; you just press the pointer to the page and a light comes on to let you know that the sensor is active. You then sweep the C-Pen from left to right at moderate speed as if it were a highlighter, and it converts the text on the page into electronic characters on your computer.
- The text instantly appears wherever the cursor on your screen is located, so you can use this device with just about any Windows program (e.g., Word, Access, etc.).
- The recognition rate is higher than I thought it would be; it's better than 99% on book-sized text. In practical terms, this means that you'll get one or two errors on average per paragraph, but these flaws are easily corrected (particularly if your spell checker highlights them for you automatically).
- It's small and easily portable, so you can take it with you to libraries and archives with a laptop.
CONS:
- The character recognition is sometimes thrown off by underlining and other marks on the page.
- You must use it with a PC or laptop that has a USB port (it doesn't run on batteries like some scanning pens).
- Even though it recognizes just about every major language written in Latin, Cyrillic, or Greek letters, it can't handle older typefaces (like German Fraktur). It also has trouble recognizing some symbols (such as footnotes).
- You have to scan each line of text one at a time, so it's not necessarily the best solution if you need to copy many pages of text.
The bottom line is that the C-Pen 20 has been an excellent investment for me, and I recommend it to anyone who's looking for an easy way to transfer printed text into an electronic medium.Ectaco C-Pen 20 Handheld Scanner Overview

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