***

description: >-
Load audio datasets from various sources including FLEURS, custom manifests,
and local files
categories:

* workflows
  tags:
* data-loading
* audio-manifests
* fleurs
* local-files
* batch-processing
  personas:
* data-scientist-focused
* mle-focused
  difficulty: beginner
  content\_type: workflow
  modality: audio-only

***

# Load Audio Data

Import audio datasets from various sources into NeMo Curator's audio processing pipeline. Audio data loading supports manifest files, direct file paths, and automated dataset downloads.

## How it Works

Audio data loading in NeMo Curator centers around the `AudioBatch` data structure, which contains:

* **Audio file paths**: References to audio files (.wav, .mp3, .flac, etc.)
* **Transcriptions**: Ground truth or reference text for speech content
* **Metadata**: Duration, language, speaker information, and quality metrics

The loading process validates audio file existence and formats data for downstream ASR inference and quality assessment stages.

***

## Loading Methods

Choose the appropriate loading method based on your data source and format:

<Cards>
  <Card title="FLEURS Dataset" href="/curate-audio/load-data/fleurs-dataset">
    Automated download and processing of the multilingual FLEURS speech dataset
    automated
    multilingual
    102-languages
  </Card>

  <Card title="Custom Manifests" href="/curate-audio/load-data/custom-manifests">
    Create and load custom audio manifests with file paths and transcriptions
    jsonl
    tsv
    custom-format
  </Card>

  <Card title="Local Files" href="/curate-audio/load-data/local-files">
    Load audio files directly from local directories and file systems
    local-storage
    batch-processing
    file-discovery
  </Card>
</Cards>