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Online meeting captioning, transcription and summary tools

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I spend most of my work day on MS Teams working with remote development, UX and client teams on development projects. Since losing a chunk of my hearing in my left ear a few weeks ago I’ve been looking at tools to help me make out speech both in person and online.

I’ve got some aids on trail with Boots for in person but I’ve also tried a few meeting caption and capture tools.

While I now have the MS Teams captioning tool turned on, it is not that accurate (but it does **** out profanity, no matter how mild). However reading, talking and taking notes is a bit of a challenge, so I’ve tried a few other tools.

AIDE uses ChatGPT to both capture transcriptions (and does a very good job of it) but them pushes that transcription through a prompt (there are a few built in ones but you can create your own) to summarise the call/meeting.

KRISP is similar but more polished. While you cannot edit the prompts, it does a really good job of both capturing a transcript and produces a set of minutes with actions etc. It recognises the different voices and if you give them names, it uses them in the minutes/summary to attribute decisions and actions. It remembers the voices across different meetings (which is useful but you wonder about GDPR issues). KRISP at adds noise reduction filters if you or the others are talking from noisy environments.

Grain is another tool but I’ve not tried it yet.

Do you know of or can you recommend any others?

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@AlexE said:

Since losing a chunk of my hearing in my left ear a few weeks ago I’ve been looking at tools to help me make out speech both in person and online.

Few weeks ago? How long ago, exactly? For what reason you have hearing loss?

If you have non-infectious sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL - diagnosed by otolaringologist or audiologist physician) you should immediately get steroid therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy!

About 7 weeks ago.
Went to the GP (local doctor) who started me with a steroid and antibiotic spray, then steroid tablets. This did not show any improvement so I was quickly referred to audiology at the local hospital. There we tried direct steroid injection through my eardrum. No joy so about three weeks ago I popped into Boots and I’m trialing some Phonak Lumity aids (but at £3k that is a lot of money to look to find).

Waiting on the results of the .

I’ve also been bumped up the NHS hearing aid waiting list given I need something to help me understand speech for work.

Edited

You don’t have the option of hyperbaric therapy? And out of curiosity: what glucocorticosteroid and at what dose did you have it in tablets and how quickly after the hearing loss? How long have you been taking the pills?

Sorry to learn about your hearing loss. I lost my hearing the same way years ago. I’m really interested in the transcription s/w you mentioned, haven’t heard about either one. Can you share a link or something?

In reply to @Bimodal_user

The spray was about a day and a half later.

The steroid tablets (the following week) were Prednisolon, 60mg a day (5mg tablets so shovelling them in). Not sure about the injection in my ear, but 0.3ml as that is all they could fit.

Tablets were 2 weeks

I was offered an additional couple of through-the-eardrum injections but as none of the steroids seem to have any impact on my hearing (I had weekly hearing tests) this seemed a rather fruitless route.

No mention of hyperbaric treatment.

In reply to @user699

Here is the one I’m currently using:

World’s #1 Noise Cancelling App and AI Meeting Assistant5

Krisp cancels background noise, records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and calls.

The one I tried first was:

AIDE AI Assistant for Mac | Efficient Meetings and Quick Transcriptions 🚀1

Meet AIDE! Your discreet assistant for note-taking and transcriptions in any language. Organize meetings, save time, and boost productivity!

Edited

In reply to @AlexE

@AlexE said:

I was offered an additional couple of through-the-eardrum injections but as none of the steroids seem to have any impact on my hearing (I had weekly hearing tests) this seemed a rather fruitless route

Sorry to hear that. I know that nighmare.

@AlexE said:

No mention of hyperbaric treatment.

I think you should really consider this, but contact with otolaringologist and decision must be made now.

Regarding —not for transcription, but for improved microphone effectiveness—try Adobe Podcast AI.

Hi,
dumb question, sorry. Are you using a headset (with microphone) for your online meetings?
The headset ideally has over the ear headphones and the audio to the headphones from MS Teams is routed through graphic equaliser software on the computer so as to customise the audio to partially compensate for your hearing loss / make voices clearer.
This crude approach was a big help for me in my last years before retirement.
Regards

I use a set of bone conduction headphones (Shokz OpenComm) but I cannot find any equaliser settings on my Mac.

Sorry, I realise now my answer was misleading and not relevant due to my work computer setup.
This was a Windows 10 computer which used an old-fashioned “Tower case” so 3rd party soundcards could be added and used for sound output. The 3rd party soundcard had its own software that came with an equaliser for sound adjustment (and was not part of Windows 10).
My over the ear closed back headphones with a wired connection were plugged directly into the soundcard. These Over the ear closed back headphones blocked out most external sounds in the office (pre-work from home) so enabled me to focus without distraction on the audio output from the soundcard.
I used wired connection so as not to add another layer of technical conversion to the sound.

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