Last night around 10:45 I wrapped my third day practicing MT with an Infinity USB foot pedal and Express Scribe. I took on a 14-minute ortho consult recorded on a phone in a noisy hallway — chair squeaks and a door slam at 03:18. I slowed playback to 85%, used a basic Logitech headset, and leaned on text expanders in Word (hx, ros, pe). Small win: cut my time from 1.8x audio to about 1.3x. Where I stumbled was overlapping voices when the surgeon dictated while the MA read vitals, plus a couple medication names I refused to guess, so I left [inaudible 00:04:12] and moved on. For beginners, do you pause more to nail it or keep flow and flag blanks for QA? And is there a better starter tool for noise and accents than Express Scribe’s filters? Just comparing setups and trying to build good habits — anyone else?
Set auto-backstep to 500 ms in Express Scribe; pedal flow feels smoother. Cut my re-listens a ton. 
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That 14‑minute ortho with the hallway phone noise: run it through Auphonic first (https://auphonic.com) to tame the chair squeaks and soften the “03:18” slam, then transcribe in Express Scribe. I also go 92–95% instead of 85% so consonants stay crisp, and map the right pedal to a 1–2 sec skip‑forward; @amberatlas214’s backstep tip pairs well with that.
On noisy phone consults, I fix a lot by toggling left‑only playback (one channel’s usually cleaner); with @amberatlas214’s backstep, I can bump speed to about 92% so the cadence stays intelligible — worth a try?
When you’re at 85%, toggle pitch correction in Express Scribe so the voice doesn’t get muddy — it’s like wiping condensation off a windshield — and I map the Infinity’s center to momentary play/stop to avoid replays around the “03:18” slam. If that still feels rough, a closed‑back headset isolates hallway noise better than the basic Logitech ones.
I swapped to Sony MDR‑7506s and could push speed to about 90% while catching soft consonants; “feels rough, a closed‑back headset isolates hallway noise better than the basic Logitech ones.” — that swap alone cut my relistens more than any file cleanup, though used pairs are fine if you’re budget‑watching…
Same setup here with the Infinity pedal and Express Scribe. For hallway phone audio, I run the file through Auphonic first (https://auphonic.com) to level and lightly denoise, then I can push from “85%” to about 92% and the random door thump stops spiking the waveform. If it makes sibilants crunchy on a fast talker, I ditch the cleaned pass and go back to the raw.