ICASSP 2027 Audio Editing Challenge
Advancing precise, general-purpose, instruction-based audio editing
About the Challenge
The Audio Editing Challenge at ICASSP 2027 brings together researchers working on general-purpose audio editing. Built on MMAE (A Massive Multitask Audio Editing Benchmark), the challenge asks systems to understand source audio, follow potentially complex instructions, and produce precise edits while preserving unrelated content and audio quality.
Tasks span speech, music, sound, and their mixtures — from removing applause without changing the speaker to replacing a lyric while preserving the singer and accompaniment.
Challenge Tracks
| Track | Goal |
|---|---|
| Single Model Track | Build one end-to-end model that directly transforms input audio according to an instruction. |
| Agent Track | Build an autonomous system that can plan, use locally deployed models or signal-processing tools, inspect intermediate results, and refine its output. |
Track details: Single Model Track and Agent Track.
Both tracks cover speech, music, sound, and their mixtures. The Single Model Track is restricted to the MMAE single complexity category; the Agent Track covers all complexity categories.
Baselines
Our baseline repository provides setup instructions, inference scripts, and submission-format outputs for both tracks:
- Single Model: AuK-based end-to-end editing with Prompt Enhancer disabled.
- Agent: An LLM router combining DSP tools, SAM-Audio source separation, and AuK generative editing.
For participation rules, test-set release details, and submission instructions, please follow the official website.
Evaluation
The two tracks are ranked independently using rubric-based evaluation:
- Instruction Following Rate (IFR): Were the requested edits correctly executed?
- Consistency Rate (CR): Were unrelated audio content and quality preserved?
- Exact Match Rate (EMR): Were all instruction-following and consistency rubrics satisfied for a sample?
Rankings are determined by Overall EMR, with ties broken by Overall IFR, then Overall CR. See the evaluation protocol for full details.
Key Dates
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Challenge test sets and submission SDK released; leaderboard opens | November 10, 2026 |
| Final submissions due; leaderboard freezes | November 25, 2026 |
| Final rankings and invited teams announced | December 8, 2026 |
| Invited two-page ICASSP papers due | January 7, 2027 |
Submission deadlines are 11:59 PM U.S. Pacific Time. The schedule is tentative; consult the official timeline for updates.
Contact & Community
For challenge questions and invitations to the Slack workspace or WeChat group, contact Zhikang Niu or Wenming Tu.
The challenge prize pool is sponsored by Tencent. The top three teams in each track will be invited to submit a two-page ICASSP 2027 paper and present their work in the Grand Challenge session.