Audio Transcription Pipeline

VAD-first, evidence-backed Whisper transcription running locally on Apple Silicon. Produces high-quality transcripts with zero hallucinations, correct domain terminology, and LLM-polished output.

Architecture: Audio → ffmpeg (16kHz WAV) → Silero-VAD (speech segmentation) → MLX Whisper → Dictionary replacement → Claude LLM correction → Output.

Prerequisites

• macOS with Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) — required for MLX
• Python 3.9+ — Xcode Python at /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3 or Homebrew Python
• ffmpeg — for audio preprocessing (brew install ffmpeg)
• Anthropic API key — for LLM correction step (optional but recommended)

Setup

Detection Order

Check if the pipeline is already installed:

1. Check config — ls ~/.config/transcribe/client.py
2. Check Python packages — python3 -c "import mlx_whisper, torch, scipy, anthropic"
3. No installation — Run the First-Time Setup below

Using Existing Installation

If ~/.config/transcribe/client.py exists, the pipeline is ready:

# CLI usage
PYTHON="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3"
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/audio.m4a"

# With options
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/audio.m4a" --language no --no-llm

Or via Python API:

import sys
from pathlib import Path
sys.path.insert(0, str(Path.home() / '.config/transcribe'))
from client import transcribe

result = transcribe("/path/to/audio.m4a")
print(f"Output: {result.corrected_path}")
print(f"Words: {result.corrected_text.split().__len__()}")
print(f"Speed: {result.audio_duration_s / result.total_time_s:.1f}x realtime")

First-Time Setup

Step 1: Identify the Python environment

MLX requires Apple Silicon. Find the right Python:

# Option A: Xcode Python (most reliable for ML packages)
PYTHON="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3"
$PYTHON --version

# Option B: Homebrew Python
PYTHON="python3"
$PYTHON --version

Use whichever has mlx installed, or install from scratch with one of them.

Step 2: Install Python packages

# Core ML packages
$PYTHON -m pip install --user mlx mlx_whisper

# VAD (Voice Activity Detection) — requires torch
$PYTHON -m pip install --user torch torchaudio

# Audio processing
$PYTHON -m pip install --user numpy scipy

# LLM correction (optional but recommended)
$PYTHON -m pip install --user anthropic

Verify installation:

$PYTHON -c "
import mlx_whisper; print('mlx_whisper OK')
import torch; print(f'torch {torch.__version__} OK')
import scipy; print('scipy OK')
import numpy; print('numpy OK')
try:
    import anthropic; print('anthropic OK')
except: print('anthropic NOT installed (LLM correction will be unavailable)')
"

Step 3: Install ffmpeg

# macOS
brew install ffmpeg

# Verify
ffmpeg -version | head -1

Step 4: Create the pipeline directory

mkdir -p ~/.config/transcribe/models

Step 5: Create configuration files

Create ~/.config/transcribe/config.json:

{
  "models": {
    "norwegian": "nb-whisper-medium-mlx",
    "norwegian_fallback": "aalst/nb-whisper-large-distil-turbo-beta-mlx",
    "english": "mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo",
    "multilingual": "mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo"
  },
  "local_model_dir": "~/.config/transcribe/models",
  "language": "auto",
  "auto_detect_segments": 5,
  "auto_detect_norwegian_threshold": 0.8,
  "vad_enabled": true,
  "vad_chunk_max_seconds": 28,
  "vad_padding_ms": 400,
  "llm_correction": true,
  "llm_model": "claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
  "llm_chunk_words": 500,
  "output_dir": "/tmp/transcribe",
  "whisper_params": {
    "condition_on_previous_text": false,
    "best_of": 1,
    "compression_ratio_threshold": 1.8,
    "no_speech_threshold": 0.5,
    "temperature": [0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0],
    "hallucination_silence_threshold": 2.0
  }
}

Create ~/.config/transcribe/dictionary.json:

{
  "initial_prompts": {
    "no": "Velkommen til møtet. Vi diskuterer teknologi, innovasjon og prosjektledelse.",
    "en": "Welcome to the meeting. We discuss technology, innovation and project management.",
    "auto": "Meeting about technology and innovation."
  },
  "replacements": {},
  "context_hints": {
    "no": [
      "This is a Norwegian meeting transcript",
      "Fix obvious speech-to-text errors only"
    ],
    "en": [
      "This is an English meeting transcript",
      "Fix obvious speech-to-text errors only"
    ],
    "auto": [
      "This transcript may contain both Norwegian and English",
      "Fix obvious speech-to-text errors only"
    ]
  }
}

Customize the dictionary for the user's domain:

• initial_prompts — Natural sentences with domain vocabulary (max 224 tokens). These bias Whisper toward correct recognition.
• replacements — Regex-based fixes for known misrecognitions (e.g., "cloud code": "Claude Code"). Case-insensitive.
• context_hints — Instructions for the LLM correction pass describing the recording's context.

Step 6: Create the .env file (for LLM correction)

echo "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-..." > ~/.config/transcribe/.env

The pipeline loads this automatically if ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is not in the shell environment.

Step 7: Write the pipeline script

Create ~/.config/transcribe/client.py with the full pipeline code. The source is at:

• If the user already has it: Check ~/.config/transcribe/client.py
• If not: The complete pipeline (~400 lines) must be written. It implements the 6-stage architecture described in the Pipeline Architecture section below.

The client.py shebang should match the Python used in Step 1:

#!/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3

Step 8: Download models (happens automatically on first run)

The first transcription will download the required Whisper model from HuggingFace (~1.5GB). Subsequent runs use the cached model.

# Pre-download Norwegian model (optional)
$PYTHON -c "import mlx_whisper; mlx_whisper.transcribe('/dev/null', path_or_hf_repo='aalst/nb-whisper-large-distil-turbo-beta-mlx')" 2>/dev/null

# Pre-download English/multilingual model (optional)
$PYTHON -c "import mlx_whisper; mlx_whisper.transcribe('/dev/null', path_or_hf_repo='mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo')" 2>/dev/null

Usage

CLI

PYTHON="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3"

# Basic (auto language detection, VAD, LLM correction)
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a"

# Force Norwegian
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" --language no

# Force English
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" --language en

# Skip LLM correction (faster, raw output only)
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" --no-llm

# Skip VAD (process as single chunk — NOT recommended)
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" --no-vad

# Re-run only LLM correction on existing transcript
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" --llm-only

# Custom output directory
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" --output-dir /path/to/output

Python API

import sys
from pathlib import Path
sys.path.insert(0, str(Path.home() / '.config/transcribe'))
from client import transcribe

# Full pipeline
result = transcribe("/path/to/audio.m4a")

# Access results
print(result.corrected_text)       # Final corrected transcript
print(result.raw_text)             # Raw Whisper output
print(result.corrected_path)       # Path to corrected.txt
print(result.raw_path)             # Path to raw.txt
print(result.metadata_path)        # Path to metadata.json
print(result.language)             # Detected language
print(result.model_used)           # Which model was used
print(result.audio_duration_s)     # Audio length in seconds
print(result.num_vad_segments)     # Number of VAD chunks
print(result.transcribe_time_s)    # Whisper processing time
print(result.llm_correct_time_s)   # LLM correction time
print(result.total_time_s)         # Total pipeline time

# With overrides
result = transcribe(
    "/path/to/audio.m4a",
    language="no",              # Force Norwegian
    vad_enabled=True,           # Default
    llm_correction=False,       # Skip LLM step
    output_dir="/custom/path",  # Custom output
    initial_prompt="Meeting about renewable energy at Equinor..."
)

Running as Background Task

Transcription of long audio files takes significant time. Run as a background task:

PYTHON="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3"
$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/client.py "/path/to/meeting.m4a" 2>&1

Set run_in_background: true when invoking via Bash tool. Monitor output for progress:

• [1/6] Preprocessing... — ffmpeg conversion
• [2/6] VAD Segmentation... — speech detection, shows chunk count
• [3/6] Transcribing... — chunk-by-chunk progress
• [5/6] LLM Correction... — parallel API calls
• COMPLETE — with final stats

Output

The pipeline saves to {output_dir}/{audio_name}/:

metadata.json contains:

{
  "audio_path": "/original/path.m4a",
  "audio_duration_s": 3261.8,
  "language_mode": "auto",
  "language_detected": "no",
  "model_used": "nb-whisper-medium-mlx",
  "vad_enabled": true,
  "num_vad_segments": 140,
  "llm_correction": true,
  "llm_model": "claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
  "transcribe_time_s": 298.8,
  "llm_correct_time_s": 41.2,
  "total_time_s": 340.0,
  "raw_word_count": 7005,
  "corrected_word_count": 6975
}

Report key stats to the user: duration, processing speed (Xx realtime), word count, output paths.

Pipeline Architecture

Stage 1: Preprocess (ffmpeg)

Converts any audio format (.m4a, .mp3, .wav, .ogg, .flac, etc.) to 16kHz mono WAV for Whisper. Skips if input.wav already exists (safe to re-run).

Stage 2: VAD Segmentation (Silero-VAD)

The #1 quality intervention. Silero-VAD detects speech segments and merges them into chunks of maximum 28 seconds (matching Whisper's 30s internal window). Each chunk gets 400ms padding at boundaries.

Why this matters:

• Whisper hallucinates during silence (repeats text, generates phantom speech)
• VAD eliminates silence from Whisper's input entirely
• Reduces hallucination rate from ~20% to 0.2% (Baranski et al., 2025)
• 687 raw VAD segments → 140 merged chunks on a 54-min meeting

Audio loading uses scipy.io.wavfile (not torchaudio — no audio backends on macOS).

Stage 3: Transcription (MLX Whisper)

Language-aware model routing:

Auto-detection: Runs Whisper language detection on the first 5 VAD segments. If >80% detected as Norwegian → NB-Whisper. Otherwise → standard whisper-large-v3-turbo.

Evidence-backed Whisper parameters:

• condition_on_previous_text=False — prevents hallucination propagation between chunks
• No beam_size parameter — mlx_whisper only supports greedy decoding (beam search not implemented)
• temperature=(0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0) — fallback tuple for recovery when model gets stuck
• hallucination_silence_threshold=2.0 — marginal but helps catch remaining silence artifacts
• initial_prompt — natural sentence with domain vocabulary (not a term list), max 224 tokens

Memory management between chunks:

mx.set_cache_limit(100_000_000)  # 100MB cache limit
mx.clear_cache()                  # Between each chunk

Stage 4: Dictionary Replacement

Regex-based case-insensitive replacements from dictionary.json. Catches systematic ASR errors that are consistent across runs:

{
  "cloud code": "Claude Code",
  "entropic": "Anthropic",
  "terroristiske": "deterministiske",
  "co-pilot": "CoPilot"
}

This is the only stage with 100% precision — it fixes known errors every time.

Stage 5: LLM Correction (Claude Sonnet)

Splits text into ~500-word chunks and sends them in parallel (4 concurrent API calls) to Claude Sonnet for correction. The system prompt instructs strict error-fixing only:

• Fix obvious misrecognitions
• Fix punctuation and capitalization
• Preserve the speaker's actual meaning
• Do NOT rephrase, summarize, or restructure
• Return ONLY the corrected text

Context hints from dictionary.json provide domain knowledge (company names, technical terms, meeting context).

Loads ANTHROPIC_API_KEY from:

1. Environment variable (if set)
2. ~/.config/transcribe/.env file (fallback)

Stage 6: Output

Saves raw.txt, dict_corrected.txt, corrected.txt, and metadata.json. Each intermediate file serves as a resume point — if the pipeline fails at stage 5, the raw transcript is preserved.

Configuration Reference

config.json

dictionary.json

Customizing for a Domain

To adapt the pipeline for a new domain:

1. Add initial prompts with relevant vocabulary as natural sentences:

   "no": "Velkommen til styremøte i Equinor. Vi diskuterer havvind, karbonfangst, og produksjonsrapporter."
   

2. Add replacements for words you know Whisper consistently misrecognizes:

   "equi nor": "Equinor",
   "havvin": "havvind"
   

3. Add context hints so the LLM correction understands the domain:

   "no": [
     "This is a Norwegian board meeting at an energy company",
     "Key terms: havvind, karbonfangst, CCS, produksjonsvolum"
   ]
   

Performance

Benchmarked on a 54-minute Norwegian meeting recording (M1 MacBook Pro 16GB):

Comparison with Other Approaches

Critical Gotchas

1. mlx_whisper uses kwargs, not a dict

# WRONG — causes TypeError
mlx_whisper.transcribe(path, decode_options={"language": "no"})

# CORRECT — spread as kwargs
mlx_whisper.transcribe(path, language="no", best_of=1)

The mlx_whisper.transcribe() signature uses **decode_options (variadic kwargs), not decode_options: dict. The docstring is misleading.

2. mlx_whisper does NOT implement beam search

# WRONG — raises NotImplementedError
mlx_whisper.transcribe(path, beam_size=1)

# CORRECT — omit beam_size entirely (greedy decoding only)
mlx_whisper.transcribe(path)

Any non-None beam_size triggers NotImplementedError: Beam search decoder is not yet implemented. Greedy decoding (the default) is equivalent to beam_size=1.

3. torchaudio has no audio backends on macOS

# WRONG — fails with "No audio backend is available"
import torchaudio
wav, sr = torchaudio.load("audio.wav")

# CORRECT — use scipy instead
from scipy.io import wavfile
sr, audio_np = wavfile.read("audio.wav")
audio_float = audio_np.astype(np.float32) / 32768.0  # int16 → float32
wav = torch.from_numpy(audio_float)

torchaudio.list_audio_backends() returns [] on macOS with torchaudio 2.8.0. Use scipy.io.wavfile for WAV loading.

4. MLX cache API is deprecated

# WRONG — deprecated
mx.metal.set_cache_limit(100_000_000)
mx.metal.clear_cache()

# CORRECT — new API
mx.set_cache_limit(100_000_000)
mx.clear_cache()

5. ANTHROPIC_API_KEY not in subprocess environment

The Python process spawned by the agent may not have the API key in its environment. The pipeline loads from ~/.config/transcribe/.env as fallback. If LLM correction fails with auth errors, check:

# Verify key exists
cat ~/.config/transcribe/.env

# Or set in environment before running
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."

6. Temperature must be a tuple, not a float

# WRONG — no fallback recovery
temperature=0.0

# CORRECT — fallback tuple for when model gets stuck
temperature=(0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0)

When Whisper gets stuck on a chunk (high compression ratio), it retries with progressively higher temperatures.

7. initial_prompt must be natural text

# WRONG — term list (Whisper treats as transcript prefix)
initial_prompt="Claude Code, Anthropic, MCP, CoPilot, Vercel"

# CORRECT — natural sentence (max 224 tokens)
initial_prompt="Velkommen til møte om teknologi. Vi diskuterer Claude Code, Anthropic, CoPilot og MCP-servere."

Whisper uses the initial prompt as if it were previous transcript text. A term list creates unnatural conditioning. A natural sentence biases vocabulary without distorting output.

8. NB-Whisper Medium MLX needs conversion

The NB-Whisper Medium model (NbAiLab/nb-whisper-medium) is in HuggingFace format, not MLX. Until converted, the pipeline falls back to aalst/nb-whisper-large-distil-turbo-beta-mlx. To convert:

$PYTHON ~/.config/transcribe/convert_model.py

This creates ~/.config/transcribe/models/nb-whisper-medium-mlx/. The fallback model works well — conversion is optional but may improve Norwegian WER.

Supported Audio Formats

Any format ffmpeg can decode: .m4a, .mp3, .wav, .ogg, .flac, .aac, .wma, .webm, .opus, .amr, .mp4 (audio track).

Evidence Basis

The architecture decisions are backed by empirical research: