Tips on improving speech & transcript accuracy

Otter.ai is a powerful tool for transcribing meetings, interviews, and conversations. To enhance the accuracy of transcriptions, it's important to optimize your recordings and conversations. This guide provides practical tips to help you improve the accuracy of your Otter.ai transcriptions.

How to increase speech accuracy

• Minimize background noise. Background noise is generally the biggest factor in inaccurate transcriptions or missing audio. If Otter cannot distinguish what is being said due to too much background noise, it may result in inaccuracies or the audio not being transcribed at all.
• Avoid overlapping dialog. Otter may not be able to distinguish multiple people speaking over each other.  Overlapping dialog may result in inaccuracies or the audio not being transcribed at all.
• Try using an external microphone, rather than your computer or device's built-in microphone. The audio quality recorded by Otter is based on your microphone. Try using an external microphone if you’re experiencing issues with capturing audio. We recommend the following types of microphones depending on what you’re trying to record:
  • Omnidirectional Microphone - If you’re trying to record multiple speakers in a room, we recommend omnidirectional, as it can pick up audio in all directions.  
  • Unidirectional Microphone - If you’re trying to record just your voice, we recommend unidirectional, as it only picks up sound in one direction, which you can position it towards yourself. 

• Placement of microphone. Place the microphone within three feet of the person speaking and refrain from moving or touching the device to avoid any unnecessary background noise.
• Speak clearly and naturally, at your normal conversational tone and pace.

How to increase transcription accuracy 

• Tag speakers. Train Otter to recognize your and other speaker voices in a conversation. During a recording, Otter can automatically tag the speakers within the transcript. Tagging speakers will help improve speaker identification for your conversations. 
• Add custom vocabulary. Teach Otter jargon, terms, and any other vocabulary words to increase the accuracy of these terms. This can help Otter learn your spelling and vocabulary, especially if you work in a specialized industry or environment. 
• Add custom names. Teach Otter names and proper names to increase the accuracy of speakers and people mentioned in the conversation.