{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-23-qwen-audio-3-1/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-23-qwen-audio-3-1/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-09-23-qwen-audio-3-1","date":"2026-09-23","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Alibaba launches Qwen-Audio-3.1 five-model voice stack and cuts audio API prices up to 95%","deck":null,"takeaway":null,"category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Qwen on X - Meet Qwen-Audio-3.1","url":"https://x.com/Alibaba_Qwen/status/2102687258990026993","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.com"},{"n":2,"title":"QwenCloud - qwen-audio-3.1-realtime-plus","url":"https://www.qwencloud.com/models/qwen-audio-3.1-realtime-plus","type":"docs","group":"primary","domain":"qwencloud.com"},{"n":3,"title":"Model Studio - qwen-audio-3.1-tts-next","url":"https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/qwen-audio-3-1-tts-next","type":"docs","group":"primary","domain":"alibabacloud.com"},{"n":4,"title":"Qwen-Audio-3.1-Realtime: Towards Reliable Agentic Voice Interaction","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25176","type":"paper","group":"primary","domain":"arxiv.org"},{"n":5,"title":"Qwen on X - Meet Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate (2026-09-19)","url":"https://x.com/Alibaba_Qwen/status/2101206705111757253","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.com"},{"n":6,"title":"QwenCloud - qwen3.8-livetranslate-flash-realtime","url":"https://www.qwencloud.com/models/qwen3.8-livetranslate-flash-realtime","type":"docs","group":"primary","domain":"qwencloud.com"},{"n":7,"title":"Qwen blog - Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate: Names the speaker. Carries the meaning.","url":"https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8-livetranslate","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"qwen.ai"},{"n":8,"title":"GitHub - QwenLM/Omnilingua-Bench","url":"https://github.com/QwenLM/Omnilingua-Bench","type":"code","group":"primary","domain":"github.com"},{"n":9,"title":"The Decoder - Qwen Audio 3.1 slashes prices up to 95%","url":"https://the-decoder.com/alibaba-launches-qwen-audio-3-1-with-five-new-models-and-slashes-ai-audio-prices-by-up-to-95-percent/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"the-decoder.com"},{"n":10,"title":"MarkTechPost - Qwen-Audio-3.1-Realtime","url":"https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/09/28/alibaba-qwen-releases-qwen-audio-3-1-realtime-a-full-duplex-voice-model-trained-to-think-act-and-decide-when-to-speak/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"marktechpost.com"}],"official":8,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-30","orgs":["Alibaba","Qwen"],"title":"Alibaba launches Qwen-Audio-3.1 five-model voice stack and cuts audio API prices up to 95%","summary":"Around its 2026 Apsara Conference Alibaba's Qwen team released Qwen-Audio-3.1: upgraded ASR, TTS and full-duplex Realtime models plus two new ones (ASR-Next for audio understanding, TTS-Next for one-pass speech+SFX+ambience generation), with price cuts of ~70% (TTS), ~85% (Realtime) and up to 95% (ASR). Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate (60 input languages, 29 with voice output) debuted alongside.","key_facts":["Five models: Qwen-Audio-3.1-ASR, -ASR-Next, -TTS, -TTS-Next, -Realtime","qwen-audio-3.1-realtime-plus: 262K context; $6.40 audio in / $24 audio out per 1M tokens on QwenCloud","Realtime task success 82.0% (from 78.4%); response rate to background speech cut from 73.0% to 13.0% (arXiv 2609.25176)","qwen-audio-3.1-tts-next (model docs dated 2026-09-22): zh/en, up to 3,000 chars, up to 240 s podcast output","Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate (announced 2026-09-19, id qwen3.8-livetranslate-flash-realtime): LAAL latency cut from 2.8 s to 2.3 s; 60 input / 29 voice-output languages; $7.50 audio in / $30 audio out per 1M tokens; API-only"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["voice","speech","tts","asr","realtime","full-duplex","price-cut"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nAlibaba's Qwen team shipped a complete hosted audio stack in one release: recognition (ASR, ASR-Next with diarization,\nemotion and sound-event detection), synthesis (TTS with cross-language voice transfer, TTS-Next that mixes speech, sound\neffects and ambience in one pass) and a full-duplex Realtime model with tool use and web search. It came two months after\nQwen-Audio-3.0 (July 2026, see 2026-07-20-qwen-audio-3-0-tts) and alongside Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate at Apsara 2026.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nChinese labs (Alibaba, StepFun, ByteDance) now field voice-agent models that top or approach GPT-Live / Gemini Live on\npublic leaderboards at a fraction of the price, turning real-time voice into a price war.\n\nThe exact API ids of the 3.1 TTS and ASR-Next models (not in the international Model Studio docs as of 2026-09-29; only qwen-audio-3.0-tts-flash/-plus and qwen-audio-3.1-asr-flash-streaming/-filetrans are listed), and Model Studio international prices were not verified.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-09-22-alibaba-apsara-2026-qwen-4-roadmap","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-alibaba-apsara-2026-qwen-4-roadmap/","date":"2026-09-22","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Apsara 2026: Alibaba says Qwen 4 is in training, targets 5-10T-parameter Qwen 4.5/5, reports self-improvement runs and unveils Zhenwu V900 chip","deck":null,"takeaway":"It is the most concrete public scale target from a Chinese lab: 5-10T-parameter models plus a 20 GW data-center target.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":12,"official":4,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-10-13","orgs":["Alibaba","Qwen"]},{"id":"2026-09-18-qwen3-8-omni-flash","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-18-qwen3-8-omni-flash/","date":"2026-09-18","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash, an omnimodal agent model with 1M context and 93-98% cheaper audio/video input","deck":null,"takeaway":"The model sells audio and video understanding at Flash-tier prices and competes directly with Gemini 3.8 Flash on the multimodal agents that Chinese and US labs are both racing to ship.","category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":4,"filed":"2026-09-30","updated":"2026-09-30","orgs":["Alibaba","Qwen"]},{"id":"2026-09-15-stepfun-stepaudio-3","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-15-stepfun-stepaudio-3/","date":"2026-09-15","date_precision":"day","short_title":"StepFun releases StepAudio 3 family","deck":"Its Realtime model tops Artificial Analysis full-duplex rankings","takeaway":"Chinese lab StepFun launched StepAudio 3, five audio models (Realtime, ASR Max, TTS, Gen, Music).","category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":7,"official":5,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["StepFun"]},{"id":"2026-09-15-gemini-3-8-live-and-tts","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-15-gemini-3-8-live-and-tts/","date":"2026-09-15","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Google ships Gemini 3.8 Live voice models and Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS with voice design and cloning","deck":null,"takeaway":"Completes a full voice stack (transcription, reasoning, real-time dialogue, speech synthesis, cloning) on one API; voice cloning also raises misuse concerns.","category":"product","category_label":"Products","importance":2,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":12,"official":10,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-30","orgs":["Google"]},{"id":"2026-07-20-qwen-audio-3-0-tts","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-20-qwen-audio-3-0-tts/","date":"2026-07-20","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Alibaba's Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS takes #1 on the Artificial Analysis text-to-speech leaderboard","deck":null,"takeaway":"A Chinese lab led the main independent TTS leaderboard at a fraction of ElevenLabs' price, which started the summer-2026 TTS price and quality race.","category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":3,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Alibaba","Qwen"]}],"people":[],"posts":[{"id":"x-alibaba_qwen-2101206705111757253","title":"“Meet Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate, Qwen's next-generation real-time simultaneous interpretation…”","url":"https://postcutoff.com/p/x-alibaba_qwen-2101206705111757253/"}],"videos":[],"models":[{"id":"qwen-audio-3-1-asr","name":"Qwen-Audio-3.1-ASR (Flash)","url":"https://postcutoff.com/m/qwen-audio-3-1-asr/"},{"id":"qwen-audio-3-1-realtime","name":"Qwen-Audio-3.1-Realtime (Plus)","url":"https://postcutoff.com/m/qwen-audio-3-1-realtime/"},{"id":"qwen-audio-3-1-tts-plus","name":"Qwen-Audio-3.1-TTS (Plus / Flash)","url":"https://postcutoff.com/m/qwen-audio-3-1-tts-plus/"},{"id":"qwen-audio-3-1-tts-next","name":"Qwen-Audio-3.1-TTS-Next","url":"https://postcutoff.com/m/qwen-audio-3-1-tts-next/"},{"id":"qwen3-8-livetranslate","name":"Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate (Flash Realtime)","url":"https://postcutoff.com/m/qwen3-8-livetranslate/"}],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-30","type":"edit","text":"Added the official Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate blog post (Qwen blog index date 2026-09-18) and a link to the new Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash entry"},{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"edit","text":"Linked the Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS and Apsara 2026 entries; recorded which 3.1 API ids are published"},{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"edit","text":"Added verified Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate id, date, pricing and model file qwen3-8-livetranslate"},{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-30","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":146,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":85,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":176,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":115,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}