Audio is the one area small labs are winning • Hacker News Board

adithyassekhar wrote: post #16

tl2do wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your reply has a 0% ai score yet the presence of that "reply to" text is concerning.

I don't know why this would be surprising because anywhere purporting to be able to score like this is obviously lying to you

Re: Audio is the one area small labs are winning

#25

Post by anvevoice » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 4:22 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Audio is the one area small labs are winning

#26

Post by mrbluecoat » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 4:28 AM UTC

The bigger players probably avoid it because it's a bigger legal liability: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025864

..plenty of money to be made elsewhere

Re: Audio is the one area small labs are winning

#27

Post by carshodev » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 4:41 AM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #15

Does Wisprflow count as an audio “lab”?

Transcription providers like wisprflow and willow voice are typically providing nice UI/UX around open source models.

Wisprflow does not create it's own models but i know willow voice did do extensive finetuning to improve the quality and speed of their transcription models so you may count them.

Re: Audio is the one area small labs are winning

#28

Post by gorgoiler » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 4:49 AM UTC

bossyTeacher wrote: post #4

Surprised ElevenLabs is not mentioned

I was suspicious that they are not mentioned, but then I realized this is a VC opinion piece and the first company mentioned joined their portfolio last year.

Re: Audio is the one area small labs are winning

#29

Post by United857 » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 4:58 AM UTC

dkarp wrote: post #3

There's too much noise at large organizations

I see what you did there.

Re: Audio is the one area small labs are winning

#30

Post by hadlock » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 5:07 AM UTC

Can someone reccomend to me: a service that will generate a loopable engine drone for a "WWII Plane Japan Kawasaki Ki-61"? It doesn't have to be perfect, just convincing in a hollywood blockbuster context, and not just a warmed over clone of a Merlin engine sound. Turns out Suno will make whatever background music I need, but I want a "unique sound effect on demand" service. I'm not convinced voice AI stuff is sustainable