How can I improve transcription accuracy?

Most accuracy problems get fixed at the source — during recording, not during transcription. These seven steps deliver the biggest gains:

1. Use a real microphone. A budget USB condenser mic (€50-100) produces dramatically better results than a laptop's built-in mic or a phone speaker. Headsets beat desk mics because they stay a constant distance from the mouth.

2. Dampen the room. Reverb is the biggest hidden accuracy killer. Record in a carpeted room with curtains, or even under a blanket ("blanket fort studio"). Avoid empty rooms with glass walls.

3. Speaker discipline. One person finishes before the next starts. Overlapping speech breaks every diarization algorithm. For online meetings, push-to-talk or short turns help.

4. Use custom vocabulary. Most serious providers (DeepScript included) let you upload a list of proper nouns, product names, jargon, and acronyms. With it, the model nails "pembrolizumab" or "Müller-Lüdenscheidt"; without it, those terms get butchered.

5. Pick the right model. For DeepScript: Standard for everyday work, Premium for meetings, interviews, medical, legal. Premium uses a larger model and delivers significantly better results on DACH dialects (Swiss German, Austrian, regional German).

6. Specify the language instead of auto-detect. If you know the audio is German, set that explicitly. Auto-detect usually works but can flip on short clips or bilingual conversations.

7. For high-stakes audio, have a human review the output. Court records, medical documentation, regulatory filings need a quick human pass. AI-first, human-last gets you 4-6x time savings at near-human final accuracy.

The order is deliberate: steps 1-3 act before the transcription stage and have the biggest leverage.