Program dates: October 2023-April 2024
The ICASSP 2024 (opens in new tab) Audio Deep Packet Loss Concealment Challenge is intended to stimulate research in the area of Audio Packet Loss Concealment (PLC).
PLC is an important part of audio telecommunications technology and codec development, and methods for performing PLC using machine learning approaches are now becoming viable for practical use. Packet loss, either by missing packets or high packet jitter, is one of the top reasons for speech quality degradation in Voice over IP calls.
Building on the previous PLC Challenge at INTERSPEECH 2022, this challenge will feature an overall harder task and improved evaluation procedure. This iteration at ICASSP 2024 aims to address the challenges posed by long-gap packet losses and the ongoing transition to higher bandwidth (for the 2024 edition of the challenge, full-band / 48000Hz) audio in VoIP. The challenge retains the stringent realistic latency requirements from the previous iteration while presenting a more demanding dataset to reflect realistic and adverse network conditions. Subjective evaluation will be performed using the P.804 multi-dimensional audio quality assessment method, allowing for highly focused evaluation of how well models repair packet losses, while the WER will once again be used to test how well participants’ methods retain intelligibility.
Data downloads
The validation data for the 2024 edition of the challenge has now been released: https://aecchallengepublic.blob.core.windows.net/plc2024/plcchallenge24_val_v2.zip (opens in new tab)
A tool to check and validate processing latency can be found here: https://aecchallengepublic.blob.core.windows.net/plc2024/latency_test_v2.zip (opens in new tab)
The blind set has now been released, and can be found here: https://aecchallengepublic.blob.core.windows.net/plc2024/plc_challenge_2024_blind_release.zip (opens in new tab)
We recommend using the recently released new version of PLCMOS, which is part of the speechmos · PyPI (opens in new tab) package, to aid with development.
Registration procedure
To register for the challenge, please register on the challenge CMT site (opens in new tab), where you will be able to submit your entry. Additionally, please send an e-mail to plc_challenge@microsoft.com with your team name the name and e-mail of the primary contact for your teams, so that we can keep you informed about the progress of the challenge. Registration data is captured and stored in the US.
Submission instructions
To submit your entry, please:
- Process the blind set using your model. You should not do any further model optimization using this set. The output files should have the same names as the input files they were generated from. Pack up the results as a zip file.
- Sign up for the CMT system for the 2024 PLC Challenge at: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/User/Login?ReturnUrl=%2FPLCChallenge2024 (opens in new tab) , if you haven’t done that already
- Create a new submission. You can add all team members as co-authors. Upload your zip file as Supplementary Material
- CMT only allows files up to 700 megabytes. This should not be a problem. If you do end up having a larger file, please upload it somewhere and send us the link via e-mail.
- As the main submission file, please upload a brief description (or paper draft) of your model.
Submission deadline: December 7, 2023, 23:59 PM (anywhere on earth)
Contact us: For questions, please contact plc_challenge@microsoft.com