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Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

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Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#41

Post by the_king »

qntmfred wrote: post #35

I use the built-in voice typing in Windows and am pretty happy with it. How would you say this compares (presuming most of your comparisons are mac-centric)

Aqua is in another league when it comes to accuracy. I just ran them side by side on a simple q to ChatGPT and here were the results...

Aqua Voice

  What is the first recorded eclipse in human history? I'm not asking when the first one occurred, but the first written record we have of an eclipse.
Windows Voice Typing (v11 24H2, Dell XPS 13 9340)

  What is the first recorded eclipse in human history i'm not asking 1 like the first occurred but the first ridden record we have of an eclipse
Windows mistakes were:

-"1" should be "when"

-"ridden" should be "written"

-No punctuation

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#42

Post by the_king »

aylmao wrote: post #34

This is super impressive, great job! Side-comment of something this made me think of (again): tech builds too much for tech. I've lived in the Bay before, so I know why this happens. When you're there, everyone around you is in tech, your girlfriend is in tech, you go to parties and everyone invariably ends up talking about work, which is tech. Your frustrations are with tech tools and so are your peers', so you're c…

thanks!

I share the same sentiment. I remember thinking in college how annoying it was that I was reading low-resolution, marked-up, skewed, b&w scans of a book using Adobe Acrobat while CS concentrators were doing everything in VS Code (then brand new).

but we do think voice is actually great with Cursor. It’s also really useful in the terminal for certain things. Checking out or creating branches, for example.

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#45

Post by jmcintire1 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #10

This looks like it'll slurp up all your data and upload it into a cloud. Thanks, no. I want privacy, offline mode and source code for something as crucial to system security as an input method. "we also collect and process your voice inputs [..] We leverage this data for improvements and development [..] Sharing of your information [..] service providers [..] OpenAI" https://withaqua.com/privacy

fair point. offline+local would be ideal, but as it stands we can't run asr and an llm locally at the speed that is required to provide the level of service we want to.

given that we need the cloud, we offer zero data retention -- you can see this in the app. your concern is as much about ux and communications as it is privacy

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#46

Post by adamesque »

I was very delighted by Aqua v1, which felt like magic at first.

But I’ve noticed/learned that I can’t dictate written content. My brain just does not work that way at all — as I write I am constantly pausing to think, to revise, etc and it feels like a completely different part of my brain is engaged. Everything I dictated with Aqua I had to throw away and rewrite.

Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, had any success retraining themselves toward dictation? There are fleeting moments where it truly feels like it would be much faster.

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#47

Post by the_king »

adamesque wrote: post #46

I was very delighted by Aqua v1, which felt like magic at first. But I’ve noticed/learned that I can’t dictate written content. My brain just does not work that way at all — as I write I am constantly pausing to think, to revise, etc and it feels like a completely different part of my brain is engaged. Everything I dictated with Aqua I had to throw away and rewrite. Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, had any…

I think Aqua v1 had two problems:

1. The models weren't ready.

2. The interactions were often strained. Not every edit/change is easy to articulate with your voice.

If 1 had been our only problem, we might have had a hit. In reality, I think optimizing model errors allowed us to ignore some fundamental awkwardness in the experience. We've tried to rectify this with v2 by putting less emphasis on streaming for every interaction and less emphasis on commands, replacing it with context.

Hopefully it can become a tool in the toolbox.

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#48

Post by jmcintire1 »

adamesque wrote: post #46

I was very delighted by Aqua v1, which felt like magic at first. But I’ve noticed/learned that I can’t dictate written content. My brain just does not work that way at all — as I write I am constantly pausing to think, to revise, etc and it feels like a completely different part of my brain is engaged. Everything I dictated with Aqua I had to throw away and rewrite. Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, had any…

Imo it is a question of right tool for the right job, adjusted for differences between people. For me, the use case that made our product click was prompting Cursor while coding. Then I wanted to use it whenever I talked to chatgpt -- it's much faster to talk and then read, and repeat.

Voice is great for whenever the limiting factor to thought is speed of typing.

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#49

Post by noahjk »

adamesque wrote: post #46

I was very delighted by Aqua v1, which felt like magic at first. But I’ve noticed/learned that I can’t dictate written content. My brain just does not work that way at all — as I write I am constantly pausing to think, to revise, etc and it feels like a completely different part of my brain is engaged. Everything I dictated with Aqua I had to throw away and rewrite. Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, had any…

Same here. My two biggest hurdles are:

1. like you mentioned, the second I start talking about something, I totally forget where I'm going, have to pause, it's like my thoughts aren't coming to me. Probably some sort of mental feedback loop plus, like you mentioned, different method of thinking.

2. in the back of my mind, I'm always self-conscious that someone is listening, so it's a privacy / being judged / being overheard feeling which adds a layer of mental feedback.

There's also not great audio clues for handling on-the-fly editing. I've tried to say "parentheses word parentheses" and it just gets written out. I've tried to say "strike that" and it gets written out. These interfaces are very 'happy path' and don't do a lot of processing (on iOS, I can say "period" and get a '.' (or ?,!) but that's about the extent).

I have had some success with long-form recording sessions which are transcribed afterwards. After getting over the short initial hump, I can brain-dump to the recording, and then trust an app like Voice Notes or Superwhisper to transcribe, and then clean up after.

The main issue I run into there, though, is that I either forget to record something (ex. a conversation that I want to review later) or there is too much friction / I don't record often enough to launch it quickly or even remember to use that workflow.

I get the same feeling with smart home stuff - it was awesome for a while to turn lights on and off with voice, but lately there's the added overhead of "did it hear me? do I need to repeat myself? What's the least amount of words I can say? Why can't I just think something into existence instead? Or have a perfect contextual interface on a physical device?"

Re: Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows

#50

Post by mrtesthah »

jmcintire1 wrote: post #45
fxtentacle wrote: post #10

This looks like it'll slurp up all your data and upload it into a cloud. Thanks, no. I want privacy, offline mode and source code for something as crucial to system security as an input method. "we also collect and process your voice inputs [..] We leverage this data for improvements and development [..] Sharing of your information [..] service providers [..] OpenAI" https://withaqua.com/privacy

fair point. offline+local would be ideal, but as it stands we can't run asr and an llm locally at the speed that is required to provide the level of service we want to. given that we need the cloud, we offer zero data retention -- you can see this in the app. your concern is as much about ux and communications as it is privacy

MacWhisper does realtime system-wide dictation on your local machine (among other things). Just a one-time fee for an app you download -- the way shareware is supposed to be. Of course it doesn't use MoE transcription with 6 models like Aqua Voice, but if you guys expect to be acquired by Apple (that is your exit strategy, right?), you're going to need better guarantees of privacy than "we don't log".
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