How to Transcribe Bad Quality Audio: Expert Tips

After digital technology began to exist globally, transcription services became one of the most requested areas. All people, from students to TV presenters, use transcription software or professional transcription service. Today, each of you can record audio, transfer it to a transcription company, and experts will transcribe it in the shortest possible time. But what if the audio quality is poor? Can audio be transcribed with noise? What does low-quality audio mean? To answer all of these questions, read the article.

Poor Quality Audio – What Is It?

Poor quality audio meets the following criteria:

• The background sound is too loud and too harsh.
• Sound overlapping the voice.
• Voices in the background.
• Sounds of different volumes.
• Delayed sound.
• All of the above features in one audio.

When recording audio, you may feel that there are no extraneous sounds in the audience or specific location that will adversely affect the recording. However, you will hear all the rustles, interference, and strangers’ conversations when you turn on the audio. Because of this, it isn’t easy to obtain audio suitable for transcripts.

How Does Low-Quality Audio Affect The Transcript?

Transcription is a rather complex process and is best handled by professional transcriptionists. When you submit audio to professional transcription online services with low quality, it can make the experts’ work difficult. The point is, it takes a lot of time, and it is not always possible to get essential voices out of the pile of interference. Low-quality audio may cause some parts to be missing, as there may have been too many third-party sounds. Therefore, if you are recording audio, make sure the recording is in a very quiet place – then the sound will be clear. Never place the microphone in very recessed areas, as this will cause inaudible voices.

Tips to Improve Poor Quality Audio

Below you will find four ways to understand poor recording quality better and decrypt audio. We will also advise on what to do with inaudible words.

Use High-Quality Headphones & Headsets

If you understand that there will be extraneous voices and sounds in your audience, use a high-quality headset. Such technologies help to hear sounds better and facilitate accurate transcription. When you buy your headset and headphones, test them to make sure they work.

Enhancing Sound Quality with Audio Presets

Transcribing audio, particularly terrible-exceptional recordings, can be tough. However, audio presets, or pre-configured settings implemented in audio files, can appreciably enhance sound quality, making transcription less difficult.

Understanding Audio Presets

Vocal presets, or audio filters, provide excellent-track audio parameters like equalization, noise reduction, compression, and more to enhance sound quality. They’re available in numerous audio editing software programs and transcription equipment.

Benefits of Using Audio Presets for Transcription:

• Noise Reduction: Audio presets effectively reduce background noise and interference, permitting transcribers to concentrate on clean speech.

• Equalization: They beautify particular frequency levels, making voices extra awesome, which is important for muffled or doubtful recordings.

• Voice Enhancement: Customized presets emphasize human voices, enhancing clarity and transcription accuracy.

• Time Efficiency: Presets keep time as transcribers don’t need to manually regulate settings.

• Consistency: They offer a standardized approach to audio enhancement, making sure constant transcription is high-quality.

• User-Friendly: Many transcription equipment provides person-pleasant interfaces for applying audio presets, making them on hand even for non-experts.

Decrease Or Increase Sound Speed

If the person in the audio speaks too fast, lower the speed of sound, and you will hear better letters that you can assemble into words. Yes, this procedure will take longer, but it will give a good result. Also, experts note that when the speed of sound increases, words are heard better. Therefore, test both methods to see which one is right for you.

Use Sound Editor

If you have a weak sound card or headphones of not the best quality, then you can use special sound editors to improve the sound quality on your computer or laptop. There are many sound editors out there today:

• FxSound Enhancer.
• SRS Audio Essentials.
• DFX Audio Enhancer.
• Sound Normalizer.

The above programs can remove background noise from audio and help you make an accurate transcription.

Use the Software

It happens that you cannot remove various types of signals with sound editors. Therefore, we recommend using software that can clean up audio annoying and cutting sounds:

• iZotope RX 6.
• Todd-AO Absentia.
• Accusonus ERA Range.
• Acon Digital – Restoration Suite.
• Sonnox Restore.
• Cedar Studio 7.

The above programs will help you get a readable and acceptable sound for transcription. Yes, the sound in the audio will not sound like studio sound, but the cleaning of third-party noise is at a high level.

What To Do If Some Words Are Still Not Heard?

If you still cannot understand some words or sentences while listening to the audio, try to understand the essence of this passage, and the letters you may hear will tell you the context. However, do not guess because if you send audio for transcription to experts, their job is to give you an accurate result. The experts will not bother with guesswork.

Instead of guessing which word is missing in a sentence, you can specify [inaudible] or [unintelligible] in the transcription. This way, professionals will see how difficult the fragments are to transcribe. You can also use any symbols to denote fuzzy sounds.

It would be nice if you add the exact time so that the transcribers can understand which fragment you are talking about – this will reduce the search time for difficult words. For example, you can enter [illegible word at 00:12:55].