Do you people still remember the chaos created by Windows XP speech recognition? It was a terrifying experience for everyone. But with technology, what not is possible! With the drastic rise of AI engines and machine learning, speech-to-text transcription has shown an amazing development and now it has become the most convenient and yet efficient way to get through typing and instantly get our voice message converted to texts.
In this modern era, you will find hundreds of speech-to-text apps that can convert your recordings instantly but what if you want to transcribe voice recording to text?
This article aims at providing you with the best and the most reliable solutions to convert voice recordings to text that too on your mobile, web browser, or your PC.
Contents
Apps to Convert your Voice Recordings to Text
Transcribe
Transcribe is really an efficient app that easily transcribes both video formats and audio formats into actual text. Although the app is free, it charges you on the basis of the hours you are spending on transcription.
The rates that it offers are quite reasonable starting at $4.99. It hasn’t been specified by the developer whether it is using a speech-to-text API or a tool like a custom solution.
The app gives actual accuracy, but one drawback that can be seen is the punctuation errors caused by the app. But, this can surely be ignored after seeing the tremendous efficiency of the app.
Another thing that I like the most is that even when the speech is not clear and is distorted, even then the app shows up with the closest words that it could transcribe. It has shown a very steep rise in its audience and is very affordable too.
Accuracy: 96%
Install Transcribe (iOS)
Read: How to Quickly Create a Transcription for Your Podcast
Otter.AI
Otter is a very organized app, especially for students. This effectively helps learners to ease their complicated projects by transcribing notes. Not only by Students, but this app is also perfect for professionals where each of your meetings can be transcribed in order of being able to come up with the appropriate minutes and details of the meetings.
It works both ways and you can easily convert your real-time messages as well as you can choose to upload the voice recording from your collection and then just click on the transcribe option available.
The developer uses the All the cloud to transcribe and you will get two versions of the converted script. Here, the first version denotes the quick transcription generated within the initial seconds.
Obviously, it will have errors. After that, your audio will be processed and transcribed again which will improve the transcript accuracy in comparison to the previous one. The app is free for up to 600 minutes for both Android and iOS users.
Accuracy: 94%
Happyscribe
The first choice on this list is Happyscribe. It’s a subscription-based service that is being aimed at real-time professionals, including journalists, that is properly evident by the pricing: Happyscribe’s pay-per-use package will cost you 12 Euros per hour. This has to be worth it for that kind of money.
And this can totally be assured because this offer comes in the form of Happy Scribe’s developed machine learning algorithm, which it possesses to effectively transcribe the speech. Also, You can export files in a variety of formats, including Word documents and plain text files, as well as timestamped SRTs.
Results have shown that it has produced fantastic results by correctly identifying almost all of the words and even detecting paragraph changes, which is particularly useful when there are several speakers in a conversation.
Happyscribe does offer a free trial that allows you to use the service for 30 minutes,but after these 30 minutes, you will have to pay. Overall, Happyscribe is a fantastic choice if you’re looking for the best-in-class online audio-to-text solution.
Accuracy: 99%
Check out Happyscribe
Sonix
Sonix is almost similar to the above-mentioned app Happyscribe with almost the same interface and same target audience. Both apps target those who are looking for reliable and time-saving AI-based transcription apps.
Sonix’s pricing is simply straightforward and is divided between categories as a single-user license that will cost $11.25 a month and an extra $6.00 per hour for the transcribed recordings. Sonix also offers a free 30-minute trial, but you must enter your credit/debit card details to use it.
Surely one of the best apps that you are going to ever use. You will not even face a single word that hasn’t been transcribed or presented properly. And the coolest feature is that it is the most reliable as well as the fastest app for speech-to-text conversion. It is totally worth it!
Accuracy: 97%
Check out Sonix
Bear File Converter
The cost of professional transcription software can go out of your pocket. As a free alternative, we tried Bear converter. This is a multimedia converter that can convert almost any file form to another, and it also includes an MP3 to TXT converter that uses Baidu’s speech recognition engine.
Although Baidu’s speech recognition wasn’t flawless and accurate enough, but it did ensure about 70% accuracy of the actual speech. That’s pretty impressive for a media converter that isn’t even marketed Or is being paid for! For transcription, audio files are limited to 3MB. You could reduce the file size by re-encoding at a lower bitrate, but this can lead to the problem of recognition. So, you need to be careful while doing this.
Accuracy: 70%
Check out Bear File Converter
Sobolsoft MP3 to Text Converter
Sobolsoft is a successful company that is effectively running over 1500 apps till now and Sobolsoft’s audio transcription is just one of them. The Sobolsoft MP3 to Text converter is a bit more systematic and complex to use than the other apps mentioned above.
To get your work done with effective transcription, you must have an IBM Speech to Text API key. Sobolsoft will offer you a free version and a paid version of $19.99. Of course, the paid one has elaborate and easy-to-use features.
The only drawback that I could notice is that the interface is not that easy to use. In my personal opinion, if I’m choosing to opt for the paid version, I would instead go for Happy scribe and other apps.
Accuracy: 93%
Check out Sobol Mp3 to Text Converter
Final Words
These are the best apps for converting voice recordings to text in my opinion. For smartphone devices, Otter and Transcribe are the best options. If you plan to transcribe more, Sonix is less expensive than Hyperscribe. Sobolsoft MP3 to Text is a little out of date, but it’s still alive and well. What apps from this list do you prefer? Let me know if you have a better solution.
