Question Best "speech-to-text" software/solution...?

thomas81br

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Oct 3, 2014
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Hi

In 2023 which one is (are) the best solutions to convert english speech to english text... Either from "live" recording or via saved audio file. Online solutions are ok too, but i would probably prefer some "offline" solutions (in order to have "safety" that my speech/text is not going anywhere - cannot be seen by someone else - privacy). But website/online solutions are ok too i guess, just would prefer the offline more.

Which ones are the BEST (most accurate etc.) in 2023...?

(and if there is even some free option that is super/quite good) thrown that in too :) ).

Thank you
 
What you're looking for is "transcription software." The best I can probably offer in terms of advice is maybe look at one of these offerings: https://geekflare.com/best-transcription-software/

I don't know if these can take a file and create a transcription of it, but worst comes to worse, you can just play back the file with a microphone pointed at your speakers (just make sure the microphone is not being played back)
 
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The most accurate will be the online services which charge by the minute, where a real human does the transcription (because a human can understand the context and so infer the correct words when the audio isn't clear). These claim to be 99% accurate. Many of these sites also offer machine transcription for less cost, but only promise 90% average accuracy for that.

Back in 1997 when IBM ViaVoice and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 1.0 came out, accuracy was claimed to be up to 96% after some training. I found this to be true, but correcting that 4% by hand afterwards took as much time as typing the whole thing in the first place. Obviously accuracy can be much worse with an accent or low quality recording. Things don't appear to have improved much since, perhaps to 98% max.

In any case there's quite a lot of software available and some of them even free. Just don't expect too much from them (watch Youtube with auto-generated closed-captioning on to see the hilarity that can happen)
 

Ralston18

Titan
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And I will add trhe suggestion to try Window's Speech Recognition Software. Needs some setup and "training" but that is generally required for speech recognition anyway.

Not perfect but worth some time to experiment with and get a sense of the entire process.

Discover what you like and what you do not like about speech recognition. And what works and what does not work for corrections and editing.

I just started an inventory project and creating a list by verbally itemizing what I find.

Pick up item, read, speak/describe, and on to the next item.

Results pending but the process seems quite viable.

No harm in trying Windows Speech Recognition and the learning curve may prove helpful in making a choice later on.

Whenever possible, download trial versions of any speech recognition software to test before buying.
 
Apr 9, 2023
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What you're looking for is "transcription software." The best I can probably offer in terms of advice is maybe look at one of these offerings: https://geekflare.com/best-transcription-software/

I don't know if these can take a file and create a transcription of it, but worst comes to worse, you can just play back the file with a microphone pointed at your speakers (just make sure the microphone is not being played back)
I didn't try the way you propose neither all 15 mentioned at geekflare, but can asure that for video transcribing the Descript and Happyscribe work good. Surely, with audio files they should work well also.