A solid service provided by Microsoft which has some room for minor improvements. Definitely one of the top service in this market and well worth considering
March 29, 2022

A solid service provided by Microsoft which has some room for minor improvements. Definitely one of the top service in this market and well worth considering

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Speech to Text
  • Text to Speech
  • Speech Translation

Overall Satisfaction with Azure Cognitive Speech Services

There are two main uses for this product within our organisation as of yet, firstly: we use the accurate voice analysis with custom speech models in lectures to ensure our lectures are accessible to students with hearing-related accessibility issues, mostly through live text translation. Secondly, students are able to use this service and integrate its functionality into their application development during projects within their computing degrees.
  • It implements accurate voice analysis which can be improved with customised speech models
  • Affordable
  • Doesn't have to be run online/ can be run and stored locally
  • It can be quite difficult to set up
  • Speech recognition is occasionally inaccurate
  • It sometimes struggles with non-native English speakers' accents
  • Accurate speech detection and transcription
  • Live speech detection functionality
  • Easy deployment
  • Increased accessibility of our lectures for students
  • Reduced the time required by lectures to introduce CC captions to remote lectures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Having used both this service and IBM Watson's Text to Speech, I can safely say that IBM's product comes out on top but this is a close call as both products are very good in their own right. That being said, this Azure service lacks some of the extra functionality that can be found in other products such as broader multi-language support. This product is also more costly than some other alternatives which is a con in my opinion. Azure does, however, come out on top in regards to customer support and general support of the product as it is supported by Microsoft which also means that it integrates well with other parts of the Microsoft suite.

Do you think Azure AI Speech delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Azure AI Speech's feature set?

Yes

Did Azure AI Speech live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Azure AI Speech go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Azure AI Speech again?

Yes

This service is well suited for scenarios where you need to integrate text-to-speech and/or speech-to-text into applications. Within our organisation, it is primarily used by students for development purposes to enable said functionality but is also used to provide accessibility to students who have hearing-related issues. Its multi-language support is also beneficial for our international students who have English as a second language and are therefore able to rapidly translate any text or speech that they do not understand.