Suno vs ACE-Step vs YuE2: a blind music test and what each track really costs
I make my channel's music on Suno, at $10 a month. ACE-Step 1.5 XL and YuE2 are free to download, but they need a big NVIDIA card. So I rented one by the hour and ran all three through the same two jobs, ranked by ear before I knew which was which. The test Every model got the same brief in both rounds. Round one was background music: quiet late-night jazz, instrumental, no vocals, the kind of…
In a recent music test comparison, three AI music generation models - Suno, ACE-Step and YuE2 - were evaluated based on a series of blind tests. Each model was tasked with creating two types of music: background music (quiet, instrumental jazz) and a sung song ("Ten of You") with identical lyrics.
For the background music round, YuE2 impressed the testers, but it produced an unexpected hum midway through the track, which would be problematic for narration. Suno excelled, while ACE-Step struggled with a cheap-sounding drum track and repetition.
When tested on vocals, Suno again emerged as the victor, producing a clear, AI-sounding voice. YuE2 came in second, but its voice still sounded artificial. ACE-Step's voice wobbled and never resembled a real person's voice.
In terms of cost, the experiment required renting a powerful NVIDIA card for a few hours, amounting to just $0.558. ACE-Step's track cost under a cent, while YuE2's track cost between four to six cents. Suno Pro, costing $10 per month, allows 20 song downloads, making each kept track of Suno cost at least 50 cents. Using a rented card, the cost is about ten times cheaper than Suno Pro.
After the blind tests, the reporter concluded that Suno remains their preferred choice for now. The main concern was YuE2's humming track and ACE-Step's drum track repeating itself. If the reporter couldn't afford Suno, they would consider testing YuE2 for background music, ensuring to listen to each track for any humming. ACE-Step is suitable for rough sketches due to its swift completion time. However, for sung songs, Suno is the recommended option, as the costs are justified by the need for checked takes.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.