Topics / model evaluation

Attributed viewpoint

Turn detection is critical and distinct from ASR accuracy

Turn detection, also called end pointing, detects when a user has finished their turn. The author describes it as extremely hard without visual or other human conversational cues, and says poor turn detection causes long pauses and high latency.

Behind the viewpoint

Translations are for reading; original excerpts remain the evidence.

Cartesia | A Guide to Choosing Voice AI Models

Original excerpt

Turn-detection is also known as end pointing – because it refers to detecting when the user has finished their turn. It is extremely hard to do accurately as Speech to Text models do not have visual or other cues like humans do in conversation. That makes high-quality turn detection incredibly important for conversational AI - poor turn detection results in very long awkward pauses and high latency in the voice agent’s conversation.