ScriptoSphere Audio Transcription Blog

What difference can a sound card make when it comes to Audio Transcription?

More often than not, we get audio files which a sound editing software can do nothing about.  Sometimes the speaker’s voice is engulfed by so much background or static noise or is so faint, that a normal sound processor can’t do the job anymore.  This is where a specialized sound unit can help, maybe not too much, but there definitely is a difference.

These days when buying a new PC, most good motherboards come with already a pretty good sound processor onboard, and that will get the job done in most instances, but it never hurts to spend a little extra on hardware and peripherals so that you can do your job much better in the end.  There are many sound cards available in the market, from entry level stuff to really high end audiophile quality gear.  The onboard sound on motherboards are as good as entry level sound cards, and for transcription we don’t really need to go to higher end sound cards.

So, let’s look at some of the good, mid-level sound cards, that in our opinion would help tremendously when dealing with bad quality audio files.

1.  ASUS Xonar DX 7.1

This is primarily a gaming card, and can help in delivering crystal clear quality sound, amplified even better if you have good quality headphones.  Hugely helpful in audio transcription.  In our experience this card has so far proven to be very effective and worth the investment.  Very good for its price, high fidelity, no distortion even on very high volumes, and a proper 7.1 channel sound card. Even the audiophiles would love it.  This goes for around $90.

2.  Creative Soundblaster X-fi Xtremegamer 7.1

We used this one for a little while and were impressed by the sound quality even on higher volumes.  Good fidelity, good value for money.  The gamers would get much more use out of it, as reviewers have noticed visibly reduced lag with awesome sound quality when playing PC video games.  It was very helpful for transcribers and proofreaders who used it.  The quality was slightly lesser than the Xonar DX referenced above, but it was good enough.  The retail price is around $100

3.  Auzentech AZT-XPCINE X-Plosion Cinema 7.1

If you can afford to spend some extra money on a sound card, our advice would be to go with this one.  This would be more than enough for transcription purposes, but performs amazingly on all fronts.  Whether you’re a music or a movie fan, you can blast your volume up to any level, and this won’t lose any quality.  Amazing fidelity at extremely high volumes, good compatibility with newer versions of Windows, and neat driver support as well.  This can retail at around $120 to $140.

We’ll try to get more information on this topic in our future posts.

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The importance of Audio Transcription in today’s world

One of our crew, Florina, tells us about her experience. “I remember about maybe two years ago I had to fill some form for the local authority and the clerk asked me what is my job.  Obviously I answered “I’m a transcriber“, and the clerk was confused.  So, I then had to briefly describe my job to him.  The final of this short story was funny, as the clerk still wasn’t able to figure out what I really do, so he told me, “Write there, PC operator.”

So, I thought it wouldn’t be completely useless to try and develop what is that we actually do in this field and what’s really this domain of work about, is the occupation of turninv voice to text needed in the 3rd millennium?

First of all, let’s describe what an audio transcriber does to earn his living: and to start at the most simplified level, we’re going to tell you that every audio recording that needs to be turned into a document, requires a human transcriber to do it.  Of course, there’s plenty of voice recognition software in the market to do this job, but at the present time these are as good as useless in cases of fast speech, foreign accent, multiple speakers, background noise, and of course if the file contains specialty terms, technical or more rare ones.

Besides, you need to train these robotic transcribers (voice recognition software) for hours and hours for them to understand different accents and difficult words.  You have to sit with a microphone and read passages to it like a parrot for it to actually do a half decent job.  Still it’s not good enough, because they’re good at getting what you say slowly speaking into the microphone, but when it comes to audio transcription, they’re horrible.  And until they perfect that system, which won’t be for a long time coming, you’ll have to do with us pesky transcription service companies.

Now, since we have clarified that, think for a second and try to find a use for this audio to text conversion operation.  The first thing that comes to my mind are meetings.  Can you visualize all those suited executives, board of directors, CEOs, businessmen that love to have meetings all the time?  Well there’s one piece of the puzzle, because when they perhaps need publish their conference call and make it available to the public, and to recheck what one or the other said at the meeting, they won’t go fast forwarding or rewinding throughout that audio file.  It’s much simpler to press Ctrl+F and find your keyword, isn’t it?

The main purposes of audio transcription include having a proper archive, publishing interviews in the physical printed form or web media, sometimes for SEO, for the sole purpose of having better ranking on a search engine, from helping the people with disabilities to read what they can’t hear, or helping a person remember what they said, transcribing radio shows or podcasts to make them more accessible to a wider range of audience, to adding subtitles to videos and even whole movies.

Picture a physician, a dentist, a psychiatrist who sees plenty of people every day, how would they remember each patient’s problem, their symptoms, their diagnosis, their medication? In a small town it’s easy, as physical files in a steel cabinet would do, but what about large cities with millions of people?  That’s where a transcription service comes in. The doctor simply speaks into a digital recorder, his assistant uploads the file on the transcription company‘s website, and the rest is taken care by the transcribers.

The list can go on and on and on, but the bottom line is that audio transcription is now applied in more sectors than you can think, and it’s growing every day by leaps and bounds.  The myth that audio transcription is an easy task, can be debunked in 5 minutes by you trying to transcribe even a 10 minute audio file with 99% accuracy, and just see how long it takes.  Feel free to contact us in case you have any doubts or questions.

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Payment issues among other things

As you may have guessed by now, there are certain risks associated with being an online transcription service provider.  While this has its obvious advantages, it also comes with some hazards.  Non-payment being one of the biggest ones.  Fortunately ScriptoSphere hasn’t come across many non-paying clients, but we’ve had our share of one or two, and this whole situation can be disheartening at times.

What these non-paying clients don’t understand is that audio transcription is a painstaking, tedious process, one which takes a lot of concentration and typing speed, especially in the case of expedited or RUSH files.  Not only this, many of them don’t bother to record a decent enough audio and then expect miracles from the transcription service, which as any intelligent individual would know, is ridiculous.

If these non-paying clients think transcription is easy, they should try doing it themselves and learn first hand how difficult, cumbersome and time consuming it really is.  But of course, they don’t want to do the donkey work, they want to get it done by someone else and then not pay for it.  This is straight up exploitation and pretty much equal to stealing money from one’s pocket.  On top of this, a dedicated transcription service provider like ScriptoSphere doesn’t mind working over the weekend if the client really needs the file urgent, but somehow they fail to see all this.

Non-payment for services is an issue that’s facing almost every online service provider, and not just transcription services.  And this issue forces the online companies to ask the money upfront from new clients, and this becomes a messy situation for honest clients who really will pay for the service they asked, but then there is no other way to ensure that hard work gets paid.  So, in the end, just like it’s true for many other things, a few bad clients ruin it for everyone.  ScriptoSphere urges all of you to be honest and forthright and pay for what you bought, because no matter how easy it may seem, there is someone putting in hours working to get it done for you.

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How internet has changed the rules and made things easier

Don’t we all just love the internet?  I mean apart from us having to bear the thousands of uneducated imbeciles venting out and putting idiotic comments on popular sites, internet has completely and totally changed the way we do things and the way we live compared to the past.  Like we’ve said before in previous posts, audio transcription a couple of decades ago was a time consuming, costly and tedious task, one for which big media companies had to dedicate another department in-house.

Fortunately, with the advent of the internet and outsourcing, the process of converting voice to text has become much, much quicker and cost effective.  Nowadays, finding a transcription service provider is as quick as clicking twice, typing in a few words and then shooting off an email, whereas in the past you had to go through yellow pages for hours and find a transcription service suitable for you.

With so many digital recorders available today, it’s become more and more easier to find one that will suit your need.  Digital recorders can now record straight to MP3, saving you a lot of disk space and hassle.  Then, you can find a suitable transcription service provider like ScriptoSphere in mere minutes, upload your audio file, whichever format, and get the transcript back in your inbox within 2 days!

This beats recording on tape cassettes in the older days, handing it over physically to the transcription service, and then waiting weeks or even months to get your transcript back, not to mention it was a pricey affair.  It can be a pricey affair even today, if you happen to go big name hunting and end up paying $3 per minute of audio for the same quality, accuracy and turnaround time as any offshore company can provide at a much lesser price.

Many onshore companies will make a big deal out of it and try to sway your opinions by saying, “100% American” or “completely onshore” etc. but please don’t be fooled by all this.  All they’re trying to do is to get you to buy from them.  99% of the transcription companies get their work done offshore, because quite simply it makes sense for the business.  So, why go through them, why not outsource directly?  Equipment needed for transcription is readily available in almost all countries today, especially in countries like India, where audio transcription has become a viable career path.  And since English is India’s official language, transcription comes naturally to us.

Did you know that India has the world’s second largest English speaking population after USA?  Source.  Not to mention, the education level in India is comparable to that of the USA, and this means we not only have good command over the English language, being exposed to western media throughout our life, we are well versed with all the popular terms as well.

India’s booming economy means that things are quite affordable here, and this means that we can offer the same service guaranteeing you the same accuracy, quality and turnaround time as any other American company for a fraction of the cost.  For example, a well known transcription company charges its clients close to $2 per minute of audio for a TAT of 3 business days, while ScriptoSphere charges you $0.90 per minute of audio for a TAT of 2 business days.  Be clever and make the right choice.

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How can you achieve near 100% accuracy?

Audio transcription in today’s world depends on many different factors, among which one of the most important ones, and of course the number one factor is the transcriber.  But then, as we have stressed again and again on this blog that one can not overlook the importance of good audio quality in the whole process of transcription.  Any transcription service over the internet is not some magic house that can transform garbage into gold.

Clients sometimes are unreasonable asking for 100% quality on an audio which is 100% garbage at best, with full of crosstalking throughout, the speakers not near the recorder, ambient noises etc.  People have to understand that the humans who do this task are still mere humans, and not some some futuristic robot to discern each and every thing that’s being said on the audio.

That being said, sometimes a good transcriber can make all the difference, and polish a rough diamond to deliver a top notch transcript.  And in the same way, a transcriber with no experience, no language training and an untrained ear, can take the easiest of audio files and ruin the transcript completely, which at times can take the proofreader hours to edit, thus prolonging the whole transcription process.

So, I would urge the clients to ALWAYS make sure you record in the best way possible, give it all your best.  If the interview can be taken in a closed room, do it.  Do not choose an outdoor location like a cafeteria or a restaurant in the middle of the city.  At the end, not only will the quality suffer, but you’ll also end up paying a higher price.  So, make sure that the audio is clean and clear, and leave the rest to the transcription service of your choice.

Pricing for Audio Transcription

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How important is the audio quality in the whole transcription process?

We have stressed time and again how important is really the quality of audio files that clients upload to the accuracy of the final product.  Today, we’re talking about the time factor in audio transcription, that is the time needed by a transcription service to convert audio files into a written electronic document (i.e. usually a doc file, also any other text editor), and this time it’s directly proportional, among other factors, to the quality of the recorded audio.

Let’s say it’s an interview, and if the client recorded it with a poor quality recorder AND/OR didn’t pay attention to place it properly and in the optimum positions to record ALL the speakers, especially when there are multiple speakers AND/OR neglected to make sure no background noise was recorded and the speakers weren’t crosstalking, then these factors can and will greatly influence the time needed to transcribe the audio with perfect accuracy.

In case of a bad audio file, the transcriber will need to rewind and re-listen multiple times to first identify each of the speakers, then to understand clearly what they’re saying if their voice is faint, or to try to distinguish who’s saying what when speakers talk in the same time.

In any case, having an audio file of, let’s say 30 minutes, won’t mean that it will take only 30 minutes to transcribe.  In the most ideal conditions, with only 2 speakers and crystal clear quality recording, an experienced transcriber will need approximately 2 hours or more.  This is mainly because no matter how fast a transcriber is, he won’t be able to keep up with the speakers talking in English, it’s usually double or triple of the typing speed.  This mainly depends on the speakers too.  If the speaker speaks faster, then it will take more time to transcribe.

Add to all this specialty terms or proper nouns, names, places, that you have to make sure are spelled correctly, which again results in time lost with internet searches.  These are some of the main factors responsible for slowing down of the transcription process.

Always remember: High quality recording –> lower final price –> lesser time needed to transcribe –> Higher quality transcript.

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Grasp on the English language to excel in the field of audio transcription

We have stressed it over and over again throughout all of our blog posts that one needs to possess a vast and thorough knowledge of the English language, and this will always hold true.  However, do not be disheartened if you’re not a native speaker or have problems in communicating in English with other people.  While it helps, it’s certainly not a prerequisite.

As long as you are able to understand what the person is saying in English, and are able to accurately translate it into your own native language, you’re good to go.  I have witnessed transcribers who can’t communicate properly in English, but can transcribe hours and hours of audio interviews with astonishing accuracy!  This can be down to the fact that Hollywood movies are now watched everywhere, and while there are dubbed versions available, people prefer to watch them with subtitles and this is certainly helping!

And of course, as they say, practice makes perfect, if you’re unsure about your skills as a  transcriber, just start transcribing, make notes of the feedback from the proofreaders or editors that check your files and apply them in each file that you do, and you’ll see how easy the whole process of turning voice to text becomes.  Also, audio transcription is a tremendous way to learn the language as well.  As you transcribe more and more, you’ll get familiarized with the language, and it not only increases your literary skills, but also your vocabulary.  And as you get better, more and more transcription service companies like ScriptoSphere would be glad to hire you.  So, keep up the good work!

Audio Transcription Rates

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