From Decrypt · By Jose Antonio Lanz
In brief
ACE Music v1 ranks ahead of Suno v6 in Artificial Analysis' blind listening benchmark for AI-generated vocal music.
Decrypt's tests found stronger melodies, more natural voices and cleaner endings, but Suno handled some niche genres better.
The flagship model remains proprietary, while ACE-Step 1.5 is already open source and ACE Music v1 Flash is scheduled for release later in 2026.
Artificial intelligence has gotten pretty good at writing songs. Now, a relatively unfamiliar competitor has managed to beat Suno, arguably the biggest name in AI music, at its own game.
ACE Music v1, developed by ACE Studio, has taken first place on Artificial Analysis' vocal music leaderboard, scoring 1,160 Elo points against Suno v6's 1,144.
The AA-Music-Vocal v1.1 benchmark measures the quality of AI-generated songs containing vocals. Evaluators listen to tracks produced from identical prompts without knowing which model created them, then choose their favorite. Those preferences determine an Elo-style rating, with higher scores indicating stronger listener preference.
PredictEconomyNVDA Highs in November
21611%YesNo2249%YesNo2327%YesNo2405%YesNo2483%YesNo+3 more outcomes+2 more outcomesNEW$2.11 volumeCloses: Dec 1, 2026, 04:59 UTCCloses: Dec 1, 2026, 04:59 UTCThe lead is relatively narrow, and the models' statistical confidence intervals overlap. Suno also retains the top position on the separate instrumental music leaderboard.
ACE Studio, founded in 2018, originally focused on synthesizing singing voices from MIDI notes and lyrics. Its latest ACE Music v1 model generates complete songs from written descriptions or user-provided lyrics.
We tested it. And it's genuinely good.
In Decrypt's hands-on tests, ACE Music consistently produced more melodic and coherent songs in mainstream styles.
That said, the vocal performances sounded more natural in general, with fewer of the synthetic artifacts that sometimes make AI singers sound like they're struggling to pronounce their own lyrics, use a lot of autotune or hallucinate words just to fill spaces. (Go ahead and give our song a listen here, which incidentally is about our latest company announcement regarding the Information Exchange.)
ACE also handled song endings better. Where Suno occasionally introduces strange sounds, unnecessary repetitions, hallucinations or abrupt musical changes near the finish, ACE generally maintained its structure and delivered cleaner conclusions.
That matters because making a convincing chorus is relatively easy compared with maintaining a musical idea throughout an entire composition even if the lyrics are already over.
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