Audio MC
Spoken multi-turn conversations test inference memory, instruction retention, self-coherence and voice editing. O4-mini judge applies per-conversation rubrics.
Scale runs two boards for it, one for audio output and one for text output. The Inkling post names Audio MC without a link, and this Scale benchmark matches.
In the authors’ words
End-to-end (E2E) spoken dialogue systems are increasingly replacing cascaded pipelines for voice-based human-AI interaction, processing raw audio directly without intermediate transcription. Existing benchmarks primarily evaluate these models on synthetic speech and single-turn tasks, leaving realistic multi-turn conversational ability underexplored. We introduce Audio MultiChallenge, an open-source benchmark to evaluate E2E spoken dialogue systems under natural multi-turn interaction patterns. Building on the text-based MultiChallenge framework, which evaluates Inference Memory, Instruction Retention, and Self Coherence, we introduce a new axis Voice Editing that tests robustness to mid-utterance speech repairs and backtracking. We further augment each axis to the audio modality, such as introducing Audio-Cue challenges for Inference Memory that require recalling ambient sounds and paralinguistic signals beyond semantic content. We curate 452 conversations from 47 speakers with 1,712 instance-specific rubrics through a hybrid audio-native agentic and human-in-the-loop pipeline that exposes model failures at scale while preserving natural disfluencies found in unscripted human speech. Our evaluation of proprietary and open-source models reveals that even frontier models struggle on our benchmark, with Gemini 3 Pro Preview (Thinking), our highest-performing model achieving a 54.65% pass rate. Error analysis shows that models fail most often on our new axes and that Self Coherence degrades with longer audio context. These failures reflect difficulty of tracking edits, audio cues, and long-range context in natural spoken dialogue. Audio MultiChallenge provides a reproducible testbed to quantify them and drive improvements in audio-native multi-turn interaction capability.
- Level
- Everyday Most adults, without training
- Scored
- Graded by a model A language model scores each response, usually against a rubric.
- Answers
- Open-ended Free-form text, documents, designs or media judged as a whole.
Gemini 3.8 Flash leads with 60.4%
Best score per entry from the benchmark's own leaderboard, read on 2 Nov 2026. Where a model ran with several settings or harnesses, we keep its best. Every run is in the next chart. Names in gray aren't in our model list: fine-tunes, agent systems, products and older models. They don't count toward leaders.
- 60.4
Gemini 3.8 Flash
- 59.7 salesforce-launa-omni-1
- 58.4
Gemini 4 Argon
- 56.6
Inkling
- 54.9
Inkling-Small
- 54.6
Gemini 3 Pro
- 48.5 GPT-Realtime-2
- 46.9
Gemini 2.5 Pro
- 43.4 tml-interaction-small
- 40.0
Gemini 2.5 Flash
- 36.1 gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview
- 34.7 gpt-realtime-1.5
- 26.3
Voxtral Small
- 25.4 gpt-4o-audio-preview-2025-06-03
- 24.3
Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B
- 23.4 gpt-realtime
- 21.5 gemini-2.5-flash-native-audio-preview-12-2025
- 19.7 MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct
- 16.6 gpt-realtime-mini-2025-12-15
- 15.5
Phi-4-multimodal
- 15.5
Gemma 3n E4B
- 14.8 gpt-4o-mini-audio-preview-2024-12-17
- 13.7 Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct
- 11.9
Qwen2.5-Omni-7B
- 9.29 LFM2-Audio-1.5B
- 1
Gemini 3.8 Flash high, text output 60.4%
- 2 salesforce-launa-omni-1 text output 59.7%
- 3
Gemini 4 Argon high, text output 58.4%
- 4
Inkling thinking, text output 56.6%
- 5
Inkling-Small text output 54.9%
- 6
Gemini 3 Pro thinking, text output 54.6%
- 7 GPT-Realtime-2 xhigh, audio output 48.5%
- 8
Gemini 2.5 Pro Jun 2025, thinking, text output 46.9%
- 9 tml-interaction-small audio output 43.4%
- 10
Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025, thinking, text output 40%
- 11 gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview thinking, audio output 36.1%
- 12 gpt-realtime-1.5 audio output 34.7%
- 13
Voxtral Small text output 26.3%
- 14 gpt-4o-audio-preview-2025-06-03 text output 25.4%
- 15
Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B audio output 24.3%
- 16 gpt-realtime text output 23.4%
- 17 gemini-2.5-flash-native-audio-preview-12-2025 thinking, audio output 21.5%
- 18 MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct thinking, text output 19.7%
- 19 gpt-realtime-mini-2025-12-15 text output 16.6%
- 20
Phi-4-multimodal text output 15.5%
- 21
Gemma 3n E4B text output 15.5%
- 22 gpt-4o-mini-audio-preview-2024-12-17 text output 14.8%
- 23 Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct text output 13.7%
- 24
Qwen2.5-Omni-7B text output 11.9%
- 25 LFM2-Audio-1.5B audio output 9.29%
| # | Entry | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | 60.4% | high, text output | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 2 | salesforce-launa-omni-1 | 59.7% | text output | Official leaderboard | |
| 3 | | 58.4% | high, text output | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 4 | | 56.6% | thinking, text output | Jul 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 5 | | 54.9% | text output | Jul 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 6 | | 54.6% | thinking, text output | Nov 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 7 | GPT-Realtime-2 | 48.5% | xhigh, audio output | May 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 8 | | 46.9% | thinking, text output | Jun 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 9 | tml-interaction-small | 43.4% | audio output | Official leaderboard | |
| 10 | | 40% | thinking, text output | Jun 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 11 | gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview | 36.1% | thinking, audio output | Official leaderboard | |
| 12 | gpt-realtime-1.5 | 34.7% | audio output | Official leaderboard | |
| 13 | | 26.3% | text output | Jul 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 14 | gpt-4o-audio-preview-2025-06-03 | 25.4% | text output | Official leaderboard | |
| 15 | | 24.3% | audio output | Sep 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 16 | gpt-realtime | 23.4% | text output | Aug 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 17 | gemini-2.5-flash-native-audio-preview-12-2025 | 21.5% | thinking, audio output | Official leaderboard | |
| 18 | MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct | 19.7% | thinking, text output | Sep 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 19 | gpt-realtime-mini-2025-12-15 | 16.6% | text output | Official leaderboard | |
| 20 | | 15.5% | text output | Feb 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 21 | | 15.5% | text output | Jun 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 22 | gpt-4o-mini-audio-preview-2024-12-17 | 14.8% | text output | Official leaderboard | |
| 23 | Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct | 13.7% | text output | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 24 | | 11.9% | text output | Mar 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 25 | LFM2-Audio-1.5B | 9.29% | audio output | Official leaderboard |
Labs report scores for 5 models in their cards. We plot every source in the charts below.
Scores at each effort level
Models the leaderboard ran at two or more effort levels. We don’t have enough cost data here to say what the extra effort costs.
| Model | Effort | Harness | Score | Cost per task | Output tokens |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | high, text output | 60.4% | |||
| | high, text output | 58.4% | |||
| | thinking, text output | 56.6% | |||
| | text output | 54.9% | |||
| | thinking, text output | 54.6% | |||
| GPT-Realtime-2 | xhigh, audio output | 48.5% | |||
| | thinking, text output | 46.9% | |||
| | thinking, text output | 40% | |||
| GPT-Realtime-2 | audio output | 37.6% | |||
| | text output | 26.3% | |||
| | text output | 26.1% | |||
| | audio output | 24.3% | |||
| gpt-realtime | text output | 23.4% | |||
| gpt-realtime | audio output | 20.4% | |||
| MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct | thinking, text output | 19.7% | |||
| MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct | text output | 18.6% | |||
| | text output | 15.5% | |||
| | text output | 15.5% | |||
| Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct | text output | 13.7% | |||
| | text output | 11.9% | |||
| Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct | audio output | 10.4% |
3 models have held number one since its release in Dec 2025
Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release. We draw one row each for the benchmark’s own leaderboard and what labs claim in their cards.
Scores over time
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
2 labs put it in a launch post in the last six months
Launch posts from every lab that has listed it, one tick per post. Tall colored ticks include it, and short gray ones leave it out.
| Date | Launch post | Score | As the post writes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Sep 2026 | 71.5 | Audio MultiChallenge Audio Interaction | |
| 30 Jul 2026 | 54.9 | Audio MC | |
| 15 Jul 2026 | 56.6 | Audio MC | |
| 7 May 2026 | GPT-Realtime-2 | 48.5 | Audio MultiChallenge Instruction Following, gpt-realtime-2 (xhigh) |
4 system cards report it, from 3 labs
Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.
| Date | Document | Score | As the document writes it | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Oct 2026 | | 25.2 | Audio MultiChallenge, reasoning, 19.25 non-reasoning (Table 8) | Capabilities |
| 22 Sep 2026 | | 71.5 | Audio MultiChallenge (Table 4) | Capabilities |
| 30 Jul 2026 | | 54.9 | Audio MC (5. Evaluations table) | Capabilities |
| 15 Jul 2026 | | 56.6 | Audio MC (5. Evaluations table, effort 0.99) | Capabilities |
More in Audio and video
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