mudler/LocalAI · error

error: failed to detect speech

Error message

error: failed to detect speech

What it means

Voice activity detection failed on the input audio. Guard: validate the audio buffer is non-empty and in the expected sample format before running VAD; report the failure to the caller.

Source

Thrown at backend/go/whisper/cpp/gowhisper.cpp:113

  struct whisper_vad_context_params vcparams =
      whisper_vad_default_context_params();

  // XXX: Overridden to false in upstream due to performance?
  // vcparams.use_gpu = true;

  vctx = whisper_vad_init_from_file_with_params(model_path, vcparams);
  if (vctx == nullptr) {
    fprintf(stderr, "error: Failed to init model as VAD\n");
    return 1;
  }

  return 0;
}

int vad(float pcmf32[], size_t pcmf32_len, float **segs_out,
        size_t *segs_out_len) {
  if (!whisper_vad_detect_speech(vctx, pcmf32, pcmf32_len)) {
    fprintf(stderr, "error: failed to detect speech\n");
    return 1;
  }

  struct whisper_vad_params params = whisper_vad_default_params();
  struct whisper_vad_segments *segs =
      whisper_vad_segments_from_probs(vctx, params);
  size_t segn = whisper_vad_segments_n_segments(segs);

  // fprintf(stderr, "Got segments %zd\n", segn);

  flat_segs.clear();

  for (int i = 0; i < segn; i++) {
    flat_segs.push_back(whisper_vad_segments_get_segment_t0(segs, i));
    flat_segs.push_back(whisper_vad_segments_get_segment_t1(segs, i));
  }

  // fprintf(stderr, "setting out variables: %p=%p -> %p, %p=%zx -> %zx\n",

View on GitHub (pinned to 44413a9d06)

Solutions

1. Verify the audio input is valid and contains detectable speech.
2. Check sample rate/format of the input audio matches what whisper expects (16 kHz PCM).
3. Inspect earlier logs for VAD model init problems.

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at backend/go/whisper/cpp/gowhisper.cpp:113 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of mudler/LocalAI@44413a9d06 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/037a41794520fd15. Report an issue: GitHub.