Transcribe a Tascam DR-40X recording from meeting room to minutes.
A three-hour meeting recorded on a Tascam DR-40X is text in about 6 minutes, and your first recording has the first 20 minutes free. A four-track take can arrive as more than one file on the SD card, so upload the one that carries the speech and the meeting uses 180 minutes of a $6 pack of 500.
Four tracks, one meeting
Pick the file with the voices, and pay for the meeting once.
When a take is two files
In four-track mode the DR-40X records its built-in mics and its external inputs together, and the take can be saved as a pair of files on the SD card. If the built-in mics sat on the table, that file usually holds the whole room. If a lectern mic fed the external inputs, the speaker's file holds the clearest voice.
Each file is charged in full
Two files from a three-hour take are two three-hour recordings to us, 360 minutes instead of 180. Upload the clearer one, or mix both into a single file in an editor first. Either way the meeting is billed for its real length, with the remainder left on the pack.
Rehearsals: speech, not music
For a rehearsal, the director's notes, the read-through and the discussion between runs are transcribed. Singing, instruments and sound effects are not, so the transcript reads as the spoken notes with timestamps, which is often exactly what the cast needs afterwards.
Minutes from the brief
A recorded meeting returns with the thesis and takeaways, chapters for each agenda item, and the decisions, dates, amounts and owners said aloud. The chair and members are identified and named in the summary, key quotes and chapters, which is most of a set of minutes.
Why DR-40X recordings cost twice elsewhere
A four-track take is not two meetings.
✗ Sending every file the recorder made
Upload the pair without thinking and a per-minute tool bills the same meeting twice.
- 360 minutes charged for a 180-minute meeting
- A file of mostly silence from an unused input
- Hand-written minutes from a three-hour replay
- A free tier ending after the apologies
- Rehearsal music read as nonsense words
- No search across a season of meetings
✓ The speech file, uploaded once
Choose the take that holds the voices and get one transcript for the whole meeting.
- 180 minutes for three hours
- About 6 minutes to process
- Agenda items as chapters
- Decisions and owners listed
- The chair named in the summary
- DOCX for the minute book
Sample
A committee meeting from a DR-40X on the table.
This sample is illustrative and written for this page, not drawn from any real meeting. It shows a chair and members, with timestamps from the start of the recording.
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
- Unlimited AI chat per 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
- Priority queue
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Tascam DR-40X recordings, answered.
How long does a three-hour DR-40X meeting take?
Roughly 6 minutes, because each hour of audio takes about 2 minutes. A long rehearsal of four hours is about 8 minutes.
What does a three-hour DR-40X meeting cost?
180 minutes from the $6 pack of 500 when you upload one file, leaving 320 for the next meetings. A year of monthly three-hour meetings is 2,160 minutes, which the $24 pack of 5,000 covers. The first 20 minutes are free if it is your first recording.
Is a DR-40X WAV too big to upload?
A 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo WAV is about 635 MB an hour, so three hours is close to 1.9 GB and uploads before any pack. The ceiling is 5 GB or 10 hours per file, and a WAV over 2 GB starts once a pack is on the account.
Do I need to split a long rehearsal?
Not below 10 hours. A single file keeps one clock across the whole run, so notes from the second act carry their real time. Longer than 10 hours goes up as two files.
Which languages work?
99 languages, detected automatically, including Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Hebrew. A meeting that switches between English and Tagalog in one recording is handled.
What formats can I export, and who sees the recording?
Downloads come as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Meetings and rehearsals are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. A team that records every week can also use the $19 a month Workspace.
Related
Meetings and multitrack recorders
Upload the meeting. Draft the minutes from the brief.
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