چکیده
Neural audio codecs are a key component in speech language modeling. However, their high frame rates lead to long sequence lengths, increasing computational costs. Dynamic frame rate codecs mitigate this by reducing the effective frame rate using a compression step to merge multiple frames together. However, most prior methods either operate on single-codebook codecs or apply a single compression step before multi-layer quantization. This forces all quantization layers to share the same segmentation boundaries, despite the residual embeddings at different quantization layers exhibiting different rates of change over time. We propose LACE (Layer-Adaptive Codec Encoding), a dynamic frame rate codec that applies an independent compression step at each quantization layer, enabling layer-specific segmentation boundaries. To use LACE tokens in downstream text-to-speech (TTS), we further introduce union alignment and boundary anchor mechanisms to make durations consistent across layers while preserving compression benefits. Experiments on LibriTTS show that LACE offers a better rate-quality tradeoff than prior dynamic frame rate methods on the reconstruction task and improves TTS inference efficiency while maintaining competitive synthesis quality. Our code is released as part of the ESPnet3 codec recipe.
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Computer Science > Sound arXiv:2609.17509v1 (cs) [Submitted on 15 Sep 2026] Title:LACE: Layer-Wise Compression for Dynamic Frame Rate Codecs Authors:Thanapat Trachu, Samuele Cornell, William Chen, Shinji Watanabe View a PDF of the paper titled LACE: Layer-Wise Compression for Dynamic Frame Rate Codecs, by Thanapat Trachu and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Neural audio codecs are a key component in speech language modeling. However, their high frame rates lead to long sequence lengths, increasing computational costs. Dynamic frame rate codecs mitigate this by reducing the effective frame rate using a compression step to merge multiple frames together. However, most prior methods either operate on single-codebook codecs or apply a single compression step before multi-layer quantization. This forces all quantization layers to share the same segmentation boundaries, despite the residual embeddings at different quantization layers exhibiting different rates of change over time. We propose LACE (Layer-Adaptive Codec Encoding), a dynamic frame rate codec that applies an independent compression step at each quantization layer, enabling layer-specific segmentation boundaries. To use LACE tokens in downstream text-to-speech (TTS), we further introduce union alignment and boundary anchor mechanisms to make durations consistent across layers while preserving compression benefits. Experiments on LibriTTS show that LACE offers a better rate-quality tradeoff than prior dynamic frame rate methods on the reconstruction task and improves TTS inference efficiency while maintaining competitive synthesis quality. Our code is released as part of the ESPnet3 codec recipe. Comments: Subjects: Sound (cs.SD); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL) Cite as: arXiv:2609.17509 [cs.SD] (or arXiv:2609.17509v1 [cs.SD] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.17509 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Thanapat Trachu [view email] [v1] Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:46:51 UTC (293 KB) Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)