Does transcription work with background noise? Yes, when the voices carry.
Yes, as long as the voices are louder than what surrounds them: the speech is transcribed, while music, sound effects and crowd noise are left out rather than written down as words. Noise does not change the limits or the speed (one file up to 10 hours or 5 GB, about 2 minutes per audio hour), so use the first 20 minutes free on your noisiest stretch before buying a pack from $6 for 500 minutes.
Noise and speech
Which noise matters, and which does not.
Steady noise is the easy kind
Air conditioning, traffic hum, a projector fan or rain on a window sit under the voices at a constant level. When speech is clearly louder, the words come through and the hum produces no text at all.
What causes the most trouble
People talking over each other, a speaker far from the microphone in an echoing hall, music playing under conversation and wind across an outdoor mic. These are the stretches to check against the recording afterwards.
Send the original file
Heavy noise reduction can smear consonants and make speech harder to read, not easier. Upload the recording as it was made, from this page or the upload page, and judge the result on the free first 20 minutes.
Find the unclear lines fast
Every line carries a timestamp, so a doubtful word is one click from the audio. The chapters and brief still summarise the whole recording, which helps when a noisy section only needs the gist.
Before and after
Recordings made where life happens.
✗ Noise treated as a dealbreaker
Many people never transcribe a café interview or a busy event because they assume the noise ruins it.
- Interviews redone in a quiet room
- Hours spent cleaning audio first
- Music beds typed out as gibberish
- Paying before hearing any result
- Applause breaking the text into fragments
- Whole recordings written off
✓ Noise handled as part of the room
The speech is transcribed, the rest is left out, and you check only what is unclear.
- The original file uploaded as recorded
- Music and crowd noise skipped
- The first 20 minutes as a free test
- Timestamps to verify doubtful words
- A brief that still captures the gist
- Speakers named in the summary
Sample output
A ninety-minute interview in a busy café.
These lines are illustrative and not from a real interview. The clatter and the background music produced no text.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Noisy recordings, answered.
Will music in the background be typed out?
No. Music, sound effects and crowd noise are not transcribed; the speech is. A voice talking over a music bed is still transcribed when it is clearly louder than the track.
Should I clean the audio before uploading?
Usually not. Gentle level adjustment is fine, but strong noise removal tends to blur speech. Upload the original first and compare it against a cleaned copy only if the result disappoints.
How do I know if my recording is too noisy?
Use the first 20 minutes, which are free on a first visit, and pick a recording whose noisiest part is near the start. If the words you can hear clearly come back clearly, the rest of the file will behave the same.
What does a noisy 90-minute interview cost?
Ninety minutes, the same as a quiet one: noise does not change the count. It fits the $6 pack (500 minutes) with room for about four more interviews of that length. Credits never expire.
Does noise slow the transcription down?
No. Processing stays at about 2 minutes per audio hour, so a noisy 3-hour event recording is ready in about 6 minutes.
What about overlapping voices at a party or a meeting?
The clearest voice in each moment comes through best, and crosstalk is where to check the text. The summary, key quotes and chapters name the speakers. Noisy recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More on difficult recordings.
A noisy room, a clear transcript. Try your noisiest 20 minutes free.
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