This release provides new Improved language packs for all Speechmatics' 31 commercially available languages with each language now contain a standard and enhanced model. The standard is the default model with the same or slightly improved accuracy before. The enhanced model is more accurate for all languages, and must be explicitly requested in the configuration. The enhanced model requires more compute resources to run and specific hardware. Please refer to the Install/Admin Guide on our recommendations for running the enhanced model.
Currently, Speechmatics supports 2 python libraries for use with our Real-time products.
smwebsocket-pyis recommended for use for the Real-time Virtual Appliance only, andspeechmatics-pythonis recommended for use in both our Real-time Container and our Real-time Virtual Appliance. In a future release we will exclusively supportspeechmatics-pythonas our preferred Python library. We recommend you familiarise yourself with this library and use wherever possible. Please contact support@speechmatics.com if you require access to this library.
The new enhanced model has increased compute requirements and new recommended AVX flags. Please check the updated system requirements in the installation guide and ensure your hardware meets Speechmatics' recommendations. Otherwise you may see a slow down in processing speed when using the enhanced model. It is also now necessary to run the appliance on processors that support AVX2 in order to take advantage of latest performance optimisations for both the standard and enhanced model for all language packs.
If you are importing an appliance through VirtualBox, and AVX flags are not automatically enabled, you can also take advantage of the the performance benefits from AVX 2 following these guidelines.
The following are known issues in this release:
| Issue ID | Summary | Detailed Description and Possible Workarounds |
|---|---|---|
| REQ-1409 | Proteus HCL with <unk> causes out of memory error | A custom dictionary list that contains the word ' |
| REQ-7549 | Memory leak affecting gRPC | There is a small memory leak in the gRPC Python server https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/5913. |
| REQ-10160 | Advanced punctuation for Spanish (es) does not contain inverted marks. | Inverted marks [ ¿ ¡ ] are not currently available for Spanish advanced punctuation. |
| REQ-10627 | Double full stops when acronym is at the end of the sentence | If there is an acronym at the end of the sentence, then a double full stop will be output, for example: "team G.B.." |
| REQ-11792 | Speaker change token positioning is incorrect | We are aware of a consistent mis-placing of the speaker change |
| REQ-12202 | High memory usage when using custom dictionary | It has been observed that when using custom dictionary an additional 800-1700MB of memory is required (depending on the size of the wordlist used). |
| REQ-16256 | Heavy usage of RAM when swapping between 8kHz and 16kHz input | Where multiple persistent workers are configured with Custom Dictionary that swap between 8kHz and 16kHz input, this can cause a memory leak that causes the container to crash. If this starts to impact services it is recommended to restart all the services with the management API or drop the worker count to 1 and then increase it again |
Virtual Appliance image (OVA) for installation on:
See the Installation and Admin Guide for details on the minimum specifications for the VM. The maximum number of concurrent jobs (maxworkers) that you can run on a single appliance is 30.
There are five variants of the Real-time Virtual Appliance.
| Variant | Image Size | Max. Disk Space | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| nano | 9GB | 40GB | en |
| mini | 14GB | 40GB | en, de, es |
| midi | 26GB | 60GB | en, de, es, fr, ko, ja, nl, pt |
| maxi | 43GB | 80GB | en, de, es, fr, ko, ja, nl, pt, it, da, pl, ca, hi, ru, sv |
| plus | 45GB | 80GB | en, cmn, no, ar, bg, cs, el, fi, hu, hr, lt, lv, ro, sk, sl, tr, ms |
Remove the license from your old appliance (see the Admin Guide), then re-import the new OVA and configure networking as per the Installation and Admin guide. You will need to re-apply the license code you have once the OVA has imported.
Upload the OVA to VMWare ESX, VMWare Workstation Player, or VirtualBox. See the Installation and Admin Guide for more information.