I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin tones
Built this because tones are killing my spoken Mandarin and I can't reliably hear my own mistakes. It's a 9M Conformer-CTC model trained on ~300h (AISHELL + Primewords), quantized to INT8 (11 MB), runs 100% in-browser via ONNX Runtime Web. Grades per-syllable pronunciation + tones with Viterbi forced alignment. Try it here: https://simedw.com/projects/ear/
In plain words
This tool helps Mandarin learners improve their tone pronunciation by analyzing recorded speech directly in the browser. It uses a 9-million-parameter speech model trained on hundreds of hours of Mandarin audio to evaluate each syllable's pronunciation and tones, providing per-syllable feedback. The model runs entirely locally using ONNX Runtime Web, requiring no server uploads. It addresses a common challenge for learners who struggle to self-assess their own tonal accuracy.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
Does the same job
all alternatives →- MTMandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation2019 · mandarintonetrainer.com · ▲237
- IBI built a sub-500ms latency voice agent from scratchMar 2026 · ntik.me · ▲570
I built a voice agent from scratch that averages ~400ms end-to-end latency (phone stop → first syllable). That’s with full STT → LLM → TTS in the loop, clean barge-ins, and no precomputed responses. What moved the needle: Voice is a turn-taking problem, not a transcription problem. VAD alone fails; you need semantic end-of-turn detection. The system reduces to one loop: speaking vs listening. The two transitions - cancel instantly on barge-in, respond instantly on end-of-turn - define the experience. STT → LLM → TTS must stream. Sequential pipelines are dead on arrival for natural…
Parrot Speech-to-text APIMay 2026 · ringg.ai · ▲194Fast, accurate STT for production-grade voice agents
- 1M17MB model beats human experts at pronunciation scoringFeb 2026 · huggingface.co · ▲13
- AAAn “automatic” way to learn Chinese2018 · play.google.com · ▲57
More life & fun this month
the category →- TL
Life & fun · 10d ago · louisabraham.github.io
Photosynthesis fires two of your iPhone
Life & fun · 29d ago · photosynthesis.camera
SoloUno▲310Take control of hair pulling, nail biting & skin picking
Life & fun · 28d ago · solouno.io
Scroll through all 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 reachable Rubik's Cube permutations.
Life & fun · 27d ago · everycube.alen.is
Hi HN, I built Eigendrum, a web tool that solves the 2D wave equation for arbitrary shapes so you can hear what they sound like as drums. How it works: * Solves -∇²u = λu using finite element analysis (Kφ = λMφ) on a triangle mesh. * Validated to <0.1% error against closed-form solutions for circles (Bessel zeros) and rectangles. * Sound model factors in strike location, Rayleigh damping, and mallet width. * Includes Kac drums I & II to demonstrate identical sound spectra from different geometries. * No frameworks, build steps, or dependencies. Repo and tests:…
Life & fun · 27d ago · baselashraf81.github.io
Launched alongside, January 2026
the whole month →- IN
Hey HN! I wanted to share something I built over the last few weeks: isometric.nyc is a massive isometric pixel art map of NYC, built with nano banana and coding agents. I didn't write a single line of code. Of course no-code doesn't mean no-engineering. This project took a lot more manual labor than I'd hoped! I wrote a deep dive on the workflow and some thoughts about the future of AI coding and creativity: http://cannoneyed.com/projects/isometric-nyc
AI · Jan 2026 · cannoneyed.com
Automatic AI-powered code reviews the moment you open a PR
Dev tools · Jan 2026 · kilo.ai
