Tips, guides, and insights on real-time transcription, translation, and productivity.
How to build a meeting client that knows who spoke and when: LecSync's transcript.final format, keeping timestamps straight across reconnects, and how AssemblyAI, Deepgram and OpenAI handle speakers and timing, checked October 6, 2026.
Headline per-minute rates hide the add-ons. We price 1,000 hours of live captions with translation, speaker labels and summaries across six public rate cards, show the math, and say when LecSync’s flat $0.006 per audio minute wins and when it does not.
When the network stalls, uncapped audio queues make captions drift further behind. LecSync caps server-side backlog at 2 seconds so lag stops growing, then re-anchors on the current sentence within about a second.
AssemblyAI and OpenAI each ship strong realtime speech stacks. LecSync puts transcription, live translation, speakers, digest, and glossary on one WebSocket at $0.006 per audio minute.
DIY STT + MT works if you already own translation. For live bilingual captions, LecSync pairs transcription and translation on one WebSocket at $0.006 per audio minute all-in.
Soniox is strong on realtime STT, bundled translation, and low list hourly rates—but bills by token and defaults to 10 concurrent streams. LecSync is $0.006 per audio minute all-in for product-scale live captions.
Deepgram promo STT can still win on raw streaming price; LecSync fits live translation, speakers, and digest on one WebSocket at $0.006/audio minute all-in.
A short midterm oral or grade conference often leaves tone, not three fixes—bilingual captions and AI action items keep the same list searchable while you rewrite.
When the TA narrates a lab demo faster than the protocol sheet, bilingual captions keep reagent names, timing, and safety asides searchable after class.
Short project standups where next steps vanish—bilingual minutes so Chinese overseas students and local teammates leave with the same action list.
When campus Wi-Fi is fine, the real choice is privacy vs accuracy—local AI or cloud translation for this lecture hour.
Week 3 is when Free minutes run short—spend what is left on contact hours you cannot rebuild from a slide deck alone.