Sonix - Review 2022 - Leister Whosse

A transcription service can be invaluable for professionals or students who frequently rely on voice recordings for their piece of work. Sonix provides an automated service with lots of online editing tools and fast processing. However, its high toll and unreliable performance on circuitous files in our testing concord it dorsum. For simpler recordings, Sonix might work fine, but there are cheaper options that produce more accurate results. Its inconsistent operation is disappointing because information technology offers novel features not found in competing services. For a top-notch transcription experience, try Editors' Choice Rev instead.

Toll Plans

Sonix's cheapest choice, the Professional plan, costs $15 per month plus an additional $v per hour of transcription (prorated). This plan includes all of Sonix's base features (such equally word confidence levels and its embeddable actor) likewise every bit secure file storage and email support. Sonix is unusual in that information technology charges both a subscription fee and a transcription fee. If you merely need to use transcription services occasionally, so Sonix is not cost-constructive. The adjacent step up, the Business plan, costs $lxxx per calendar month plus $5 for each 60 minutes of transcription. Information technology adds multiuser access (with permissions and shared folders), private file uploading, centralized billing, and priority back up.

The elevation-tier Enterprise program costs $400 per month and includes everything in the Business program. It adds advanced ambassador controls, detailed file-consequence tracking, and advanced training resources for users. That fee doesn't include the transcripts themselves, nonetheless. Sonix does non listing the additional rate for the transcripts, instead asking potential customers to contact them directly. The practiced news is that Sonix does not charge per person, so you tin can add as many people as yous want to either the Business or Enterprise accounts. Y'all can also choose to pay on an annual footing at a slight disbelieve. With the annual discount, the subscription component of the Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans comes to $120, $800, and $4,000 per twelvemonth, respectively. The per-hour transcription pricing stays at $5 per hour for the Professional person and Business accounts.

Anyone who signs up gets 30 minutes' worth of transcriptions to examination out the service. This trial pick does non require a credit card, and I encourage you to see if it produces adequate results for your needs before y'all commit to a full subscription.

Sonix is expensive compared with nigh automatic transcription services. Sonix even says in i of its blog posts that "automatic speech recognition has not only gotten and then good, but information technology is also amazingly inexpensive (eight cents/min)," which is essentially cheaper than what it charges. Temi costs just $0.10 per minute; Otter and Scribie's automatic services are both free. That said, Sonix is a amend deal than Trint'due south $xl per calendar month subscription programme (for three hours' worth of transcriptions) also as its $fifteen per hour pay-as-yous-go rate (if you become by the beginning hour).

Human-based transcription services are more expensive. Their rates (for the almost part) change depending on the extras you select, just for the sake of comparison, we consider mid-tier rates. Scribie'south freelance service costs $1.20 per infinitesimal and GoTranscript runs most the same depending on the options and delivery fourth dimension yous select. Rev costs $1 per minute of transcription.

Getting Started and Security

To sign up for the trial, all you demand to do is provide your name, email address, and password. As noted, you don't need a credit carte to get started. Sonix does not offer any mobile apps, so you tin can only access your account via the web. About other services we reviewed allow y'all to take recordings and submit orders via a mobile device. Otter goes one stride farther and lets you directly edit transcripts on your telephone or tablet. This functionality is particularly user-friendly for professionals and students often on the go or for those who just don't want to carry around a dedicated vocalism recorder.

As with like offerings, Sonix benefits from the privacy inherent in an automatic transcription service, meaning that no person ever looks at your file. With a homo-based service, at to the lowest degree one person needs access to your recordings and then that they tin can consummate the transcription. Sonix says it uses fully secure TLS encryption to secure all the files you upload. On a related notation, Sonix also lets you lot ascertain permission levels for each person in shared accounts, which we talk over later. Keep in mind that Sonix does not accept an option for enabling two-factor authentication at the fourth dimension of this review, which could exist a security run a risk for organizations or individuals who deal with sensitive information. To be fair, no other transcription services I have reviewed offer this, either.

Web Dashboard

Sonix's web interface is primarily white and gray, with blue accents for icons, text, and other elements. It looks fine and prioritizes the most important content and areas, which I capeesh. Oddly, Sonix highlights quotes from famous people on most screens; I saw examples from John Steinbeck and Orson Welles. The introductory message also changes with each page refresh, and so Sonix may greet you lot with a formal "Welcome" or a more than familiar "How-do-you-do." Both add together a subtle touch of personality.

Across the acme of the interface, Sonix organizes using three tabs: Home, Upload, and Add together User. You go a search bar on the right-hand side of the screen and a profile icon for accessing settings. Yous tin upload files from your local device or from online sources like Dropbox or Google Drive. The search bar is specially useful in that it searches for terms within the text of all of your transcriptions (though not your notes). Home is where you can notice, organize, and upload transcripts. The Personal account settings are pretty bones. Sonix shows your billing information, displays your remaining transcription minutes, and lets you lot change your account. Notably, Sonix also offers a Referral Program tab, in which yous earn 100 additional minutes of transcriptions for each friend who subscribes to the service from an invite link you ship them.

If y'all subscribe to the Business or Enterprise tier, a new option appears in the right-hand carte for business settings. From here, you can add users to your business relationship and manage other people's roles. At that place are v main roles yous can assign to each person who uses the Sonix account: Admins, Editors, Members, View But, and Disabled. This feature is invaluable for corporate environments for managers who want to keep some files private and make others accessible to everyone. Take a expect at the chart beneath for all the various roles.

Web Editor

Sonix'due south web editor interface retains the aforementioned visual design every bit the remainder of the dashboard, which is to say that it looks clean and compact. Beyond the summit, you lot become the typical options available with other transcript services, such as playback speed and a list of keyboard shortcuts, likewise as highlight and strikethrough tools. Sonix too includes a useful find-and-supersede tool, which worked fine in testing. Nigh other services offer at to the lowest degree these capabilities, though GoTranscript does not let you edit your transcripts online at all.

Sonix, however, goes beyond what nearly other services offer. Foremost, Sonix calculates word confidence levels and assigns that value to a corresponding color scale. If you lot click on the Quality menu option in the top bar, y'all can come across the entire breakup of the document, divided into words for which Sonix determined information technology was very, fairly, and somewhat confident. You can toggle these colors in the text itself to get a full general idea of where Sonix had the most difficulties. In use, this tool is helpful in identifying areas where Sonix struggled, but it wasn't perfect. Specifically, it did non highlight some entirely incorrect words in some sections. It also does not marker areas where it entirely missed sections of the conversation. I similar the premise of this tool, just information technology needs further refinement. One other bang-up (and exclusive) feature is Sonix's AudioText tool. Essentially, this allows you to edit the uploaded audio file by making changes to the transcript text. For case, if you lot delete a line in the transcript itself, Sonix cuts out the corresponding part of the audio file.

Rounding out the web editor'due south features are notes and speaker identification. Sonix, like most automatic transcription services, had bug correctly identifying changes in speaker, just information technology'due south piece of cake plenty to separate blocks of the conversation on your own. To define a new speaker, just click on the speaker pick next to each paragraph. Yous tin add together and remove names and select from any that you lot already defined. For each cake of text, you can likewise add notes. These tin can take any shape, such as research notes or only general comments.

Additional Features

One of Sonix'due south coolest features is the ability to embed your transcript in other places across the spider web. How does that work, you may ask? Sonix can generate HTML code that includes both the transcript audio and the transcript text combined in a neat packet. The widget itself includes the entire transcript text in a scrollable text box with sound playback tools on the bottom. Sonix says this widget helps with SEO since the actual text of the transcription is discoverable by search engines on the page. On top of that, the playback via the embed syncs upwardly with the text, so you can easily follow along. Furthermore, if yous make any edits to the transcript via Sonix'southward web editor, even later on you embed information technology on a website, the live embed volition update as well. If you want, you lot tin can even choose to make the transcript notes public equally well.

Sonix also implements uncomplicated (but highly useful) call recording capabilities (currently in beta). To use this feature, navigate over to the Options drop-downwards on the right-hand side of the screen and striking the Tape Calls option. All y'all demand to do is to fill out your name, telephone number, an optional Pivot, and the number of the other person on the phone call. After y'all initiate the recording, Sonix will telephone call and connect on your end and and so exercise the same for the other political party. It is your responsibility to inform the other person that Sonix is recording the phone call as to comply with any recording consent laws in your country. At the time of publishing, you lot cannot add a third person to the phone call. Competitor Scribie does offer an option for transcribing conference calls.

Accuracy

To test the accuracy of the transcription services, I uploaded the same xvi-minute recording to each 1. The original recording of a 3-person briefing call came from an Olympus VN-722PC defended vox recorder. It's not an easy recording, but this is the best way to compare Sonix'southward automated speech recognition (ASR) engine straight to other services.

Sonix finished the transcript procedure in nigh iii minutes. All of the automated transcription services completed the chore in the range of iii to 4 minutes. The quickest human-based transcription, Rev, required around an hour for the same job.

Instead of comparing the entirety of each transcript, I chose three paragraphs, one from each speaker on the call. For each snippet of the transcription, I marked an error wherever there was a missing, incorrect, or extra word. I calculated the overall mistake rate by dividing the total number of mistakes into the total number of words beyond the combined sections (in this case, 201 words). The sample for section A is a short introductory department. Department B is slightly longer and uses more complex vocabulary. Department C is even lengthier and contains some technical language.

Sonix produced dismal results in the offset test (information technology had an fault charge per unit of 97 percentage). It entirely missed large chunks of the conversation, added extraneous words, or only came up with similar-sounding (but wrong) words in other sections. These results surprised me, and Sonix after informed me that its service is designed to work with high-quality audio, such as podcasts. While that may be the instance, the same is true of every transcription service, automatic or otherwise; they all work best with perfect recordings. Withal, equally whatsoever podcast listener knows, recording perfect audio is not always possible, which is why we exam with a not-ideal file. Our goal is to differentiate the abilities of these services every bit much equally possible.

To be off-white, Sonix did inform me in the Quality menu dropdown that the transcript required significant editing and recommended I use a transmission transcription service for ameliorate results. Sonix does have a referral mechanism of sorts, known as Sonix Cleanup, but it is not piece of cake to detect on the website. This section lists a couple of freelancer transcription services yous can contact if you desire a homo to better the results.

Fifty-fifty Trint, with its poor error rate of 78 percent, fared ameliorate. For reference, automatic services do non perform nearly as well on this more-hard transcription test, though Otter did tape an admirable 17 pct error rate. Rev, our top human-based transcription service, had an error rate of just 3 percent, and Scribie turned in a final re-create with 6 percent. Take a look at the full chart below for the complete breakdown.

I retested all the automatic services, including Sonix, with a simpler recording (two people, in-person) and calculated the error rate in the aforementioned manner, using two samples instead of three. The automatic services fared better with this task as a whole, but they however weren't perfect. Sonix brutal in line with the rest of the pack with an error charge per unit of 23 per centum and was not too far off from Trint'due south 14 percent or Temi'south 21 percent. The full results of the second examination appear below.

Mixed Impressions

Sonix gets points for its collection of editing tools and spider web functionality, simply those lonely are not plenty to make upwardly for its poor accuracy. Furthermore, it's expensive for an automatic service, specially considering that others in the category that cost less (or are free) also produce better results. It should do a decent job on simple transcription tasks, simply individuals and corporations should look elsewhere for annihilation more than complex. If Sonix's transcription performance improves, its excellent combination of editing and collaboration features could make it a strong, if pricey, contender. For now, however, we recommend our Editors' Choice, Rev.