Voice AI
What is Voice activity detection (VAD)?
Voice activity detection (VAD) is the technique of determining, moment by moment, whether an audio stream contains human speech or only silence and background noise.
Also called: VAD, speech activity detection
It is the first stage of a voice agent pipeline, telling the system when the caller starts and stops talking, which in turn drives barge-in and endpointing. Indian phone environments make it hard: traffic horns, a television in the room, construction noise, other people talking nearby and patchy mobile signal. Set too sensitive, the agent stops mid-sentence for a horn; too insensitive, it misses a soft-spoken caller.
VAD errors produce the two behaviours that most quickly make a call feel robotic: an agent that interrupts itself for no reason, and one that talks straight over the caller. Good VAD is invisible on a call. Bad VAD shows up in transcripts as repeated apologies, half-finished sentences and callers asking whether anyone is there.
What is Voice activity detection (VAD)?
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Voice activity detection (VAD) is the technique of determining, moment by moment, whether an audio stream contains human speech or only silence and background noise. It is the first stage of a voice agent pipeline, telling the system when the caller starts and stops talking, which in turn drives barge-in and endpointing. Indian phone environments make it hard: traffic horns, a television in the room, construction noise, other people talking nearby and patchy mobile signal. Set too sensitive, the agent stops mid-sentence for a horn; too insensitive, it misses a soft-spoken caller.
Why does Voice activity detection (VAD) matter?
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VAD errors produce the two behaviours that most quickly make a call feel robotic: an agent that interrupts itself for no reason, and one that talks straight over the caller. Good VAD is invisible on a call. Bad VAD shows up in transcripts as repeated apologies, half-finished sentences and callers asking whether anyone is there.
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