# Low-Resource Audio Codec (LRAC): 2025 Challenge Description

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23312 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23312/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 19 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Vocoders and speech synthesis, one of 11 directions in Speech and audio language models.
- Builds on 47 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Oct 2025.

## Placed in

- Speech and audio language models / [Vocoders and speech synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/speech/vocoders-and-speech-synthesis/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [SoundStream: An End-to-End Neural Audio Codec](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03312/) (2021)
- [High Fidelity Neural Audio Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13438/) (2022)
- [Moshi: a speech-text foundation model for real-time dialogue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00037/) (2024)
- [High-Fidelity Audio Compression with Improved RVQGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06546/) (2023)
- [UTMOS: UTokyo-SaruLab System for VoiceMOS Challenge 2022](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02152/) (2022)
- [Parallel WaveGAN: A fast waveform generation model based on generative adversarial networks with multi-resolution spectrogram](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11480/) (2019)
- [FSD50K: An Open Dataset of Human-Labeled Sound Events](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00475/) (2020)
- [WHAM!: Extending Speech Separation to Noisy Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01160/) (2019)
- [FMA: A Dataset For Music Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01840/) (2016)
- [Meta Audiobox Aesthetics: Unified Automatic Quality Assessment for Speech, Music, and Sound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05139/) (2025)
- [Codec Does Matter: Exploring the Semantic Shortcoming of Codec for Audio Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17175/) (2024)
- [ICASSP 2023 Deep Noise Suppression Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11510/) (2023)
- [AudioDec: An Open-source Streaming High-fidelity Neural Audio Codec](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16608/) (2023)
- [EARS: An Anechoic Fullband Speech Dataset Benchmarked for Speech Enhancement and Dereverberation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06185/) (2024)
- [SemantiCodec: An Ultra Low Bitrate Semantic Audio Codec for General Sound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00233/) (2024)
- [BigCodec: Pushing the Limits of Low-Bitrate Neural Speech Codec](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05377/) (2024)
- [Scaling Transformers for Low-Bitrate High-Quality Speech Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19842/) (2024)
- [SNAC: Multi-Scale Neural Audio Codec](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14411/) (2024)
- [Codabench: Flexible, Easy-to-Use and Reproducible Benchmarking Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05802/) (2021)
- [Low Bit-Rate Speech Coding with VQ-VAE and a WaveNet Decoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06464/) (2019)
- [Discrete Audio Tokens: More Than a Survey!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10274/) (2025)
- [Wavenet based low rate speech coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01120/) (2017)
- [SCOREQ: Speech Quality Assessment with Contrastive Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06675/) (2024)
- [URGENT Challenge: Universality, Robustness, and Generalizability For Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04660/) (2024)
- [APCodec: A Neural Audio Codec with Parallel Amplitude and Phase Spectrum Encoding and Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10533/) (2024)
- [GLOBE: A High-quality English Corpus with Global Accents for Zero-shot Speaker Adaptive Text-to-Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14875/) (2024)
- [Interspeech 2025 URGENT Speech Enhancement Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23212/) (2025)
- [A Real-Time Wideband Neural Vocoder at 1.6 kb/s Using LPCNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12087/) (2019)
- [High-Quality, Low-Delay Music Coding in the Opus Codec](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04845/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Assessing the Impact of Noise and Speech Enhancement on the Intelligibility of Speech Codecs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03776/) (2026)
- [VoCodec: An Efficient Lightweight Low-Bitrate Speech Codec](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13055/) (2026)
- [Optimising Neural Speech Codecs for 300bps Communication using Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19541/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While recent neural audio codecs deliver superior speech quality at ultralow bitrates over traditional methods, their practical adoption is hindered by obstacles related to low-resource operation and robustness to acoustic distortions. Edge deployment scenarios demand codecs that operate under stringent compute constraints while maintaining low latency and bitrate. The presence of background noise and reverberation further necessitates designs that are resilient to such degradations. The performance of neural codecs under these constraints and their integration with speech enhancement remain largely unaddressed. To catalyze progress in this area, we introduce the 2025 Low-Resource Audio Codec Challenge, which targets the development of neural and hybrid codecs for resource-constrained applications. Participants are supported with a standardized training dataset, two baseline systems, and a comprehensive evaluation framework. The challenge is expected to yield valuable insights applicable to both codec design and related downstream audio tasks.