The paper investigates how to evaluate audio‑language models by separating the use of acoustic evidence from the need to invoke a generative audio model. Using a controlled call‑decision framework, the authors compare policies that rely on transcript labels, encoder outputs from CLAP, AST, or WavLM, and optional calls to generative models such as Qwen2‑Audio, Qwen2.5‑Omni, or MOSS‑Audio. Results on the VocalSound dataset show that while transcript‑only accuracy is low (0.296), encoder‑only controls achieve high accuracy (≈0.85) without any generative calls, and adding generative calls yields only a marginal improvement (0.925 vs. 0.921).
By Mengzhe Geng
The paper investigates how to evaluate generative audio large language models (Audio‑LLMs) on known closed‑set tasks by separating the decision to call a generative model from the use of acoustic evidence. It introduces a controlled call‑decision framework where a policy can choose between a transcript label, encoder evidence from CLAP, AST, or WavLM, or a generative call to Qwen2‑Audio, Qwen2.5‑Omni, or MOSS‑Audio, and measures the impact of generative calls on accuracy. Results on the VocalSound dataset show that while transcript‑only accuracy is low (0.296), encoder‑based controls achieve high accuracy (≈0.85) without any generative calls, and adding generative calls yields only a marginal improvement (0.925 vs. 0.921).
By Mengzhe Geng
arXiv:2608.27783v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Speech language models (speech LLMs) can generate plausible outputs from audio that contains no usable speech evidence. We study this failure...
By Mengzhe Geng
VoxReason introduces a listener‑free evaluation framework that measures whether a speech planning system’s delivery choices—such as pitch, energy, rate, pause, emphasis, and stance—are grounded in cited source records before any waveform is generated. The system outputs a source‑cited speaking plan and uses a deterministic verifier to check citation legality, slot agreement, unsupported states, schema validity, and counterfactual locality. Experiments on 1,440 source‑label cases show that simple slot accuracy can be misleading, while a 7B locality‑based repair model significantly improves plan‑slot accuracy and locality, and removing source records sharply reduces the grounded score.
whyItMatters":"The framework provides a concrete, measurable way to ensure that expressive speech systems make source‑licensed planning decisions, addressing a source‑use failure that occurs before audio synthesis."
By Mengzhe Geng
arXiv:2609.20995v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Natural spoken interaction requires more than streaming ASR, language generation, and speech synthesis: a system must react to overlap without cancel...
By Bertil Braun
arXiv:2609.03203v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Speech systems increasingly infer how an utterance should be delivered from context, but a plausible delivery plan may not be supported by th...
By Mengzhe Geng
The paper introduces a reproducible framework that converts existing text-based tool‑calling benchmarks into audio‑based evaluations using text‑to‑speech, speaker variation, and environmental noise, while preserving original annotations. Experiments on seven omni‑modal models show that performance varies strongly by model and task, with notable gaps between text and voice results. The study also includes a stress test, a reference‑free LLM‑as‑judge protocol, and demonstrates that open‑source judges can match proprietary ones, aiding privacy‑preserving evaluation.
By Md Tahmid Rahman Laskar, Xue-Yong Fu, Seyyed Saeed Sarfjoo, Quinten McNamara, Jonas Robertson, Shashi Bhushan TN
arXiv:2609.08899v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Speech deepfakes can mimic a speaker's voice convincingly enough to deceive listeners and automated systems. This has driven strong progress...
By Mengzhe Geng, Yujia Lu, Patrick Littell, Manuela Kunz, Xie Chen
The paper introduces the Speech-Unsupported Rejection Evaluation Challenge (SURE‑Challenge), a benchmark designed to test whether speech‑LLMs should accept or reject audio inputs before generating answers. Using LibriSpeech‑derived transcriptions paired with first‑word question answering, the authors evaluate various noise and silence conditions, and compare a simple energy‑plus‑Whisper‑score rule against a Qwen2‑Audio front‑end. On a 474‑row test set, the rule rejects 196 of 204 unsupported inputs while preserving accuracy on supported data, revealing a pre‑generation error mode that answer‑only scoring misses.
By Mengzhe Geng
arXiv:2609.38232v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Streaming spoken agents may take an external action before the available speech supports it, yet final-turn scores do not reveal whether each observe...
By Mengzhe Geng
Full-duplex speech models require training data that preserves turn-taking, overlap, interruption, and backchannel behavior, yet these signals are entangled across speakers in noisy real-world recordi...
AVERT is a method for spoken dialogue state tracking that improves upon a per-turn text editor by incorporating an audio-conditioned verifier to score candidate slot values. It addresses three types of recoverable errors—inconsistent values across turns, omitted slots, and values unsupported by audio—using three specialized operators: vote, add, and swap, each limited to relevant slots. On the SpokenWOZ dataset, AVERT achieves a joint goal accuracy of 40.13, surpassing both a base speech-LLM (33.04) and a text editor (38.34) without retraining, and matching the performance of a larger end‑to‑end system that processes the full spoken history.
By Chunggi Lee, Hanspeter Pfister