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CMU Sphinx VS Tesseract

Compare CMU Sphinx VS Tesseract and see what are their differences

CMU Sphinx logo CMU Sphinx

CMU Sphinx is a speaker-independent large vocabulary continuous speech recognizer released under...

Tesseract logo Tesseract

Tesseract is an optical character recognition engine for various operating systems
  • CMU Sphinx Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-17
  • Tesseract Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21

CMU Sphinx features and specs

  • Open Source
    CMU Sphinx is free and open source, allowing developers to use, modify, and distribute the software without any licensing costs.
  • Offline Functionality
    CMU Sphinx can be used for offline speech recognition, making it suitable for applications where internet connectivity is unreliable or unavailable.
  • Flexible and Extensible
    CMU Sphinx provides a variety of tools and libraries that can be extended and customized for specific use cases, such as adapting it to recognize domain-specific vocabulary.
  • Multiple Language Support
    Supports various languages and accents, making it versatile for global applications.
  • Custom Models
    Allows the creation of custom acoustic and language models tailored to specific applications, thereby improving accuracy in specialized environments.

Possible disadvantages of CMU Sphinx

  • Accuracy
    CMU Sphinx often has lower recognition accuracy compared to more modern, deep learning-based speech recognition systems.
  • Complex Setup
    Setting up and configuring CMU Sphinx can be complex and requires a significant understanding of speech recognition technology.
  • Limited Community Support
    The user community and support for CMU Sphinx are not as large or active as those for some commercial or newer open-source alternatives.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running CMU Sphinx, especially with large custom models, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant CPU and memory resources.
  • Lagging Behind in Technology
    CMU Sphinx has not kept pace with recent advancements in speech recognition technology, particularly deep learning innovations employed by newer systems.

Tesseract features and specs

  • Open Source
    Tesseract is free and open-source, allowing developers to use, modify, and distribute the code without any cost. This makes it accessible for individual projects and startup companies.
  • Multiple Language Support
    Tesseract supports a wide range of languages, including those with complex scripts. This makes it versatile for applications in different linguistic contexts.
  • Active Community
    The project has an active community and is well-maintained on GitHub, which means regular updates, bug fixes, and community support are available.
  • High Accuracy
    When properly configured and used with high-quality images, Tesseract can provide highly accurate OCR results.
  • Extensible
    Tesseract can be integrated with other tools and frameworks, such as image pre-processing libraries, to enhance its functionality and improve OCR results.

Possible disadvantages of Tesseract

  • Complex Setup
    Setting up Tesseract can be complex for beginners. It may require additional dependencies and configuration to perform optimally.
  • Performance
    Tesseract is not the fastest OCR engine available. For applications requiring real-time processing, its performance may be a bottleneck.
  • Image Quality Dependency
    Tesseract's accuracy heavily depends on the quality of the input image. Low-quality images or those with significant noise can lead to poor OCR results.
  • Limited Handwriting Recognition
    Tesseract primarily excels at printed text recognition and offers limited capabilities for handwritten text.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Tesseract requires significant computational resources, which might be a limitation for mobile or low-power devices.

Analysis of CMU Sphinx

Overall verdict

  • Yes, CMU Sphinx is a good choice for those seeking an adaptable and versatile speech recognition solution, particularly when an open-source option is preferred.

Why this product is good

  • CMU Sphinx is an open-source speech recognition system that is well-regarded for its flexibility and the broad range of features it offers. It supports several languages, is adaptable to various scenarios, and includes tools for acoustic model training. Its open-source nature allows developers to customize and modify the code to fit specific needs, which is valuable for educational and research purposes. Additionally, it has a strong community and a wealth of documentation and resources.

Recommended for

  • Research and educational purposes
  • Developers requiring a customizable speech recognition tool
  • Projects needing speech recognition in multiple languages
  • Users who prefer open-source software solutions

Analysis of Tesseract

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Tesseract is generally considered to be a good choice for OCR tasks due to its robustness, flexibility, and the fact that it is free and open-source.

Why this product is good

  • Tesseract is an open-source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine that is highly regarded for its accuracy, multilingual support, and active community. It can be used to extract text from images, which is useful in a variety of applications, such as digitizing documents, number plate recognition, and more. The project is continually being improved, with regular updates and a wide array of tools and libraries that integrate well with other software.

Recommended for

    Tesseract is recommended for developers and organizations looking for a reliable OCR engine to embed in their applications or workflows. It is suitable for projects that require text extraction from scanned documents, images, or PDFs and is especially beneficial for those who prefer open-source solutions.

CMU Sphinx videos

Training CMU Sphinx Speech Recognition

Tesseract videos

Tesseract – Sonder | Album Review | Rocked

More videos:

  • Review - TesseracT - POLARIS Album Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CMU Sphinx and Tesseract)
Knowledge Sharing
100 100%
0% 0
OCR
0 0%
100% 100
Speech Recognition And Processing
Image Recognition
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CMU Sphinx and Tesseract

CMU Sphinx Reviews

We have no reviews of CMU Sphinx yet.
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Tesseract Reviews

7 Best OCR Software of 2022 (Free and PAID)
Tesseract is the best free OCR converter for various operating systems. It is free software released under the Apache License. Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines currently available.
The best alternatives to Abbyy FineReader
Top five alternatives to Abbyy FineReader PDF1. Klippa DocHorizonPros of Klippa DocHorizonConsKlippa DocHorizon is used in industries such asKlippa DocHorizon offers you data extraction for multiple file types such asPricing2. VeryfiPros of VeryfiConsVeryfi is used in industries such asVeryfi’s OCR software offers data extraction for multiple file types such asPricing3....
Source: www.klippa.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tesseract seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 79 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CMU Sphinx mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of CMU Sphinx yet. Tracking of CMU Sphinx recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Tesseract mentions (79)

  • Mistral OCR
    Https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/seven_segments/ https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~auerswal/ssocr/ https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract https://www.google.com/search?q=home+assistant+ocr+integration https://www.google.com/search?q=esphome+ocr+sensor https://hackaday.com/2021/02/07/an-esp-will-read-your-meter-for-you/ ...start digging around and you'll likely find something. HA has integrations which... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • OCR4all
    „OCR4all combines various open-source solutions to provide a fully automated workflow for automatic text recognition of historical printed (OCR) and handwritten (HTR) material.“ It seems to be based on OCR-D, which itself is based on - https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract - https://github.com/ocropus-archive/DUP-ocropy See - https://ocr-d.de/en/models. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • OCR Solutions Uncovered: How to Choose the Best for Different Use Cases
    Custom Integration: Developers and businesses needing flexibility for custom integration into applications and projects should consider open-source solutions like Tesseract OCR or API-based services like API4AI OCR. These options provide APIs for seamless integration into existing software systems. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Mastering Text Extraction from Multi-Page PDFs Using OCR API: A Step-by-Step Guide
    Tesseract OCR is an open-source OCR engine created by Google, known for its accuracy and wide language support. It is particularly favored by developers for its flexibility and the absence of licensing fees, allowing it to be integrated into various applications. However, it demands more effort to set up and utilize compared to cloud-based OCR services. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Ask HN: How to OCR a PDF and preserve whitespace?
    Many of the OCR services are based on the free, open-source Tesseract OCR, but don’t expose all of the options. If you’re handy with shell scripts or Python, you can probably get better performance by hand-tuning options for your particular images. For example, if I recall there are page segmentation options to tell Tesseract to expect multi-column text. That alone might get you better performance than the... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing CMU Sphinx and Tesseract, you can also consider the following products

LipSurf - "Siri for Chrome" Completely control the browser without your hands -- say "google...

ABBYY FineReader - ABBYY's latest PDF editor software, FineReader 16 you can easily convert files like PDF to Excel, PDF to Word, edit, share, collaborate & more with this PDF editor!

Express Dictate Digital Dictation Software - Express Dictate software is a voice recording program that works like a dictaphone.

GImageReader - gImageReader is a simple Gtk/Qt front-end to the Tesseract OCR Engine.

TextFromToSpeech - Free online speech recognition tool that will help you write text with your voice without typing.

Onlineocr.net - Free Online OCR service allows you to convert PDF document to MS Word file, scanned images to editable text formats and extract text from JPEG/TIFF/BMP files