Silence Detection VAD - pretty neat in Realtime API but very sensitive at times

Lets brainstorm about silence detection,
These are the variables to attribute for server VAD detection -
The main settings you can control are:

  1. Threshold (0.0 to 1.0):
  • like a volume knob
  • At 0.5 (default), it needs medium-loud speech to activate
  • Higher numbers mean you need to speak louder for it to notice you
  • Useful in noisy places - you can turn it up so it only listens to clear speech
  1. Prefix Padding (300ms default):
  • This captures a bit of audio before you actually start speaking
  • It’s like rewinding 0.3 seconds to catch the very start of your words
  • Helps prevent cutting off the beginning of sentences
  1. Silence Duration (500ms default):
  • This is how long it waits after you stop talking before responding
  • Half a second by default
  • If you make this shorter, it will respond faster
  • But too short, and it might interrupt you during normal speaking pauses
  1. Create Response:
  • Simply turns on/off automatic responses
  • When on (default), it will respond as soon as it detects you’ve finished speaking
  • When off, it will listen but won’t automatically reply

There is an awkward silence happening and the model never responds at some point of time - thats where we need to detect silence and push a response.create event saying “Are you there”?

Considering there is playback time involved in giving time for the assistant to say its response which is the variable timer - has anyone implemented custom mitigations for this silence detection. Below, do you think is this one such way to think about based on events - any idea on any other algorithms or custom functions for benchmarking these - One considering the noises or background that users are susceptible to over phone vs being silent in the call for more seconds!

  1. Monitor Client-Side Speech Events:

• Listen for the input_audio_buffer.speech_started and input_audio_buffer.speech_stopped events.

• When speech_started is detected, set a flag (e.g., speech_detected = True).

• When speech_stopped is detected, set speech_detected = False and record the timestamp.

  1. Implement Silence Detection Timer:

• After detecting speech_stopped, start a timer for a predefined duration (e.g., 2 seconds).

• If speech_started is detected before the timer expires, cancel the timer.

• If the timer expires without detecting speech_started, confirm that a silence period has occurred.

  1. Trigger Actions Upon Silence Detection:

• Once a silence period is confirmed, proceed with the desired action, such as prompting the AI assistant to continue the conversation or generate a response.

We implemented the silence detection as you suggested. I haven’t found a better solution yet.