MP3 to Text Converter

Q: Can I transcribe only part of a long MP3?

Yes. Enter **Start at** and **End at** under **Advanced settings** in seconds or minutes:seconds, for example 12:30 to 18:00. Only that stretch is transcribed, which is quicker when you need one answer from a long interview.

Q: Can it tell who is speaking?

With **Speaker labels** on, the transcript marks changes of voice as Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on. It does not know names, so replace the labels with the real names in Word afterwards.

Upload an MP3 of a lecture, interview, meeting or podcast and get the spoken words back as text you can search, edit and quote. Choose plain text for notes, Word for editing, or SRT and VTT when the words need to line up with a video.

or drop MP3, WAV, M4A … files here ·

Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes

Transcription

Spoken language

Output

Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.

How to use this tool

1
Upload the MP3
Drop one or more MP3 files, up to 20 at a time and 95 MB each. Other audio and video files such as M4A, WAV and MP4 work too.
2
Set the language and output
Spoken language is on Auto-detect, which listens to the first 30 seconds. Pick the language yourself if the recording opens with music. Output starts at plain text; switch to Word, PDF, SRT or VTT as needed.
3
Transcribe and download
Press Transcribe and download the transcript. Turn on Timestamps or Speaker labels under Advanced settings first if you need to find passages or tell voices apart.

Transcribing an MP3 turns minutes of listening into seconds of reading: search for a word, copy a quote, or hand the text to someone who cannot play audio.

Why transcribe MP3 to text

MP3 is what most voice recorders, phone recording apps and podcast tools export, so it is usually the file you already have. Students transcribe recorded lectures to study from notes, journalists pull exact quotes from interviews, researchers code focus groups, and podcasters publish transcripts so the episode can be found by search engines and read by people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The output decides what you can do next. Plain text (TXT) pastes anywhere. Word (DOCX) is ready for editing and comments. PDF suits a transcript that should not be changed. SRT and VTT are subtitle files with timings, and JSON lists every word with its time for developers.

If the recording is inside a video, you can upload the video itself; the audio track is transcribed. Or extract the sound first with MP4 to MP3 when the video is too large to upload.

files per batch: 20
per file: 95 MB
languages plus auto-detect: 33
until uploads are deleted: 30 min

What affects MP3 to text accuracy

Overlapping speakers: Two voices at once are the hardest case. Panels and dinner-table recordings lose the most words where people interrupt each other.
Background sound: Music, traffic and air conditioning compete with speech. A quiet room matters more than an expensive microphone.
Phone and call recordings: Traditional phone lines carry only a narrow band of frequencies, so consonants blur. Expect more corrections on call recordings.
Wrong language setting: Auto-detect can misjudge a file that opens with music or switches languages. Setting Spoken language yourself fixes it.

MP3 to SRT subtitles with timestamps

Two cues from an SRT file

1
00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:04,050
Welcome back to the show.

2
00:00:04,300 --> 00:00:07,900
Today we're talking about home recording.

SRT comes from SubRip, a Windows subtitle tool, and is the most widely accepted subtitle format: a number, a start and end time with a comma before the milliseconds, and the caption text. VTT, or WebVTT, is the W3C's version for web video players and uses a period instead of the comma. Both are plain text, so you can fix a misheard word in any editor.

Caption lines are wrapped at 42 characters by default, the limit used in professional subtitle style guides such as Netflix's for most Latin-script languages. If you want time markers in a document rather than a subtitle file, keep TXT, Word or PDF and turn on Timestamps, which puts a marker like [01:15] before each paragraph. Already have subtitles and need plain text? SRT to TXT strips the numbers and timings.

MP3 to text questions

How accurate is MP3 transcription?

It depends far more on the recording than on the file format. One clear voice close to a microphone transcribes very well; a phone call, a noisy café or several people talking over each other produces more mistakes. Always read the transcript once before quoting from it.

Can I transcribe only part of a long MP3?

Yes. Enter Start at and End at under Advanced settings in seconds or minutes:seconds, for example 12:30 to 18:00. Only that stretch is transcribed, which is quicker when you need one answer from a long interview.

Which output should I pick for YouTube captions?

SRT or VTT. Both carry a start and end time for every line, and YouTube Studio accepts either when you upload a subtitle file. Keep Characters per line at 42 so each caption fits two short lines on screen.

What does the JSON output contain?

Every word with its start and end time. Developers use it to build interactive transcripts, search within audio or cut clips at exact words. For reading, TXT or Word is easier.

My MP3 is larger than 95 MB. What can I do?

Speech does not need a high bitrate. Re-encode the file at 64 kbps mono with Compress audio, which shrinks a long recording several times over without hurting transcription, then upload the smaller file.

Can it tell who is speaking?

With Speaker labels on, the transcript marks changes of voice as Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on. It does not know names, so replace the labels with the real names in Word afterwards.