arXiv Computation and Language

VocalAffectBench: Evaluating Vocal Emotion Recognition in AI Audio Models

arXiv AI
Jul 17

RW-Voice-EQ Bench: A Real World Benchmark for Evaluating Voice AI Systems

arXiv:2607. 14846v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Current voice AI benchmarks typically evaluate isolated capabilities such as speech intelligibility, word error rate, or text-based dialogue quality, but they rarely test whether systems harness the acoustic information that distinguishes spoken language from its textual representation.

By David Ayllon, Alice Baird, Jeffrey Brooks, Franc Camps-Febrer, Jakub Piotr C{\l}apa, Theo Lebryk, Jens Madsen, Olya Ossipova, Sharath Rao, Hoon Shin, Tigran Soghbatyan, Georg Streich, Rashish Tandon, Panagiotis Tzirakis
arXiv AI
Oct 26

Interpretable Singing Emotion Recognition Using Acoustic and Vocal Technique Features

The paper introduces an interpretable framework for singing emotion recognition that uses a compact set of singing-specific descriptors covering prosody, spectral features, phonetics, and vocal technique. By applying SHAP and GRAD-CAM, the authors link model predictions to measurable acoustic phenomena, showing that vocal technique descriptors reduce cross-singer variability and provide interpretable insights. Out‑of‑domain tests on VocalSet reveal that vibrato and pharyngeal techniques are key emotional cues, with vibrato’s importance depending on articulation rate.

By Fotini Kiriakopoulou, Vassilis Lyberatos, Spyridon Kantarelis, Athanasios Voulodimos, Giorgos Stamou
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 23

Enriching Speech Emotion Representations with Conversational Context

The paper introduces ACERT, a module that incorporates a flexible-length window of conversational context to enhance Speech Emotion Recognition (SER). By capturing emotional evolution across utterances, ACERT outperforms state‑of‑the‑art methods on IEMOCAP, sets a new context‑aware benchmark on SAFE, and achieves strong results on MELD. Ablation studies attribute ACERT’s improvements to emotional and conversational continuity rather than speaker identity or acoustic conditions.

By Arthur Peuvot, Romaric Besan\c{c}on, Ga\"el de Chalendar, Bianca Vieru, Ioana Vasilescu