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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sun, Chunyu, Liu, Bingyu, Cui, Zhichao, Shi, Junhan, Qi, Anbin, Zhang, Tian-hao, Zhou, Dinghao, Lu, Lewei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02603
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Table of Contents:
  • Embedding-based retrieval models have made significant strides in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques for text and multimodal large language models (LLMs) applications. However, when it comes to speech larage language models (SLLMs), these methods are limited to a two-stage process, where automatic speech recognition (ASR) is combined with text-based retrieval. This sequential architecture suffers from high latency and error propagation. To address these limitations, we propose a unified embedding framework that eliminates the need for intermediate text representations. Specifically, the framework includes separate speech and text encoders, followed by a shared scaling layer that maps both modalities into a common embedding space. Our model reduces pipeline latency by 50\% while achieving higher retrieval accuracy compared to traditional two-stage methods. We also provide a theoretical analysis of the challenges inherent in end-to-end speech retrieval and introduce architectural principles for effective speech-to-document matching. Extensive experiments demonstrate the robustness of our approach across diverse acoustic conditions and speaker variations, paving the way for a new paradigm in multimodal SLLMs retrieval systems.