Being able to produce written text from audio is more useful than it sounds. As WhatsApp prepares to bring these transcriptions to voicemails, on our iPhone or iPad, we can also make transcriptions. Transcripts, yes, they have a thing.
Fortunately, we also have our resources, so We can transcribe any audio as it suits us best. Whether we use applications, services on the Internet or directly on our iPhone or iPad, we will have the text written without having to touch a single key and, of course, without having to pay for it.
From audio to text, there is little distance
When it comes to transcribing texts, there are two clearly differentiated systems. On one side there is the text that is dictated in real time while a tool is transcribing, on the other there is the ability to send a record directly for the system to process of all. In this last category, Watson, of IBM, is to be highlighted.
Watson is IBM’s artificial intelligence. From its official website, we can transcribe recordings which we can upload to the service. For free, that’s the trick, we can transcribe up to 500 minutes per monthmore than enough for occasional use if you take into account the quality of the results.
IBM Watson
In a similar line, the Bear File Converter utility is presented, which we can access from its official website and which allows us to convert mp3 to text. The results aren’t as good as Watson’s, but the service is free as long as the file is under 3MB. Here the trick is being able to split a long audio file into small pieces. If we also use a compression tool, we can transcribe several hours in relatively few steps.
bear file converter
If we have already entered the dictated text, the one that the tool must listen to in real time to perform the transcription, the best option is to use the dictation from our iPhone or iPad. In general, mainly because of a microphone problem, iPhone usually works better than iPad and these are still better than the Mac, something to keep in mind.
There is no trick here, although if we want to transcribe a file we can always play it on our iPad while we let the iPhone transcribe it. Yes, I admit it, it’s an inelegant solution, but once you see the results, the truth is, you’re planning on using it more than once.
So far four ways to convert spoken text to written text. There are obviously more options, from the Dictation web service to using Gboard or even Google Docs dictation, but the ones we’ve listed offer the best results, comparatively. Although it always depends on the quality of the recording itself, being able to transcribe any audio to text, even if it has a trick, it’s really easy.
