Speech Technology

Technical deep-dives into speech and audio ML systems, from research foundations to production deployment. Covers ASR, TTS, speaker recognition, and conversational AI with both theoretical insights and practical engineering.

Each post includes:

Architecture and model design choices
Streaming and real-time processing considerations
Research foundations and recent advances
Production deployment and optimization strategies
Scaling, cost analysis, and performance tuning
Code examples and implementation details

Browse by Topic

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR):

Speech Classification:

Speech Command Classification

Audio Processing:

Real-time Processing:

Text-to-Speech (TTS):

TTS System Fundamentals

Speaker Technology:

Speech Separation:

Pipeline Optimization:

Conversational AI:

Coming soon…

Model Optimization:

Distributed Speech Training

Speech MLOps:

Adaptive Systems:

Adaptive Speech Models

Speech Model Design:

Speech Architecture Search

Speech Tech Index

Below you’ll find all speech technology posts in chronological order:

Content created with the assistance of large language models and reviewed for technical accuracy.

Streaming ASR Architecture

23 minute read

Why batch ASR won’t work for voice assistants, and how streaming models transcribe speech as you speak in under 200ms.

Speech Command Classification

28 minute read

How voice assistants recognize “turn on the lights” from raw audio in under 100ms without full ASR transcription.

Audio Feature Extraction for Speech ML

29 minute read

How to transform raw audio waveforms into ML-ready features that capture speech characteristics for robust model training.

Voice Activity Detection (VAD)

23 minute read

How voice assistants and video conferencing apps detect when you’re speaking vs silence, the critical first step in every speech pipeline.

Speaker Recognition & Verification

21 minute read

How voice assistants recognize who’s speaking, the biometric authentication powering “Hey Alexa” and personalized experiences.

Text-to-Speech (TTS) System Fundamentals

20 minute read

From text to natural speech: understanding modern neural TTS architectures that power Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.

Audio Preprocessing & Signal Processing

24 minute read

Clean audio is the foundation of robust speech systems, master preprocessing pipelines that handle real-world noise and variability.

Streaming Speech Processing Pipeline

24 minute read

Build real-time speech processing pipelines that handle audio streams with minimal latency for live transcription and voice interfaces.

Real-time Keyword Spotting

25 minute read

Build lightweight models that detect specific keywords in audio streams with minimal latency and power consumption for voice interfaces.

Voice Enhancement & Noise Reduction

27 minute read

Build systems that enhance voice quality by removing noise, improving intelligibility, and optimizing audio for speech applications.

Speech Separation

22 minute read

Separate overlapping speakers with 99%+ accuracy: Deep learning solves the cocktail party problem for meeting transcription and voice assistants.

Multi-Speaker ASR

25 minute read

Build production multi-speaker ASR systems: Combine speech recognition, speaker diarization, and overlap handling for real-world conversations.

Compute Allocation for Speech Models

23 minute read

Optimize speech pipeline throughput by allocating compute to bottleneck stages using greedy resource management.

Multi-model Speech Ensemble

23 minute read

Build production speech systems that combine multiple ASR/TTS models using backtracking-based selection strategies to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy.

Speaker Clustering (Diarization)

21 minute read

Build production speaker diarization systems that cluster audio segments by speaker using embedding-based similarity and hash-based grouping.

Real-time Audio Segmentation

20 minute read

Build production audio segmentation systems that detect boundaries in real-time using interval merging and temporal processing—the same principles from merge...

Distributed Speech Training

11 minute read

Design distributed training pipelines for large-scale speech models that efficiently handle hundreds of thousands of hours of sequential audio data.

Audio Augmentation Techniques

9 minute read

Use audio augmentation techniques to make speech models robust to noise, accents, channels, and real-world conditions—built on the same matrix/tensor transfo...

Speech Experiment Management

16 minute read

Design experiment management systems tailored for speech research—tracking audio data, models, metrics, and multi-dimensional experiments at scale.

Adaptive Speech Models

20 minute read

Design adaptive speech models that adjust in real-time to speakers, accents, noise, and domains—using the same greedy adaptation strategy as Jump Game and on...

Speech Architecture Search

17 minute read

Design neural architecture search systems for speech models that automatically discover optimal ASR/TTS architectures—using dynamic programming and path opti...