Dictation not working on Mountain Lion?

hey guys , can anyone tell me why my dictation is turned off and won't allow me to turn it back on ( i had it on before for awhile and it just stopped working ) ?

2011 27" imac, am used to the built-in dictation on my iPhone 4s. It works beautifully over wi-fi, unlike the version that came with Mountain Lion. I can say 10 words, and it might show 2, 1 may be right if i'm lucky. Otherwise, the sequential dots will shake no. Have tried: changing mike selection to internal from automatic, having a face time call to confirm the mike works OK, (other person hears me fine), unplugging ethernet cable & using over wifi (airport extreme network, same one my 4S uses & works perfectly on), rebooting, and yes, dictation is enabled. Now I know I have been right, until now, to wait several months to upgrade after a new release. What's amazing is, this is tried and true technology! Any suggestions? By the way, I have FIOS-

Try the headset that came with your 4s and see if that improves the situation any.

HUH?

I'm sorry, I failed to notice the southern california location.

PLUG IN YOUR HEADSET (that has a microphone in it) FROM YOUR IPHONE 4S INTO THE MICROPHONE PORT ON YOUR COMPUTER, SWITCH TO THAT INPUT, HOLD THE MICROPHONE IN FRONT OF YOUR MOUTH AND SEE IF THAT IMPROVES THE QUALITY.

It is just to test to see if background noise is the problem.

Eagledup: check parental controls.

Mofodojo : yours sound like an environmental noise problem. Whereas the iPhone comes with noise-cancelling microphones, most Macs (MacBooks and iMacs) don't AFAIK. What deggie is suggesting is for you to plug in your earbuds/microphone that comes supplied with your iPhone. This sometimes helps to isolate environmental noise so that your Mac can interpret your voice better.

As for those of us who have dictation server connections issues requiring VPN connections to solve, no news so far from AppleCare as I am afraid. Might try to call them again.

btw, shouting into the microphone (in all caps) probably won't help dictation work any better ;)

loyking, never know, shouting may work better in Texas. Anyway, I'll give it try but, all efforts have been in a very quiet room. Having to use a headset vs the built-in mic. seems...half baked (trying to be nice here). Try it once I get home, nothing to lose at this point..

As someone else pointed out the 4s has noise reduction built into its chipset that your machine lacks, it could be a vibration you can barely hear that is interfering. But it is a test to try to take one piece out of the formula.

P.S. I graduated from Pacoima Junior High (this was before it became Richie Valens Middle School) and San Fernando High School.

While watching Charlie Rose interview a New York Times reporter a couple of nights ago, the reporter said that dictation is not happening on Apple's servers. The reporter said that the dictation translation is being 'farmed out' to another company. He made this comment while discussing takeover targets that he thought Apple should buy.

I am not a computer geek but have a lot of telecom experience. To me this problem looks like network congestion and unwanted delays triggering failures in data stream continuity.

This solution (adding DSN IPs) works fine for me. Thank you!

By the way, if you enabled sticky keys from Accessibily (in System Preferrence), dictation will not work. At least I could not find a way to keep both skicky keys and dictation co-exist.

hello .

can you explain to me what you do exactly . because i do everythink put still not working .

thanks

I "wrote" a blog by using Dictation. Here is the detail how you set up DNS: http://davidchumac.blogspot.ca/2012/08/my-experience-with-mountain-lion.html

Since I have strong accent, Dictation does not work well for me. Sorry for so many wrong words and incorrect sentences in my blog. I think you may get what I mean.

hi again

i put dns saim what you do put still not working , i have i mac 27 ich - in im dubai .

I mentioned in my blog that if you have sticker keys enabled, the Dictation would not work. Check your System Preference->Accessibility. There you should make sure the check box for Skicky Keys is cleared.