Skip to content
← Back to explorer

MAEB: Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark

Adnan El Assadi, Isaac Chung, Chenghao Xiao, Roman Solomatin, Animesh Jha, Rahul Chand, Silky Singh, Kaitlyn Wang, Ali Sartaz Khan, Marc Moussa Nasser, Sufen Fong, Pengfei He, Alan Xiao, Ayush Sunil Munot, Aditya Shrivastava, Artem Gazizov, Niklas Muennighoff, Kenneth Enevoldsen · Feb 17, 2026 · Citations: 0

How to use this paper page

Coverage: Stale

Use this page to decide whether the paper is strong enough to influence an eval design. It summarizes the abstract plus available structured metadata. If the signal is thin, use it as background context and compare it against stronger hub pages before making protocol choices.

Best use

Background context only

Metadata: Stale

Trust level

Low

Signals: Stale

What still needs checking

Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.

Signal confidence: 0.35

Abstract

We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages. We evaluate 50+ models and find that no single model dominates across all tasks: contrastive audio-text models excel at environmental sound classification (e.g., ESC50) but score near random on multilingual speech tasks (e.g., SIB-FLEURS), while speech-pretrained models show the opposite pattern. Clustering remains challenging for all models, with even the best-performing model achieving only modest results. We observe that models excelling on acoustic understanding often perform poorly on linguistic tasks, and vice versa. We also show that the performance of audio encoders on MAEB correlates highly with their performance when used in audio large language models. MAEB is derived from MAEB+, a collection of 98 tasks. MAEB is designed to maintain task diversity while reducing evaluation cost, and it integrates into the MTEB ecosystem for unified evaluation across text, image, and audio modalities. We release MAEB and all 98 tasks along with code and a leaderboard at https://github.com/embeddings-benchmark/mteb.

Use caution before copying this protocol

Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.

  • Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.
  • Extraction confidence is 0.35 (below strong-reference threshold).

HFEPX Relevance Assessment

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.

Trust level

Low

Eval-Fit Score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

HFEPX Fit

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence: Low

What This Page Found In The Paper

Each field below shows whether the signal looked explicit, partial, or missing in the available metadata. Use this to judge what is safe to trust directly and what still needs full-paper validation.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

Evidence snippet: We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Confidence: Low Direct evidence

Includes extracted eval setup.

Evidence snippet: We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit QC controls found.

Evidence snippet: We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

Confidence: Low Not found

No benchmark anchors detected.

Evidence snippet: We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.

Reported Metrics

partial

Cost

Confidence: Low Direct evidence

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

Evidence snippet: MAEB is designed to maintain task diversity while reducing evaluation cost, and it integrates into the MTEB ecosystem for unified evaluation across text, image, and audio modalities.

Rater Population

missing

Unknown

Confidence: Low Not found

Rater source not explicitly reported.

Evidence snippet: We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.

Human Data Lens

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Unknown
  • Unit of annotation: Unknown
  • Expertise required: Coding, Multilingual
  • Signal basis: Structured extraction plus abstract evidence.

Evaluation Lens

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Signal confidence: 0.35
  • Known cautions: low_signal, possible_false_positive

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

cost

Research Brief

Metadata summary

We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.
  • We evaluate 50+ models and find that no single model dominates across all tasks: contrastive audio-text models excel at environmental sound classification (e.g., ESC50) but score near random on multilingual speech tasks (e.g., SIB-FLEURS), while speech-pretrained models show the opposite pattern.
  • Clustering remains challenging for all models, with even the best-performing model achieving only modest results.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.
  • We evaluate 50+ models and find that no single model dominates across all tasks: contrastive audio-text models excel at environmental sound classification (e.g., ESC50) but score near random on multilingual speech tasks (e.g., SIB-FLEURS),…
  • MAEB is designed to maintain task diversity while reducing evaluation cost, and it integrates into the MTEB ecosystem for unified evaluation across text, image, and audio modalities.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • We introduce the Massive Audio Embedding Benchmark (MAEB), a large-scale benchmark covering 30 tasks across speech, music, environmental sounds, and cross-modal audio-text reasoning in 100+ languages.
  • MAEB is designed to maintain task diversity while reducing evaluation cost, and it integrates into the MTEB ecosystem for unified evaluation across text, image, and audio modalities.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: cost

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

Get Started

Join the #1 Platform for AI Training Talent

Where top AI builders and expert AI Trainers connect to build the future of AI.
Self-Service
Post a Job
Post your project and get a shortlist of qualified AI Trainers and Data Labelers. Hire and manage your team in the tools you already use.
Managed Service
For Large Projects
Done-for-You
We recruit, onboard, and manage a dedicated team inside your tools. End-to-end operations for large or complex projects.
For Freelancers
Join as an AI Trainer
Find AI training and data labeling projects across platforms, all in one place. One profile, one application process, more opportunities.