xAI Speech to Text API for audio transcription
Transcribe audio files or stream audio in real time using a single API call.
Speech to Text API
Transcribing audio files into text, supporting 12 audio formats, word-level timestamps, multichannel transcription, and text formatting. Offers real-time transcription via WebSocket.
Not specified
https://docs.x.ai/developers/model-capabilities/audio/speech-to-text
The xAI Speech to Text API allows developers to convert audio files into text with a single API call. It supports various audio formats, provides word-level timestamps, handles multichannel audio, and can format text. Real-time transcription is available via a WebSocket API.
- Speech to Text ↗xAI · xAI Docs: Guides · Aug 25, 2026 · paraphrased
First seen on Subvolts Aug 25, 2026. Updated Sep 11, 2026. Spotted a problem? Tell us.
- Speech to TextxAI · xAI Docs: Guides · Aug 25, 2026
The Playbook: reusable how-tos, prompts, configs and tips pulled out of the news.
- Code snippetReal-time Speech to Text streaming via WebSocketStream audio as binary WebSocket frames and receive JSON transcript events for real-time transcription. · 10 min
- Safety tipNever expose API keys in client-side codeAlways proxy WebSocket connections through your backend to protect your API keys from exposure. · 10 min
- Setting tipEnable compressed audio streaming with opus encodingSet encoding=opus to stream compressed audio, reducing bandwidth usage significantly compared to raw PCM. · 5 min
- Setting tipSet smart_turn_timeout for maximum silence durationSet smart_turn_timeout to a maximum silence duration (1-5000ms) to prevent sessions from hanging during extended silence. · 5 min
- Setting tipEnable independent channel transcription with multichannel=trueSet multichannel=true and channels >= 2 to transcribe each audio channel independently. · 5 min
- Setting tipUse Smart Turn for natural speech endpointingEnable Smart Turn to use a lightweight ML model for predicting speaker's thought completion during silences. · 5 min
Questions people ask
- Which AI tools does this work with?
- The sources used it with Grok.
- Where did this come from?
- xAI (xAI Docs: Guides). Subvolts collected, normalized and credited it; the link above opens the original.