Transcribe English audio with Parakeet CTC

When you know the audio is English and latency matters, Parakeet CTC is faster than TDT. The trade is that CTC is English-only; Parakeet CTC rejects non-English audio rather than mistranslating it.

CTC is the English-only sibling of TDT. The model file is smaller and the inference path is shorter, so transcribe returns a few hundred milliseconds sooner.

The editor prefills the model load (Parakeet CTC with modelType: "parakeet-transcription"). The new piece is the transcribe call.

CTC is the English-only TDT variant: same call shape, same options, just a different modelId. The transcribe call we'd make would look like:

const text = await transcribe({
  modelId,
  audioChunk: "./examples/qvac/transcription/input/sample-16khz.wav",
});
console.log(text);

The call shape and the constants are the only differences from TDT.

Note: CTC is also the right Parakeet variant for the transcribeStream duplex session when the audio is English. The next lesson covers diarization with Sortformer.

Put it to the test

1. Call transcribe({ modelId, audioChunk: "./examples/qvac/transcription/input/sample-16khz.wav" }), await the result, and console.log the returned text.