AudioCodecBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Audio Codec Evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Lu, Chen, Hao, Wu, Siyu, Wu, Zhiyue, Zhou, Hao, Zhang, Chengfeng, Wang, Ting, Zhang, Haodi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Lu
Chen, Hao
Wu, Siyu
Wu, Zhiyue
Zhou, Hao
Zhang, Chengfeng
Wang, Ting
Zhang, Haodi
author_facet Wang, Lu
Chen, Hao
Wu, Siyu
Wu, Zhiyue
Zhou, Hao
Zhang, Chengfeng
Wang, Ting
Zhang, Haodi
contents Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have been widely applied in speech and music. This tendency has led to a focus on audio tokenization for Large Models (LMs). Unlike semantic-only text tokens, audio tokens must both capture global semantic content and preserve fine-grained acoustic details. Moreover, they provide a discrete method for speech and music that can be effectively integrated into MLLMs. However, existing research is unsuitable in the definitions of semantic tokens and acoustic tokens. In addition, the evaluation of different codecs typically concentrates on specific domains or tasks, such as reconstruction or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) task, which prevents fair and comprehensive comparisons. To address these problems, this paper provides suitable definitions for semantic and acoustic tokens and introduces a systematic evaluation framework. This framework allows for a comprehensive assessment of codecs' capabilities which evaluate across four dimensions: audio reconstruction metric, codebook index (ID) stability, decoder-only transformer perplexity, and performance on downstream probe tasks. Our results show the correctness of the provided suitable definitions and the correlation among reconstruction metrics, codebook ID stability, downstream probe tasks and perplexity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_02349
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AudioCodecBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Audio Codec Evaluation
Wang, Lu
Chen, Hao
Wu, Siyu
Wu, Zhiyue
Zhou, Hao
Zhang, Chengfeng
Wang, Ting
Zhang, Haodi
Sound
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have been widely applied in speech and music. This tendency has led to a focus on audio tokenization for Large Models (LMs). Unlike semantic-only text tokens, audio tokens must both capture global semantic content and preserve fine-grained acoustic details. Moreover, they provide a discrete method for speech and music that can be effectively integrated into MLLMs. However, existing research is unsuitable in the definitions of semantic tokens and acoustic tokens. In addition, the evaluation of different codecs typically concentrates on specific domains or tasks, such as reconstruction or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) task, which prevents fair and comprehensive comparisons. To address these problems, this paper provides suitable definitions for semantic and acoustic tokens and introduces a systematic evaluation framework. This framework allows for a comprehensive assessment of codecs' capabilities which evaluate across four dimensions: audio reconstruction metric, codebook index (ID) stability, decoder-only transformer perplexity, and performance on downstream probe tasks. Our results show the correctness of the provided suitable definitions and the correlation among reconstruction metrics, codebook ID stability, downstream probe tasks and perplexity.
title AudioCodecBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Audio Codec Evaluation
topic Sound
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02349