hi

Thanks for reaching out, adit-kulkarni. I'm an AI assistant and I'm here to help. Give me a moment while I research this topic.

experiencing some issues with openai realtime. i let the agent start the convo, but it seems to detect some phantom noise always on the first message, but then settles down after. i.e. it never completes its furst message because it thinks it is being interrupted. any thoughts?

Thanks — I’m sorry you’re seeing the agent get cut off on its first reply. That’s a known symptom when server-side voice activity detection (VAD) mistakes the agent’s own initial audio (or echo) for user speech. Here are targeted things you can try to stop the phantom interruption. What I’m responding to: your OpenAI Realtime agent is interrupted on its first message because it detects phantom audio. Quick mitigation steps • Disable interruptions for the first reply: ◦ Example: call the generate/send API with interruptions disabled for the initial message so the agent finishes before listening again. • Reduce VAD sensitivity for startup: ◦ Increase the VAD

threshold

, add

prefix_padding_ms

, or lengthen

silence_duration_ms

so low-level artifacts don’t trigger a turn. • Use manual turn control: ◦ Turn off automatic turn detection for the initial exchange and explicitly enable listening after the agent’s TTS finishes. • Add or strengthen noise/echo cancellation: ◦ Enable enhanced noise cancellation on the audio input path to suppress speaker→mic bleed that can trigger VAD. • Verify via Agent Insights: ◦ Check the conversation/observability logs to see whether the interruption was triggered by detected input audio or a misclassification. If you’d like, tell me which SDK (web/iOS/Android) and whether you control the turn-detection settings now — I can give the exact code snippet and the precise parameter values to try. Sources: OpenAI Realtime API plugin guide | LiveKit docs | Turns overview | LiveKit docs | Streamline Troubleshooting with Agent Observability