Acoustic monitoringMusic and sound

BEATs

A self-supervised sound understanding model that became the base for many current systems: teams take it as a starting point and fine-tune it on their own equipment sounds. The system does not make a diagnosis, it gives you a reason to check the unit before it fails.

The last open version came out in Dec 2022. The family has not been updated for a long time: the model still works, but do not expect fixes or new sizes.

Developer
Microsoft, USA
First release
Dec 2022
Latest release
Dec 2022
Sizes
a ViT-base class model, around 90M parameters
License
Commercial use allowedMIT
Running
On your own serverAlso runs without a GPU
Industries
Manufacturing and logistics, Security, Media and production, Science and research
Deploy on your server GitHub

What it does

  • A base for your own sound understanding model
  • Audio features for spotting abnormal operating modes
  • Labelling sound events on a site
  • Fine-tuning on a small set of your own recordings

Where it is used

Manufacturing and equipment maintenanceSite securityMedia and audio archivesResearch

Hardware requirements

LaptopLaptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions
fits
1 GPUOne GPU with 16–80 GB — mid-size versions
fits
ClusterServer with several GPUs — flagship versions
no versions

Versions

  1. BEATs iter3+ (AS20K и AS2M)
  2. BEATs iter3
  3. BEATs iter2
  4. BEATs iter1

How to run it

On your own serverWeights are downloaded from Hugging Face and served with vLLM (load and API) or llama.cpp (modest hardware). The model then runs in a closed network with no per-request fees.
How much hardware you needCalculate the VRAM for the model size, context length and number of concurrent requests.Open the hardware calculator

I can set this up end to end: pick the model size, deploy it on your server and connect it to your systems.

Frequently asked questions

Can BEATs be used in a commercial project?

Yes. License: MIT. It allows commercial use, but it is still worth having a lawyer review the license before launch.

What hardware does BEATs need?

At minimum: Laptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions. Some versions also run on an ordinary CPU, without a GPU. You can calculate the exact VRAM for your model size and context in the hardware calculator.

Does BEATs support Russian?

Language does not matter for this model: it does not work with text.

Where can I download BEATs and what does it cost?

The BEATs weights are open and free to download. You only pay for the hardware it runs on and for the setup. Source links are at the bottom of this page.

How I deploy it for clients

  1. SelectionI pick the model size for your task and hardware and test it on your examples.
  2. DeploymentI deploy it on your server or in a closed network and provide an API.
  3. Fine-tuningI fine-tune it on your data (LoRA) or connect a knowledge base — whichever is cheaper for the task.
  4. IntegrationI connect it to your CRM, ERP, bot, website or team chat and set up monitoring.

Similar models

Acoustic monitoringOpenBEATsCarnegie Mellon University and co-authors (the ESPnet project) · USACommercial use allowed

A fully open reproduction of BEATs: code, training recipes and weights are all published. Teams pick it when they need a transparent base for their own sound model. The system does not make a diagnosis, it gives you a reason to check the unit before it fails.

DetailsAcoustic monitoringEATShanghai Jiao Tong University and Peng Cheng Laboratory · ChinaCommercial use allowed

A self-supervised sound understanding model that is markedly cheaper to train on your own data than its predecessors. The system does not make a diagnosis, it gives you a reason to check the unit before it fails.

DetailsMusic and soundAST (Audio Spectrogram Transformer)MIT · USACommercial use allowed

A classic 2021 sound recognition model: detects 527 AudioSet event classes (siren, barking, breaking glass, music). Lightweight, runs without a GPU, in Transformers since 2022.

Details

Source: github.com/microsoft/unilm/blob/master/beats/README.md. Data checked against the model card on 22 Sep 2026. Have a lawyer review the license before commercial launch.