Free Voice File Player Downloads Compatible With All Foot Pedals

Voice file player, the unavoidable integral part of medical transcription! How many choices do you have in that? Well, this week, I tried to do some research on the available freewares on the internet. In the early days of my transcription career when I started with CBay Systems, I was working with Medipro, a voice file player designed exclusively for CBay Systems (not available for public download). Out of CBay, I have also worked with the voice file players Trans-Aid and Trans-Assist for which I couldn’t find a reliable download source or any information on the internet. Currently, I’m using the paid version of Start Stop Universal Transcription System, available for $99, which is configurable with game port (15 pins), serial port (9 pins), USB, COM port, single pedal, dual pedal or three pedal assembly foot pedals. It can play audio file formats like .wav, .dss, .vox, .aud, gsm, mp3 etc., and it is fully configurable to automatically load the audio files on the player. While I’m perfectly satisfied with its performance and using it for the past six years for my home transcription purposes, I thought to do some research for free voice file player downloads on the Internet, free audio file players for transcription that can be used as an alternative for this paid version, and I could find a few of them. Here are the free voice file player downloads compatible with all foot pedals for your perusal:

Express Scribe

Express Scribe is the most popular free audio player software available on the internet for PC, Mac or Linux designed to assist the transcription of audio recordings. I think Express Scribe has almost all the functions available with that of Start Stop Universal Transcription System and can be used without any restrictions.

The features of Express Scribe include:

• Variable speed playback.
• Supports many professional foot pedals which connect to the game, serial or USB port to control playback.
• Works with Microsoft Word and all major word-processor applications. Playback can be controlled with keyboard also when using other softwares like MS Word.
• Automatically receives and loads files by internet (FTP), email or over a local computer network.
• Automatically sends typing to the person who dictated the work.
• Works with speech recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking to automatically convert speech to text.
• Loads audio directly – start to work as it loads in the background.
• Can switch to ‘mini’ mode to reduce screen space.
• Works on Windows 98, ME, XP 2000/2003/Vista/2008 and Windows 7 and Mac OS X – 10.1 or above and Linux
• Ability to play almost all audio file formats (including encrypted dictation files) including wav, mp3, au, aif, vox, dct (encrypted dictation), Windows Media, VoiceIt (sri), RealAudio (ra and rm), Olympus, Lanier & Grundig (dss), Sony Recorder formats (msv, dvf), Philips Digital Recorder format, Sanyo Digital Recorder format, DSP TrueSpeech, mp2, etc.

If this is the free voice player that you have been looking for, go and grab it from ExpressScribe Download location.

F4 Transcriptions Software

F4 is a free transcription software which can be run from any computer, PC or Mac, Linux or Windows which can read audio files wma, ogg, wav, aif. However, it is compatible with single pedal footswitch only. Get more details and download link of F4 from audiotranskription.de

Update: The software author, Thorsten, has reported that F4 is compatible with three foot pedals. Please see the comment below.

Olympus DSS Player Lite

Olympus DSS Player Lite is capable of reading files DSS/WAV/WMA/VA. You can download it from here.

And now a audio file player that works only with only mouse control….

Source Forge’s Transcriber

Transcriber allows you to play the audio file using mouse-activated controls that look like a cassette or CD player. You play a section, pause, then type what you have heard. Further, you can link the text to the audio file, i.e., when you highlight a line, the audio of the line plays audibly. I think it will be tedious to work on this; however, if your foot pedal is not working, you may try this player just for transcribing a couple of files until the foot pedal is fixed. Get further details and download link from Source Forge.

JoyScribe

Another good transcription audio player software that I have worked with is ESPI JoyScribe which comes bundled with some foot pedals for which I couldn’t find an authorized site available for download, either paid version or free download. However, I was able to find a couple of unauthorized download links of Joy Scribe, find one here.

The FTW Transcriber

The FTW Transcriber is another transcription voice player software with the usual features and some more additional features. It is completely FREE download for individuals (non-corporate users)! The features are not limited to but include:

• Automatic adding of time-stamps and frames – huge time-saver! (optional)
• Supports and plays a wide range of file types (including dss/ds2)
• Timestamp formatting – add them in the format of your choice
• Start timestamps from any timecode, not just 00:00:00
• Hotkeys for common transcription phrases like “overtalking” or “unclear”
• Plays files either on your local drive or on remote servers without downloading first!
• Can be used with hotkeys or pedals

Find further details and download link for the latest version at the home page of The FTW Transcriber.

Philips DSS Player

Get Philips DSS Player from here.

That’s all for now. Do you know any transcription voice player other than these? Leave your comments below.