***

title: Overview
description: >-
Convert speech to text with the Pulse API - supporting real-time streaming and
pre-recorded audio transcription with industry-leading latency
icon: microphone
----------------

The Waves Speech To Text (STT) stack processes audio via `https://waves-api.smallest.ai/api/v1/pulse/get_text` and returns low-latency transcripts with configurable languages, formats, and pricing tiers suited for enterprise deployments.

<Card title="Quickstart" icon="rocket" href="/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/quickstart">
  Get started in minutes. Learn how to get your API key and transcribe your first audio file.
</Card>

## Transcription Modes

We offer two transcription modes to cover a wide range of use cases. Choose the one that best fits your needs:

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Pre-Recorded" icon="file-audio" href="/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/pre-recorded/quickstart">
    Transcribe audio files using synchronous HTTPS POST requests. Perfect for batch processing, archived media, and offline transcription workflows.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Real-Time" icon="broadcast-tower" href="/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/realtime-web-socket/quickstart">
    Stream audio and receive transcription results as the audio is processed. Ideal for live conversations, voice assistants, and low-latency applications.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Feature highlights

Our models specialize in processing audio to preserve information that is often lost during conventional speech to text conversion.

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="32+ Languages & Automatic Language Detection">
    Support for 32+ languages with automatic language detection or ISO 639-1 codes (`en`, `hi`, etc.). Use `language=multi` to enable automatic language detection across all supported languages.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Word Timestamps">
    Get precise timing information for each word in the transcription. Enables caption generation, subtitle tracks, and time-based search within audio content.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Sentence Timestamps (Utterances)">
    Receive sentence-level transcription segments with timing information. Perfect for displaying readable captions, synchronizing larger chunks of audio, or storing structured call summaries.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Diarization">
    Identify and separate generated text into speaker turns. Automatically label different speakers in multi-speaker audio, enabling speaker-attributed transcription.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Age & Gender Detection">
    Estimate the age group and detect the gender of each speaker alongside transcription. Provides demographic insights for analytics and content analysis.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Emotion Detection">
    Detect emotional tone in transcribed speech with strength indicators for 5 core emotion types. Analyze sentiment and emotional context in conversations.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="PII & PCI Redaction">
    Automatically redact personally identifiable information (names, addresses, phone numbers) and payment card information (credit cards, CVV, account numbers) to protect privacy and ensure compliance.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Full Transcript (Real-Time)">
    Get cumulative transcript received up to this point in responses where `is_final` is `true`. Maintain complete session transcripts for conversation logs and real-time monitoring.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Low Latency">
    Streaming pipeline tuned for \~64 ms time to first transcript latency. Optimized for real-time transcription with minimal delay.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Supported languages

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>
        Language
      </th>

      <th>
        Code
      </th>

      <th>
        Pre-Recorded
      </th>

      <th>
        Real-Time
      </th>
    </tr>
  </thead>

  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>
        Italian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>it</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Spanish
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>es</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        English
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>en</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Portuguese
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>pt</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Hindi
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>hi</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        German
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>de</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        French
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>fr</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Ukrainian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>uk</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Russian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>ru</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Kannada
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>kn</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Malayalam
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>ml</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Polish
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>pl</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Marathi
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>mr</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Gujarati
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>gu</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Czech
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>cs</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Slovak
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>sk</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Telugu
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>te</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Oriya (Odia)
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>or</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Dutch
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>nl</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Bengali
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>bn</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Latvian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>lv</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Estonian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>et</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Romanian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>ro</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Punjabi
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>pa</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Finnish
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>fi</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Swedish
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>sv</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Bulgarian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>bg</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Tamil
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>ta</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Hungarian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>hu</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Danish
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>da</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Lithuanian
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>lt</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>
        Maltese
      </td>

      <td>
        <code>mt</code>
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>

      <td>
        Yes
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Use `language=multi` to auto-detect across the full list or specify one of the codes above to pin the model to a single language.

## Next steps

* Send your first POST request in the [Pulse STT Pre-Recorded quickstart](/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/pre-recorded/quickstart).
* Start your first WebSocket connection in the [Pulse STT WebSocket quickstart](/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/realtime-web-socket/quickstart).
* Review [best practices](/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/pre-recorded/best-practices) for audio preprocessing and request hygiene.
* Use the [troubleshooting guide](/waves/documentation/speech-to-text/pre-recorded/troubleshooting) when you need quick fixes.