DeepWave
DeepWave is a Taiwanese audio AI platform spun out of National Taiwan University. Its Meeting Ink notetaker records, transcribes and summarises meetings in 28 languages, while Noise Eraser strips background noise from audio and video.
What is DeepWave?
DeepWave is the audio AI platform of DeepWave Co., Ltd., a Taipei company established in August 2019 as a spin-off from the Multimedia Information Retrieval Lab of National Taiwan University. The team is small, fourteen people by its own count, and the stated ambition is not: to let machines understand environmental sound the way people do, and turn that sound into information a database can hold or an interface can react to. Four processing families are claimed, namely detection, separation, transcription and replacement.
Three products carry that research to market. Meeting Ink, launched in December 2023 with a desktop version in March 2024, is the flagship. It records meetings four different ways, through browser tab capture, a mobile app, a bot that joins from your calendar, or a plain file upload, then transcribes, separates speakers and writes summaries from contextual templates. It covers Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex, reads Google and Outlook calendars, and accepts YouTube links and podcast episodes as input. Its most distinctive asset is linguistic: 28 languages, Taiwanese, Hakka and Cantonese among them, which the company presents as precisely the ones larger products overlook.
Noise Eraser, released in August 2022, is the consumer-facing half. It does more than reduce noise. It separates chosen sources, voice, wind, music, traffic or air conditioning, and lets you keep or drop each one with sliders, in the browser or on a phone.
SONA, the API platform, is the unfinished third. The company's own milestones date its completion to August 2023, yet the homepage still labels it coming soon and no developer documentation exists on the site. Behind it sits a catalogue offered for trial on request: vocal and instrumental separation, transcription to musical notation, articulation scoring, speaker intent recognition, voiceprint verification, diarisation, speech-to-text and anomaly detection.
The infrastructure runs on Azure and AWS, with Azure OpenAI Service for language processing and NVIDIA hardware for acceleration, and on-premises or private-cloud options for organisations that cannot use either. DeepWave claimed more than 300,000 members in November 2023.
What it does
- Record a meeting held in person, online or in hybrid form
- Transcribe speech into text across 28 languages, with speakers told apart automatically
- Display live subtitles and live translation while the meeting is still running
- Produce an AI summary and a list of action items minutes after the meeting ends
- Strip wind, rain, traffic, air conditioning or barking out of an audio or video file
- Isolate or remove one specific sound instead of reducing noise across the board
- Turn a YouTube link or a podcast episode into searchable text
When to use DeepWave / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if DeepWave is the right fit.
When to use DeepWave
- Multilingual and cross-border teams that need live subtitles and translation while the meeting is still running
- Organisations working in Taiwanese, Hakka or Cantonese, which mainstream notetakers rarely transcribe well
- Public bodies and large accounts needing enterprise SSO, an admin console and on-premises or private-cloud deployment
- Recruiters, journalists and researchers who run interviews and need accurate transcripts with speakers told apart
- Creators and freelancers who record in noisy places and want studio-grade cleanup without an audio editor
When not to use DeepWave
- Teams that need a documented public API today, since the SONA platform is still advertised as coming soon
- Buyers who require an explicit GDPR framework, a data processing agreement or an EU representative, none of which the site publishes
- Anyone wanting to try the tool without an account, as membership is required for the full service experience
- Heavy users hoping to stay on the free tier, which is capped at 30 minutes per meeting and three hours a month
- Customers who expect refunds or seamless upgrades, as subscriptions are non-refundable and changing plan means cancelling first
How to use DeepWave
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account on accounts.dwave.cc, or sign in with Google or Microsoft single sign-on
- Confirm the verification email, checking the spam folder if it does not arrive
- Open Meeting Ink in your browser and start a tab recording, with nothing to install
- Or install the Mac, Windows, iOS or Android app if you record away from the desk
- Connect Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar so the meeting bot joins scheduled calls on its own
- Or upload an existing audio or video file, or paste a YouTube or podcast link
- Switch on live subtitles and translation during the meeting and share them with the room
- Declare your industry vocabulary and pick a summary template so the AI writes in your house style
- Collect the transcript and summary afterwards, emailed automatically to attendees on bot recordings
- For Noise Eraser, upload the clip in the browser or the app and move the sliders until the noise is gone
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Asian language coverage competitors rarely match, with Taiwanese, Hakka and Cantonese beside 25 other languages
- Browser tab recording works even in meetings that ban bots, which no calendar integration can solve
- Training on customer data is ruled out explicitly, and the statement is repeated on two separate pages
- A permanent free tier rather than a countdown trial, with the MCP connector included
- Low annual pricing: 90 USD a year buys twenty hours of meetings a month
- On-premises and private-cloud options for organisations that cannot put recordings in a public cloud
- A described security programme: penetration tests, vulnerability scans, an OWASP 3.2 audit, code reviews and GCB compliance
Cons
- GDPR is never mentioned anywhere on the site, and no data processing agreement or Article 27 representative is published
- Data is hosted in Taipei with no transfer mechanism described for European customers
- The SONA API is still labelled coming soon, although the company's own milestones date its completion to 2023
- The page meant to evidence the ISO 27001 certification returns no related content
- No App Store or Google Play link is served anywhere on the site, though mobile subscriptions are discussed in the terms
- The free tier is tight, at 30 minutes per meeting and three recording hours a month
- Subscriptions are non-refundable, and moving to another plan means cancelling the current one first
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available. The cheapest paid tier is Meeting Ink Pro at 90.00 USD per year, followed by Pro+ at 190.00 USD per year, while the Enterprise tier is quoted on request for teams of ten or more. Annual commitment is advertised as 17% cheaper than monthly billing, although the monthly figures are rendered client-side and could not be verified. Payment is taken by in-app purchase on mobile, or by PayPal and VISA, MASTER and JCB cards on the web; PayPal is charged in USD and is offered outside Taiwan only. No public price was found for Noise Eraser or for the SONA building blocks.
- 30 minutes per meeting
- 3 recording hours a month
- all four recording modes
- transcription in 28+ languages
- speaker diarisation
- transcript translation
- 3 vocabulary terms
- 2 summary versions
- 2 hours per meeting
- 20 hours a month
- meeting bot with scheduled auto-join
- 5 vocabulary terms
- 2 custom templates
- real-time subtitles and translation
- real-time sharing
- 3 hours per meeting
- 40 hours a month
- 20 vocabulary terms
- 3 summary versions
- 3 custom templates
- 4 hours per meeting
- pooled team recording hours
- 200+ vocabulary terms
- 5 summary versions
- 20+ templates
- bidirectional real-time translation
- admin console
- enterprise single sign-on
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how DeepWave handles your data.
GDPR overview
The word GDPR appears nowhere on this site, in the privacy policy, the terms or the FAQ. That silence is the finding, and it is why the tool is recorded here as non-compliant rather than compliant: the regulation is never invoked, let alone claimed. The privacy policy does open six rights modelled on it, namely access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability, but hedges them with the phrase depending on your jurisdiction, which is an offer rather than a compliance statement. Requests go to service@dwave.cc, and complaints escalate through sung.yeh@dwave.cc to whichever authority has jurisdiction. No Article 27 representative is designated, no data processing agreement is published, and no transfer mechanism is described for data held in Taipei. Governing law is Taiwanese, with exclusive jurisdiction in the Taipei District Court.
Who owns the data?
Under the terms of service dated 25 January 2026, you keep ownership of the audio, video and text you upload. Uploading grants DeepWave Co., Ltd. a worldwide, royalty-free licence limited to hosting, storing, backing up, transmitting, processing and displaying that content, and only as far as is necessary to provide, maintain, secure and support the service. Troubleshooting, quality assurance and abuse prevention are named explicitly as the permitted purposes. The privacy policy adds that DeepWave does not sell personal data and passes no Google account data to advertising partners. Access is restricted to authorised personnel bound by confidentiality obligations.
Reuse rights
Re-use is asymmetric, and worth reading in that light. On your side, the terms grant a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the service for personal or internal business purposes, and the transcripts, summaries and cleaned audio you produce remain your content. The FAQ is blunt about the limit: separated audio is for personal use, and you carry the legal responsibility for anything you publish, since DeepWave neither reviews nor interferes with the files you process. Two uses are forbidden outright, namely reselling or reproducing the service without written consent, and using it to train other AI models or machine-learning algorithms without authorisation. On DeepWave's side, processing is confined to delivering the service: data obtained through single sign-on and third-party APIs such as Google Calendar is used solely for authentication, account linking and the features you explicitly request, under read-only OAuth scopes.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy policy, effective 25 January 2026, states that data is stored on servers located in Taipei, Taiwan, which also settles the jurisdiction: Taiwanese law governs, with exclusive jurisdiction in the Taipei District Court. The FAQ describes the platform differently, as running on Azure and AWS around the clock, and names no cloud regions; the two statements are never reconciled on the site. Meeting Ink specifically uses Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service for language processing and AWS for scaling. Enterprise customers facing security or procurement constraints are offered on-premises or private-cloud deployment instead. Protective measures listed include firewalls, anti-virus systems, access controls, TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, encryption at rest for authentication identifiers, least-privilege access with audit logging, continuous monitoring and an incident response procedure. External assurance is claimed through regular penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, an OWASP 3.2 audit, source code reviews and compliance with the Government Configuration Baseline. No named subprocessor list is published, only categories of recipients.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting DeepWave.
- Recording a meeting captures everyone present, and consent rules differ by jurisdiction; the tool does not obtain that consent for you
- GDPR is absent from the entire site, the data sits in Taipei, and there is no data processing agreement or Article 27 representative, which is a real obstacle for any EU organisation whose recordings contain personal data
- The privacy policy admits sharing limited browsing data with advertising partners through advertising cookies
- The ISO 27001 certification is advertised in a footer link whose page returns nothing; treat it as unverified until the vendor supplies the certificate
- Summary accuracy is advertised at 90% or above, which still leaves errors; decisions and commitments deserve a check against the transcript rather than the summary
- Leaning on automatic minutes can quietly erode the habit of listening actively, since the transcript remembers and the participant may stop trying to
- No minimum age is stated anywhere: minors are covered only by a parental permission clause, with no threshold given
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low. The main route needs a browser and an account: no plugin, no software, sign in and start recording. Optional applications exist for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. The one configuration step worth taking is connecting Google or Outlook Calendar so the bot joins scheduled calls by itself; custom vocabulary and summary templates are refinements rather than requirements. Sign-in can go through Google or Microsoft, with enterprise single sign-on reserved for the top tier. No development skills are needed. The only technical touchpoint is the MCP connector for AI agents, and it is marked BETA.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind DeepWave
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement DeepWave.
Frequently asked questions
Does DeepWave use my recordings to train its models?
Where is my data stored?
How many languages does it handle?
Is there a free plan?
What does the paid version cost?
Does the site claim GDPR compliance?
Are there mobile applications?
Can I cancel, and will I be refunded?
Should you pick DeepWave?
DeepWave is an unusually well-grounded small company: a 2019 spin-off from National Taiwan University's Multimedia Information Retrieval Lab, fourteen people, years of academic work behind the products and a dense award record to show for it. What it sells is coherent with what it built. Meeting Ink is a serious notetaker with four recording routes, and its browser tab capture answers a real problem that calendar bots cannot, namely meetings that refuse bots outright. The language matrix is the standout: Taiwanese, Hakka and Cantonese transcribed beside 25 other languages, which leaves organisations working in those languages with few alternatives. Noise Eraser covers the other end, separating sound sources rather than flattening them.
The pricing is candid and low. A permanent free tier, 90 USD a year for twenty hours of meetings a month, and an enterprise path with SSO, an admin console and on-premises deployment for buyers who cannot use public cloud. The refusal to train on customer data is stated plainly, twice, and the security programme is described in enough detail to be checked.
The reservations sit in one place: what the site announces without evidencing. The SONA API is still coming soon, three years after a milestone dating its completion. The page meant to prove the ISO 27001 certification returns nothing. Mobile subscriptions appear in the terms while no store link appears in the site's HTML. And for a European buyer the gap is wider than a missing page: GDPR is never mentioned, the data sits in Taipei, and there is no data processing agreement, no Article 27 representative and no described transfer mechanism. For teams inside Asia this is a strong and affordable tool. For teams inside the EU, that legal groundwork needs to be requested before anything is signed.
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