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Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

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Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's tons, Parakeet was the last I remember seeing which seemed to gain traction (independent lightweight implementations etc).

Parakeet is way faster (on Nvidia hardware) but not quite as accurate in my experience.

It's also super fast on CPU.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#72
I stopped reading after seeing they compared only with Whisper Small, Base, Tiny

This is useless test and benchmark when you have these day Whisper-V3-Large and Whisper V3-Turbo that you can faster than realtime on 5 years old macbook on apple sillicon (ANE). They didn't even compared to parakeet v2 or parakeet v3. And only english language...

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#73
post #68
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, this test is English-only, while a strong point of other models is to understand different languages without first having to say which one (so you don't need 3 different keyboard shortcuts if you wanna dictate in 3 languages day-to-day)

As an Australian, Apples voice models have always sucked. I've tried using stt (again) more recently and its improved, but i'm so tired of having to Americanize my voice to get it to figure out what the hell i'm saying.

It also struggles with my NYC-area accent, which is only medium thick.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#74
post #68
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, this test is English-only, while a strong point of other models is to understand different languages without first having to say which one (so you don't need 3 different keyboard shortcuts if you wanna dictate in 3 languages day-to-day)

As an Australian, Apples voice models have always sucked. I've tried using stt (again) more recently and its improved, but i'm so tired of having to Americanize my voice to get it to figure out what the hell i'm saying.

As a Texan first, American second, I sympathize with this statement. Siri can't understand me probably 25% of the time. I use STT for iMessage while in the car, and half the time it will take 3+ times to either get it right or me give up, and hope to remember to text them by hand when I next stop.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#75
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which world 98% accuracy is not usable?

In a world where you say "tmux" and Apple's VTT writes "T Max".

You can't reasonably expect generic ASR to infer tmux from "tee-mucks". "tee-em-you-ex" works reliably if you're ok with capitalisation for your use case.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#77
post #67

Whisper is the wrong model to benchmark against, or rather, there are better models that are state of the art now like Nemotron and Parakeet both by Nvidia, as well as Mistral's Voxtral and Cohere Transcribe. However, what's funny is, RIP to a lot of the paid apps that simply wrap Whisper, I'm sure Apple will make a native GUI such as a recorder app for macOS that obviates the need for these wrappers, which everyone…

Apple's own Voice Memos app already does automatic transcription since macOS 15 / iOS 18.

Speech-to-text is also already built into the keyboard as well, so it can be used in any app where a user would type.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#78

Whisper is the wrong model to benchmark against, or rather, there are better models that are state of the art now like Nemotron and Parakeet both by Nvidia, as well as Mistral's Voxtral and Cohere Transcribe. However, what's funny is, RIP to a lot of the paid apps that simply wrap Whisper, I'm sure Apple will make a native GUI such as a recorder app for macOS that obviates the need for these wrappers, which everyone…

> there are better models that are state of the art now like Nemotron and Parakeet both by Nvidia Is parakeet state of the art? It always transcribes speech fragments for me, like if I stutter and say "m-m-m-map" parakeet will dutifully transcribe "m m m map". Which I guess could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you want. Whisper does not do that however. I do like cohere transcribe a lot.

Agree on this point. Recent anecdotal testing I did found Whisper is still better than Parakeet.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#79

Vs Voxtral would be a better comparison. No other model, open or closed, has been able to hit such a low AER (Acronym Error Rate ;)) for my meeting transcripts. Seems to understand/infer all the technobabble I use at work. Never have to edit anything. Whisper was catastrophically bad.

I typically disable autocorrect on Apple products because of this, cautiously optimistic about their improved speech models, but definitely worried that it's going to 'correct' technical jargon to more common words.

Re: Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

#80
For my current purposes, I need a speech-to-text model/API to also emit word-level timestamps - for now, that makes ElevenLabs's Scribe v2 the best multiplatform, multi-language choice though it does look like this SpeechAnalyzer API provides them (although only for English).
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