How do you transcribe an in-person meeting?

Record the room with a microphone close to the speakers, then transcribe the saved file. Distance is the factor that most changes accuracy, so a headset for each person, or a device on the table within reach of every speaker, does far better than a recorder at the far end of the room. Tell everyone the meeting is being recorded before you start.

Put the microphone close to each speaker

Distance changed accuracy a great deal in the research below. On the AMI meeting corpus, Whisper Large V2 had a word error rate of 16.9 percent when each speaker wore a headset microphone ¹. With one distant microphone, the same model reached 36.4 percent ², about 2.15 times the headset error rate ³. Apple gives the same advice for dictation: a headset microphone may help in a noisy room or one with excessive echo ⁴.

For a small table, put one device in the middle, close enough that every speaker is within arm's length. For a large room, use a headset for each person, or several devices, one for each group of seats. These placements are practical advice, not measured results, so test them with a short recording first.

Record the room, then transcribe the file

1. Record a test. Two minutes with everyone speaking, then play it back and listen for dropouts and muffled voices.
2. Record the full meeting on a phone or laptop, with the device in the middle of the table.
3. Save the audio. Export it in a common format such as MP3, M4A or WAV.
4. Transcribe the file with a tool you trust. For a free option in the browser, use our audio to text tool. Our guide to how to transcribe audio to text covers the steps.
5. Check the draft against the audio at each decision, and fix names and numbers by hand.

A file transcript does not name the speakers by itself. Some tools split the audio by voice, which is called speaker diarization, and then you add the names. Others return one block of text, and you add the speaker labels yourself.

Overlapping talk is the other source of errors. Conversational speech, where people talk over each other, is harder for recognizers. On the CHiME6 test set of conversational speech, Whisper Large V2 had a word error rate of 25.5 percent ⁵. Ask people to take turns, and expect to correct more text where two people spoke at once.

Live Captions on a Mac follows the room as it happens

On a Mac, Live Captions can caption the microphone instead of the computer's audio. Apple says that you can switch between the two, "for example during an in-person conversation" ⁶. Apple also says its accuracy may vary and should not be relied on in high-risk or emergency situations ⁷.

Live Captions is useful for following a discussion in real time. For a record you can search and quote later, make a recording and transcribe the file.

It depends on who is in the room and where you are

Consent is the first check. California Penal Code 632 punishes recording a confidential communication without the consent of all parties ⁸. Whether a particular meeting counts as confidential is a question for a lawyer, not for this page. Other states follow different rules. Our guide to recording consent laws explains the difference, and the all-party consent entry defines the term.

Many speakers, a noisy room or a large space all raise errors, so a meeting with six people around a table needs more care than a one-to-one talk. A recording that is clear to you may still be hard for a tool, so test before you rely on it.

What to do

1. Choose the microphone spot: one device within reach of every speaker, or a headset for each person.
2. Record a short test, and play it back.
3. Tell everyone the meeting is being recorded, and ask for objections before you start.
4. Record the full meeting and keep the original file.
5. Transcribe the file, then read the draft against the audio at each decision.
6. Add the speakers' names by hand if the tool does not label them.

For the other routes to a meeting transcript, read our guide to meeting transcription. To turn a finished transcript into a record of decisions, see how to turn a meeting transcript into minutes. If the meeting is on a call rather than in one room, see whether you can transcribe a meeting without a bot.