Computer Science > Sound
  [Submitted on 12 Sep 2026 (v1), last revised 19 Sep 2026 (this version, v2)]
    Title:StepAudio 3 Realtime Technical Report
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            Abstract:Realtime spoken interaction demands deep reasoning, prompt responses, and fluid turn-taking. We present StepAudio 3 Realtime, an audio-language foundation model organized around a continuous listen-converse-think-act loop. Deep Perception captures rich acoustic cues to interpret user intent, while Seamless Duplex models synchronized audio streams to handle pauses, backchannels, and interruptions naturally. Crucially, we resolve the tension between deep deliberation and latency via Think-While-Speaking, executing private reasoning in parallel with spoken delivery. In reasoning mode, StepAudio 3 reaches a 73.0 macro average on StepAudioChat. With Think-While-Speaking, it achieves dialogue and reasoning performance comparable to dedicated reasoning models while speaking in real time. Furthermore, an integrated Voice Agent handles asynchronous tool execution without disrupting the dialogue flow. StepAudio 3 Realtime achieves top-tier performance across key dimensions: an exceptional 90.6 on the MMSU benchmark, 98.9 Overall on the Artificial Analysis Full-Duplex Bench, and a 56.0% macro task-success rate on $\tau$-Voice.

Submission history
From: Haoyang Zhang [view email]
[v1] Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:40:02 UTC (937 KB)
[v2] Sat, 19 Sep 2026 07:01:51 UTC (367 KB)
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