Benchmark Almanac

Audio MC

Gemini 3.8 Flash 60.4% leads since Sep 2026 In use

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.

Abstract of Audio MultiChallenge: A Multi-Turn Evaluation of Spoken Dialogue Systems on Natural Human Interaction (arXiv:2512.14865, CC0)
Made by Scale AI Released Dec 2025 Audio understanding and voice All tasks public Last in a launch post Sep 2026 Last model added Oct 2026 Scores refreshed 2 Nov 2026
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.
25
Entries on its own leaderboard, 16 models we track
4
Launch posts list it, from 3 labs
4
System cards report it, from 3 labs

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.

  1. 1 Gemini 3.8 Flash high, text output 60.4%
  2. 2 salesforce-launa-omni-1 text output 59.7%
  3. 3 Gemini 4 Argon high, text output 58.4%
  4. 4 Inkling thinking, text output 56.6%
  5. 5 Inkling-Small text output 54.9%
  6. 6 Gemini 3 Pro thinking, text output 54.6%
  7. 7 GPT-Realtime-2 xhigh, audio output 48.5%
  8. 8 Gemini 2.5 Pro Jun 2025, thinking, text output 46.9%
  9. 9 tml-interaction-small audio output 43.4%
  10. 10 Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025, thinking, text output 40%
  11. 11 gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview thinking, audio output 36.1%
  12. 12 gpt-realtime-1.5 audio output 34.7%
  13. 13 Voxtral Small text output 26.3%
  14. 14 gpt-4o-audio-preview-2025-06-03 text output 25.4%
  15. 15 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B audio output 24.3%
  16. 16 gpt-realtime text output 23.4%
  17. 17 gemini-2.5-flash-native-audio-preview-12-2025 thinking, audio output 21.5%
  18. 18 MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct thinking, text output 19.7%
  19. 19 gpt-realtime-mini-2025-12-15 text output 16.6%
  20. 20 Phi-4-multimodal text output 15.5%
  21. 21 Gemma 3n E4B text output 15.5%
  22. 22 gpt-4o-mini-audio-preview-2024-12-17 text output 14.8%
  23. 23 Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct text output 13.7%
  24. 24 Qwen2.5-Omni-7B text output 11.9%
  25. 25 LFM2-Audio-1.5B audio output 9.29%
#EntryScoreSettingDateSource
1 Gemini 3.8 Flash 60.4% high, text output Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
2 salesforce-launa-omni-1 59.7% text output Official leaderboard
3 Gemini 4 Argon 58.4% high, text output Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
4 Inkling 56.6% thinking, text output Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
5 Inkling-Small 54.9% text output Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
6 Gemini 3 Pro 54.6% thinking, text output Nov 2025 Official leaderboard
7 GPT-Realtime-2 48.5% xhigh, audio output May 2026 Official leaderboard
8 Gemini 2.5 Pro Jun 2025 46.9% thinking, text output Jun 2025 Official leaderboard
9 tml-interaction-small 43.4% audio output Official leaderboard
10 Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025 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 Voxtral Small 26.3% text output Jul 2025 Official leaderboard
14 gpt-4o-audio-preview-2025-06-03 25.4% text output Official leaderboard
15 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B 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 Phi-4-multimodal 15.5% text output Feb 2025 Official leaderboard
21 Gemma 3n E4B 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 Qwen2.5-Omni-7B 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.

Lowest effort to highest, light to dark
GPT-Realtime-2
audio output xhigh, audi…
48.5%
Gemini 2.5 Flash
text output thinking, t…
40%
gpt-realtime
audio output text output
23.4%
MiMo-Audio-7B-Instruct
text output
19.7%
Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct
audio output text output
13.7%
ModelEffortHarnessScoreCost per taskOutput tokens
Gemini 3.8 Flash high, text output 60.4%
Gemini 4 Argon high, text output 58.4%
Inkling thinking, text output 56.6%
Inkling-Small text output 54.9%
Gemini 3 Pro thinking, text output 54.6%
GPT-Realtime-2 xhigh, audio output 48.5%
Gemini 2.5 Pro Jun 2025 thinking, text output 46.9%
Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025 thinking, text output 40%
GPT-Realtime-2 audio output 37.6%
Voxtral Small text output 26.3%
Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025 text output 26.1%
Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B 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%
Phi-4-multimodal text output 15.5%
Gemma 3n E4B text output 15.5%
Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct text output 13.7%
Qwen2.5-Omni-7B 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.

Google DeepMind Thinking Machines OpenAI Qwen
Own leaderboard 3 leaders
Lab claims 3 leaders

Scores over time

All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.

On the benchmark’s own leaderboard Reported by the lab in its model card Best so far
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2025 2026 2027 Near the ceiling (85%) Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash Gemini 3.8 Flash Gemini 3 Pro Gemini 2.5 Pro Phi-4-multimodal 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2025 2026 2027 Near the ceiling (85%) Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash Gemini 3.8 Flash

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.

OpenAI
Thinking Machines
Qwen
DateLaunch postScoreAs the post writes it
18 Sep 2026 Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash 71.5 Audio MultiChallenge Audio Interaction
30 Jul 2026 Inkling-Small 54.9 Audio MC
15 Jul 2026 Inkling 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.

DateDocumentScoreAs the document writes itSection
23 Oct 2026 Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B technical report 25.2 Audio MultiChallenge, reasoning, 19.25 non-reasoning (Table 8) Capabilities
22 Sep 2026 Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash technical report 71.5 Audio MultiChallenge (Table 4) Capabilities
30 Jul 2026 Inkling-Small model card 54.9 Audio MC (5. Evaluations table) Capabilities
15 Jul 2026 Inkling model card 56.6 Audio MC (5. Evaluations table, effort 0.99) Capabilities

More in Audio and video

All 168 in Audio and video
  • Video-MMMU In use 300 expert-level lecture videos with questions testing perception, comprehension and adaptation of knowledge. Accuracy. Qwen 3.8 Max 88.7%
  • LVBench In use Hours-long video understanding with multiple-choice questions on reasoning, grounding and summarization. Gemini 4 Argon 91.7%
  • MMVU In use 3,000 expert-annotated questions on videos across 27 disciplines. Multiple-choice and open-ended accuracy. Qwen 3.8 Max 82.4%
  • MLVU In use Multi-task long video understanding (minutes to hours) with multiple-choice and generation tasks. Accuracy. Qwen 3.8 Max 90.8%
  • VoiceBench In use Spoken instructions with speaker, environment and content variation. Voice assistant responses scored by GPT judge or rules. Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus 93.1%
  • TVBench In use Models answer multiple-choice questions on 10 temporal video tasks, such as action counting and ordering, that static frames cannot solve. Scored by accuracy. Qwen 3.8 Max 81.9%