TEN VAD - rapida.ai documentation

TEN VAD is a native C library from the TEN Framework that provides frame-level speech probability scores with a fixed 256-sample hop size (16 ms at 16 kHz). Provider identifier: ten_vad

Source Location

api/assistant-api/internal/vad/internal/ten_vad/
├── ten_vad.go           # Main implementation
├── detector.go          # CGO wrapper for libten_vad
├── ten_vad.h            # C header
├── lib/
│   └── Linux/x64/libten_vad.so   # Shared library

How It Works

Incoming LINEAR16 bytes are converted to int16 samples
Samples are processed in fixed 256-sample frames (16 ms each)
Each frame produces a speech probability score
Speech onset/offset is tracked with Pipecat-style start_secs and stop_secs debounce windows
Same packet emission pattern: InterruptionPacket start/end events on speech onset and offset

Parameters

Option Key	Default	Range	Description
`microphone.vad.confidence`	`0.7`	0–1	Speech probability threshold
`microphone.vad.start_secs`	`0.2`	0–2	Continuous speech duration before confirming speech start
`microphone.vad.stop_secs`	`0.2`	0–2	Continuous non-speech duration before confirming speech end

Internally, start_secs and stop_secs are rounded to TEN VAD’s native 256-sample frames.

Shared Library

TEN VAD does not use an ONNX model. It requires the libten_vad shared library at both build and runtime. Docker: The Dockerfile copies the library from the source tree:

COPY api/assistant-api/internal/vad/internal/ten_vad/lib/Linux/x64/libten_vad.so /opt/ten_vad/lib/

From source (Linux):

export CGO_CFLAGS="-I$(pwd)/api/assistant-api/internal/vad/internal/ten_vad"
export CGO_LDFLAGS="-L$(pwd)/api/assistant-api/internal/vad/internal/ten_vad/lib/Linux/x64 -lten_vad"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$(pwd)/api/assistant-api/internal/vad/internal/ten_vad/lib/Linux/x64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

The pre-compiled shared library is for Linux x86_64 only. TEN VAD is not available for macOS local development. Use Silero VAD or FireRed VAD instead when developing on macOS.