Audio tips and microphones

Caption quality depends most on audio: use a clear microphone, a stable network and the right languages.

Caption quality depends a lot on the audio. These tips help make captions more accurate and stable.

Use a microphone close to your mouth, such as a lapel or handheld microphone. A laptop’s built-in microphone is often too far away and picks up echo and noise.
If the venue has a sound technician, ask them to connect the mixer output to the speaker computer and select it as the “Audio source”.
Before you start, check that the right microphone is selected under “Audio source”. Say a few words and watch the level meter move.
If you change or unplug the microphone and the page says the audio device stopped, reconnect it and click “Start” again.

Speak at a normal pace and pause briefly between sentences. Captions appear sooner.
Ask the organizer to add special names to the glossary in advance, such as people, companies and products.
Pick only the languages you will actually use (“Settings” → “Languages I speak”). Too many slow things down. The spoken language is detected automatically.
For panels with several speakers, the organizer can turn on multiple speakers in the event settings. Captions then show “Speaker 1, Speaker 2”.

To caption audio from a video or an online meeting, choose “Share a tab’s audio (desktop Chrome)” under “Audio source”:

If you do not turn it on, no audio is received.

Use a stable network, wired if possible.
Venue Wi-Fi may require you to sign in again. If you cannot connect, switch to mobile data or turn off your VPN.
After a short disconnection, the speaker page reconnects automatically and resends the last 30 seconds of audio. After a long disconnection, a part may have no captions, and the page tells you.

Do not let another app (for example a video call) use the microphone at the same time.
Do not close or reload the speaker page while recording. After reopening it, click “Start” again.
One speaker link records on one page at a time. If you open it in another tab or on another computer, you can choose “Record here” to take over.