About Accuracy Tuning

Overview

About

Accuracy Tuning is an adaptation process that analyzes audio data saved from your dictation to increase Dragon’s recognition accuracy. Accuracy Tuning analyzes the first two to three hours of your dictation, learning the most from your speech during the first 15 minutes. If you are an accented speaker, Accuracy Tuning is especially beneficial for you.

Accuracy Tuning consists of the following:

  • Acoustic optimization—Helps Dragon understand how you pronounce your words. Updates your user profile with the following:

    • Up to 180 minutes of acoustic data from dictation and any corrections you make, including corrections with the keyboard.

    • Words on which you trained Dragon.

    Acoustic optimization can take an hour or more to run, depending on how much dictation you’ve done since the last time it ran. You should run acoustic optimization at a time when you’re not actively using your computer.

  • Language model optimization—Helps Dragon understand how you construct sequences of words. Updates your language model with frequently dictated word sequences extracted from your user profile's DRA files.

    Language model optimization takes very little time to run.

Optional?

Yes

Prerequisites

To run Accuracy Tuning, you must have done the following:

  • Dictated for at least 4 minutes
  • Made a correction in one of the following ways:

    • Through the Correction menu by selecting a numbered option
    • Using the keyboard

If you attempt to run Accuracy Tuning before you’ve met the prerequisites, a message indicating that there is not enough acoustic data to run it appears.

When to run

  • By default, Dragon runs Accuracy Tuning every day at 3:00AM. You can change the schedule to a more convenient time and frequency in Administrative Settings. For more information, see Scheduling Accuracy Tuning in Administrative Settings.

    Scheduled Accuracy Tuning runs only when you have met the prerequisites, exited Dragon, and left your machine on.

  • If you have added words to Dragon’s vocabulary and trained them, you should run Accuracy Tuning.

Settings to configure

Before running Accuracy Tuning, configure the following settings.

  • Options dialog box—Data tab:

    • Store corrections in archive—Select to enable.

    • Archive size—Optionally change the amount of acoustic data Dragon retains to add to your user profile. Default value is 180 minutes.

    • Run Accuracy Tuning at the time scheduled by your Administrator—Optionally select to enable. For more information on scheduled accuracy tuning, see Scheduling Accuracy Tuning in Administrative Settings.

    If you are using a Dragon edition where Nuance Management Center/NMS mode is enabled, this page is unavailable in the Dragon client. Your Dragon administrator manages these settings in the NMC console.

  • Administrative Settings dialog box—Miscellaneous tab tab:

    • Correction Only Mode—Deselect to disable this setting. Accuracy Tuning does not run when Correction Only Mode is enabled.
    • Disable automatic acoustic model selection in the Acoustic Optimizer—Select to prevent Dragon from choosing a different acoustic model for your user profile during Accuracy Tuning.
  • Administrative Settings dialog box—Scheduled Tasks tab tab:

    • Enable scheduled Accuracy Tuning—Selected by default.

    • Configure—Click to configure intervals and time.

How to run

You can start Accuracy Tuning:

  • As a scheduled task.

    Dragon schedules the Accuracy Tuning task to run every night at 3:00AM by default. You can change this to a more convenient time on the Administrative Settings dialog box—Scheduled Tasks tab tab. You must have exited Dragon and left your computer on for the task to run.

    You can also schedule Accuracy Tuning for selected or all user profiles, including Roaming user profiles, using the Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer Scheduler. For more information, see Scheduling Accuracy Tuning with the Acoustic Optimizer Scheduler.

  • When Dragon prompts you.

    When you exit Dragon, it checks the amount of acoustic data available for your user profile. If there is sufficient data, and you did not close your user profile before exiting, a prompt appears, giving you the option to run Accuracy Tuning. If you choose to run it, Dragon performs Accuracy Tuning on the last user profile you opened.

  • From the DragonBar's Accuracy Center menu.

    You can run Accuracy Tuning at any time (provided the prerequisites are met) by selecting Tools>Accuracy Center>Launch Accuracy Tuning from the DragonBar. Dragon performs Accuracy Tuning on your current user profile and microphone.

 

Related procedures Additional information
Scheduling Accuracy Tuning in Administrative Settings About acoustic models
Scheduling Accuracy Tuning with the Acoustic Optimizer Scheduler About the language model
  Improving accuracy