Is it possible to use my dragon for mac to transcribe audio files?

August 11, 2014 11:24 AM

So I have a voice recorder. Which I use because LA and traffic. And I have Dragon Naturally Speaking 3.0 for Mac. The question is whether it's possible to use them together to transcribe dictation. For my purposes it doesn't have to be completely right. It just has to be a scratch draft to fix later. IS such a thing possible? And IF so...how?
posted by rileyray3000 to Technology (4 answers total)

The FAQ for Dragon Naturally Speaking will probably answer a lot of your questions.

TL;DR - probably, depending on what version of the software you have and what kind of recorder you're using.
posted by Naberius at 11:47 AM on August 11, 2014

You may need to fool around with Soundflower, or a similar utility, which lets you route audio around within a Mac. I'm thinking, maybe you'd need to send the audio from file playback to the mic input, specifically.
posted by thelonius at 11:54 AM on August 11, 2014

I have done this with version 4 and it works fine. You can upload files directly into Dragon, so you don't need to use Soundflower or mess around with the system inputs. Here's a tutorial on how to do it with version 3.

Be warned that if you don't dictate the punctuation, you will end up with a long stream of text with no breaks at all. Also, it won't pick up two different speakers on the same recording, so it's not good for conversations.
posted by ohisee at 12:02 PM on August 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I want to add that the reviews I read said there was a pretty big difference in accuracy for this sort of thing between Dragon 3 and 4. If it's not working for you, it might be worth upgrading. Also, I have a good recorder and use an external mic, so all the audio is really clear. The quality of the recorder and mic could impact your accuracy as well.
posted by ohisee at 12:09 PM on August 11, 2014