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Robert in Atlanta, Georgia listens on AM920 The Answer and asked: “Is there a PC utility or a device that can convert speech to text?”
Robert, yes there are plenty, but you may have to pay depending on how much you want to transcribe.
If youre thinking about dictation, you may be able to get away with using some free websites like VoiceToText or SpeechNotes.
They wont be as accurate as software like Dragons Naturally Speaking, which is trained to your voice, but theyll be reasonably ok and you can tweak as you go.
Naturally Speakings Home edition, the cheapest one available, costs $150.
If you want to transcribe a pre-recorded audio file youre pretty much looking at either paid software or paid online services.
Microsoft 365 includes limited audio transcription. You can open a Word document and select Home, then Dictate, and then Transcribe and upload your audio file.
That will be a good choice if youre transcribing less than 300 minutes of audio a month, but it does have that limit of 300 minutes a month.
Between software and online services, online services are the best choice since they largely rely on Amazons, Googles, Microsofts, or IBMs speech to text engines, which are constantly being improved behind the scenes.
You can look into automated services like HappyScribe, which will charge you 20 cents a minute.
You can go the manual route and look into Fiverr or Amazons Mechanical Turk, on which a human being will type up the text for you. It will take longer, but it will be more accurate from the start.
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