I don’t know why I never thought to google the phrase “transcription software,” but it occurred to me today, and up came the website for Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software. It looks like it used to be shareware, but is now freeware. I downloaded it and played with it a bit, and it seems to be pretty great. It has an audio player built into the same program as a text editor, so you can play your audio file, transcribe in the same program, and use the function buttons to execute transcription commands, such as the most essential one of all: rewind. And you can even set how far back it jumps each time you hit rewind — 5, 10, 15 seconds, whatever works best for you. It also has a rather useful feature that slows down the audio speed, so that when transcribing interviews, it’s easier to type what the subject is saying. I’ve used something like this before, but this is much superior to anything I’ve tried, as it manages to slow the speech down, yet has very little distortion.

If you have need of such a thing, I highly recommend checking it out. Not only does it seem to work pretty great, but the price is also right: free.