Streaming automatic speech recognition transcribes at low latency but produces an unattributed word stream, while real-time applications such as customer-service analytics need each word tied to a speaker role. Role attribution is usually a separate stage, either an offline or streaming speaker-diarization model aligned to the words or a text-based large language model applied to the transcript, and role labels for training are scarce. We present RoleHear, a semi-supervised pipeline that makes a single cache-aware streaming transducer emit roles inline through lightweight in-vocabulary role tokens: a fast turn-boundary marker followed by a per-role token a few words later. An offline transducer teacher, fine-tuned into a role-attributed recognizer, relabels unlabeled audio, and a multimodal large language model supplies silver role labels where gold annotations are unavailable. The streaming student is fine-tuned on the mixture in a single pass. Across customer-service calls with gold roles and earnings calls with silver roles, RoleHear attributes roles accurately while preserving transcription quality and narrowing the gap to the offline teacher.
Figures & tables
Split
Earnings-21
Earnings-22
ServiceCall
Labeled Train
10.72
0 24.76
0 31.08
Labeled Val
0 3.09
00 9.16
00 7.22
Labeled Test
0 4.88
0 12.38
00 6.86
Unlabeled
18.85
0 63.01
0 62.56
Total
37.54
109.31
107.72
Chunk (s)
23.3
0 23.0
00 9.8
Table 1: Dataset statistics, reporting the total duration in hours per split and the average chunk length in seconds.
Method
Earnings-21
Earnings-22
ServiceCall-3R
ServiceCall-5R
WER ↓
RWER ↓
F1 ↑
WER ↓
RWER ↓
F1 ↑
Δ WER ↓
Δ RWER ↓
Δ F1 ↑
Δ WER ↓
Δ RWER ↓
Δ F1 ↑
Teacher + MLLM
6.49 ±0.00
-
-
12.24 ±0.00
-
-
- 0.00 ±0.00
- 0.00 ±0.00
- 0.00 ±0.00
- 0.00 ±0.00
- 0.00 ±0.00
- 0.00 ±0.00
FT Teacher
6.88 ±0.06
19.24 ±0.60
82.83 ±0.70
11.79 ±0.04
25.94 ±0.78
80.59 ±0.96
-2.98 ±0.06
-6.29 ±0.44
+1.21 ±0.77
-3.04 ±0.07
-5.56 ±0.39
-8.92 ±2.64
Student + MLLM
8.27 ±0.00
-
-
13.55 ±0.00
-
-
+0.78 ±0.00
+1.66 ±0.00
-1.20 ±0.00
+0.78 ±0.00
-1.82 ±0.00
+1.42 ±0.00
FT Student
7.74 ±0.14
31.78 ±0.63
64.06 ±1.66
12.93 ±0.06
42.29 ±0.71
52.16 ±1.65
-1.31 ±0.17
+0.21 ±0.65
-8.83 ±1.39
-1.30 ±0.09
+2.81 ±0.45
-19.83 ±0.93
RoleHear
7.56 ±0.09
27.55 ±0.81
72.95 ±2.20
12.33 ±0.16
35.80 ±0.60
65.97 ±2.07
-1.99 ±0.09
-2.92 ±0.35
-5.95 ±0.83
-2.10 ±0.13
-1.80 ±0.98
-17.34 ±1.82
Table 2: Role-attributed ASR on the labeled test split (%, 5 -seed mean, std in subscript). ServiceCall-5R uses the 5 -role set, the others the 3 -role set; roles are gold on ServiceCall, silver on Earnings. The student rows decode at RC=1 ( 160 ms). FT denotes fine-tuned. Earnings columns are absolute; ServiceCall columns are the change ( Δ , in pp) from the Teacher + MLLM row.
Model
Delay
RL
WER ↓
RWER ↓
F1 ↑
Teacher
0
0
6.88 ±0.08
17.99 ±0.85
83.80 ±1.44
−1
Turn
6.88 ±0.06
19.24 ±0.60
82.83 ±0.70
Student
0
0
7.71 ±0.07
37.32 ±1.03
46.07 ±4.90
1
360
7.74 ±0.14
31.78 ±0.63
64.06 ±1.66
3
1080
7.74 ±0.12
31.75 ±1.51
60.91 ±3.05
5
1800
7.75 ±0.05
32.89 ±1.22
60.10 ±1.74
Table 3: Role-emission delay on Earnings-21, fine-tuning only; student at RC=1 . WER, RWER, F1 (%); role latency RL≈delay×360 ms. Delay −1 places the token after the turn’s last word (highest latency). Bold / underline : best/second-best per column (student rows).
Delay
RC
RL
AL
WER ↓
RWER ↓
F1 ↑
0
0
0
80
7.84 ±0.07
36.25 ±1.17
42.55 ±1.42
1
0
160
7.71 ±0.07
37.32 ±1.03
46.07 ±4.90
6
0
560
7.51 ±0.05
32.60 ±0.87
60.98 ±8.64
13
0
1120
7.40 ±0.07
29.54 ±1.13
65.93 ±9.87
1
0
360
80
7.86 ±0.13
32.31 ±0.51
63.39 ±0.76
1
360
160
7.74 ±0.14
31.78 ±0.63
64.06 ±1.66
Table 4: Right context and delay on Earnings-21, fine-tuning only; streaming student. WER, RWER, F1 (%); role latency RL≈delay×360 ms, algorithmic latency AL=(1+RC)×80 ms. Bold / underline : best/second-best per column within each delay.
Streaming automatic speech recognition (ASR) underperforms on domain-shifted target audio, where labeled in-domain data is costly to prepare while unlabeled audio is abundant. We present StreamHear, a semi-supervised pipeline that adapts a pretrained streaming student by fine-tuning an offline transducer teacher on the labeled training set, generating pseudo-labels on the unlabeled portion, and fine-tuning the student on the mixture. We further introduce a prior-regularized dynamic-programming realignment step that fixes chunk-level word placement using an ASR-hypothesis anchor. Across four datasets spanning financial calls, prepared read speech, and phone-quality dialogue, StreamHear consistently outperforms supervised student fine-tuning and narrows the gap to the offline teacher.
We study timestamped speaker-attributed automatic speech recognition (SA-ASR) for long-form, multi-party speech with overlap. In this setting, chunk-wise inference must preserve meeting-level speaker identity consistency while producing time-stamped, speaker-labeled transcripts. Prior Speech-LLM systems tend to prioritize either local diarization or global labeling, lacking the ability to jointly model fine-grained temporal boundaries and robust cross-chunk identity linking. We propose G-STAR, an end-to-end framework that couples a cache-conditioned speaker-tracking module with a Speech-LLM transcription backbone. The tracker provides structured speaker cues with temporal grounding, and the LLM generates attributed text conditioned on these cues. G-STAR supports component-wise optimization and joint end-to-end training, enabling flexible learning under heterogeneous supervision and domain shift. Under chunk-wise decoding protocols, experiments on both oracle-segmented local evaluation and full-meeting global evaluation show strong speaker-attributed transcription performance.
Jing Peng, Ziyi Chen, Haoyu Li +7
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data · Nanjing University +2
We present a real-time pipeline of open source, pretrained models for streaming identification of a target speaker, motivated by hearing-aid applications where latency as low as 10 ms can be perceptible. We formulate a two-step approach in which incoming audio is first segmented by speaker using low-latency streaming diarization, followed by speaker verification against a registered target speaker. To emulate conversational speech while minimizing overlap, we use the This American Life Podcast Transcripts dataset and select the host as a consistent target speaker. We benchmark offline diarization with Pyannote and LIUM using diarization error rate (DER) and select Pyannote based on baseline performance and compatibility with streaming. We then evaluate speaker verification using Pyannote and TitaNet-Large and generate ROC curves to select an operating region. We integrate Diart and tune clustering parameters to reduce DER while maintaining real-time operation. We pair Diart with Pyannote verification and evaluate system-level performance by converting predicted and ground-truth speech regions into 100 ms binary masks. Across 17 evaluation episodes, the system achieves greater than 0.90 median accuracy with high specificity (0.95-0.98) at cosine distance thresholds of 0.7-0.75, demonstrating a practical proof of concept for downstream low-latency selective amplification.
Patrick S. Burke, Satyam Raj, Sean Kinahan
Children's National Hospital · Children’s National Hospital Washington, DC · Arizona State University +1