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Converting an audio clip to written text without using programs on Windows

Whether you are a college student recording your lectures, or perhaps an employee recording official meetings, regardless of the reason, you may need to convert these audio recordings into written text for reading or quoting in a report or research. Some people usually resort to transcribing word-for-word, which can take several hours if the recording is long. While there are countless tools and software options that make this task easier by converting audio to text using artificial intelligence techniques, if you are using a Windows system on your computer, you likely won’t need to install additional programs. Below, we outline an easy method to help you extract information from an audio clip and save it as written text without the need for software.

This method relies on a technology found in most sound cards, even those built into laptop motherboards and older desktop computers, called Stereo Mix (sometimes known as What U Hear). In its simplest form, this technology works as a virtual microphone that records audio output from the computer, combining both output/input audio channels together into one channel. This allows the microphone to reproduce any audio waves sent to the speaker. Now all we have to do is activate the Stereo Mix technology and play the audio file on the computer, using the “Voice Typing” feature in Google Docs. The content spoken in the audio file (via the virtual microphone) will be recognized and extracted as a text document – a simple and easy process as outlined in the following steps.

First: Activate Stereo Mix Technology

As it is disabled by default, we will first activate the Stereo Mix technology by pressing the Win + R keys together to open the “Run” window, then type the command “mmsys.cpl” and press Enter to open the “Sounds” window. From here, go to the “Recording” section and right-click anywhere in the window, then select “Show Disabled Devices” to display disabled microphones. Stereo Mix should now appear as one of the microphones connected to the device, if it doesn’t appear, it means that your device’s sound card does not support this technology. If it appears, right-click on Stereo Mix and choose “Enable” and then “Set as Default Device” so that the Stereo Mix microphone replaces any real microphone connected to the device.

Second: Convert Audio Recording to Text

After enabling the technology, we now need a tool to convert speech to text, whether in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. For the purpose of this explanation, we will use the tool provided by Google as it is easy to access and can recognize various languages and dialects without requiring anything other than a Google account. So, start by visiting Google Docs where you can create a blank document by clicking the add button represented by a plus sign (+) floating at the bottom of the screen. Once the document editing page appears, click on “Tools” from the top taskbar, then click on “Voice typing” from the dropdown menu. Alternatively, press the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + S, and the tool will start immediately.
You may be interested: How to write documents in Google Docs using your voice!
After launching the tool, you will need to grant permission for the service to access the microphone by clicking “Allow” from the browser’s address bar and the microphone icon will appear on the screen for you to select the language for the tool to recognize based on the language of the speech in the audio recording. Arabic is available in various dialects, which is one of the reasons we recommend the Google Docs tool. After everything is set up, play the audio recording using a Media Player or any other audio playback program, and once the file starts playing, let it run in the background and then switch to Google Docs tool and click on the microphone button.
Since the microphone used is Stereo Mix, the Google Docs tool will transcribe anything heard in the audio file being played, and to ensure the highest accuracy in text recognition, make sure not to play any other videos or audio clips during the conversion process to avoid interference in the written text. Finally, click on the red microphone icon whenever you want to stop. You can then copy or edit the text in case of spelling errors or add punctuation and formatting, or translate it.

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