diff --git a/vall_e/emb/qnt.py b/vall_e/emb/qnt.py
index 19a6c84..69552f9 100755
--- a/vall_e/emb/qnt.py
+++ b/vall_e/emb/qnt.py
@@ -240,12 +240,12 @@ def decode(codes: Tensor, device="cuda", dtype=None, metadata=None, window_durat
 	if model.backend == "vocos":
 		x = model.codes_to_features(codes[0])
 		wav = model.decode(x, bandwidth_id=model.bandwidth_id)
-		return wav, cfg.sample_rate
-
+	
 	if model.backend == "encodec":
 		x = [(codes.to(device), None)]
-		wav = model.decode(x)
-		return wav, cfg.sample_rate
+		wav = model.decode(x)[0]
+
+	return wav, cfg.sample_rate
 
 @torch.inference_mode()
 def decode_batch(codes: list[Tensor], device="cuda", dtype=None):
diff --git a/vall_e/engines/__init__.py b/vall_e/engines/__init__.py
index 7b30418..65672cc 100755
--- a/vall_e/engines/__init__.py
+++ b/vall_e/engines/__init__.py
@@ -145,9 +145,25 @@ def load_engines(training=True, **model_kwargs):
 				})
 			elif cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer.lower() == "adagrad":
 				optimizer_class = ml.Adagrad
+			elif cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer.lower() == "muon":
+				del params["params"]
+				optimizer_class = ml.Muon
+				
+
+				params["muon_params"] = [ param for name, param in model.model.named_parameters() if param.ndim >= 2 and f'model.{name}' not in model.config.frozen_params ]
+				params["adamw_params"] = [ param for name, param in model.model.named_parameters() if param.ndim < 2 and f'model.{name}' not in model.config.frozen_params ]
+				params["adamw_params"] += [ param for name, param in model.named_parameters() if not name.startswith('model.') and name not in model.config.frozen_params ]
+
+				if cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params is not None:
+					params["adamw_betas"] = cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params.pop("adamw_betas", (0.95, 0.95))
+					params["adamw_eps"] = cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params.pop("adamw_eps", 1e-8)
 			else:
 				raise ValueError(f'Optimizer specified not implemented: {cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer}')
 
+			params.update(cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params)
+			optimizer = optimizer_class(**params)
+
+			"""
 			if cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params is not None:
 				muon_params = cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params.pop("muon", None)
 				params.update(cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params)
@@ -164,6 +180,7 @@ def load_engines(training=True, **model_kwargs):
 				])
 			else:
 				optimizer = optimizer_class(**params)
+			"""
 
 			if cfg.hyperparameters.scheduler.lower() == "schedulefree":
 				if cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer.lower() == "adamw":
diff --git a/vall_e/models/ar_nar.py b/vall_e/models/ar_nar.py
index 75156f9..dead515 100644
--- a/vall_e/models/ar_nar.py
+++ b/vall_e/models/ar_nar.py
@@ -171,7 +171,7 @@ class AR_NAR(Base):
 							resps_list[i][t, l] = clamp(token + offset, 1, 1022) # +- 1
 
 			# only apply stop token for RVQ level 0
-			if (self.version < 7 and quant_level <= 0 and timesteps[i] is None) or (self.version >= 7 and timesteps[i] is None):
+			if (self.version < 7 and quant_level <= 0 and timesteps[i] is None) or (self.version >= 7):
 				# append stop tokens for AR
 				if task not in text_task:
 					resps_list[i] = torch.cat([ resps, audio_stop_sequence ])
@@ -1434,7 +1434,9 @@ def example_usage():
 	scheduler = cfg.hyperparameters.scheduler.lower() if cfg.yaml_path is not None else ""
 	learning_rate = cfg.hyperparameters.learning_rate if cfg.yaml_path is not None else None
 
-	params = model.parameters()
+	params = {
+		"params": model.parameters()
+	}
 	if cfg.optimizations.dadaptation:
 		# do not combine the two
 		if scheduler == "schedulefree":
@@ -1467,23 +1469,25 @@ def example_usage():
 			learning_rate = 0.01
 
 		optimizer = ml.Apollo
-		params = [{'params': params, 'rank': 1, 'proj': 'random', 'scale_type': 'tensor', 'scale': 128,'update_proj_gap': 200, 'proj_type': 'std'}]
+		params["params"] = [{'params': params, 'rank': 1, 'proj': 'random', 'scale_type': 'tensor', 'scale': 128,'update_proj_gap': 200, 'proj_type': 'std'}]
+	elif optimizer == "muon":
+		del params["params"]
+		optimizer = ml.Muon
+
+		params["muon_params"] = [ param for name, param in model.model.named_parameters() if param.ndim >= 2 ]
+		params["adamw_params"] = [ param for name, param in model.model.named_parameters() if param.ndim < 2 ]
+		params["adamw_params"] += [ param for name, param in model.named_parameters() if not name.startswith('model.') ]
+
+		if cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params is not None:
+			params["adamw_betas"] = cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params.pop("adamw_betas", (0.95, 0.95))
+			params["adamw_eps"] = cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params.pop("adamw_eps", 1e-8)
 	else:
 		raise ValueError(f"Unrecognized optimizer: {optimizer}")
 
 	_logger.info(f"Optimizer: {optimizer}\tLearning rate: {learning_rate}")
-	
-	muon_params = cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params.pop("muon", None) if cfg.hyperparameters.optimizer_params is not None else None
-	if muon_params is not None:
-		muon_params["params"] = [ param for name, param in model.model.named_parameters() if param.ndim >= 2 ]
-		adam_params = [ param for name, param in model.model.named_parameters() if param.ndim < 2 ] + [ param for name, param in model.named_parameters() if not name.startswith('model.') ]
-		
-		optimizer = ml.Optimizers([
-			ml.Muon(**muon_params),
-			optimizer(adam_params, lr=learning_rate)
-		])
-	else:
-		optimizer = optimizer(params, lr=learning_rate)
+
+	params["lr"] = learning_rate
+	optimizer = optimizer(**params)
 
 	if scheduler == "schedulefree":
 		if isinstance(optimizer, ml.AdamW):
diff --git a/vall_e/models/base.py b/vall_e/models/base.py
index ca1aa54..c680a3d 100755
--- a/vall_e/models/base.py
+++ b/vall_e/models/base.py
@@ -1503,7 +1503,7 @@ class Base(nn.Module):
 				return None, None
 
 			# shift if causal
-			if causal:
+			if causal or self.version >= 7:
 				l = self.causal_size
 				logit = logit[..., :-l, :] # shift the target so that token n...
 				sequence = sequence[..., l:] # ...predicts token n + 1
diff --git a/vall_e/utils/ext/muon.py b/vall_e/utils/ext/muon.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cee740b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/vall_e/utils/ext/muon.py
@@ -0,0 +1,200 @@
+# From https://github.com/MoonshotAI/Moonlight/blob/master/examples/toy_train.py
+# because it combines both param types and makes life easier with DeepSpeed
+
+import os
+import math
+import torch
+import torch.distributed as dist
+
+@torch.compile
+def zeropower_via_newtonschulz5(G, steps):
+	"""
+	Newton-Schulz iteration to compute the zeroth power / orthogonalization of G. We opt to use a
+	quintic iteration whose coefficients are selected to maximize the slope at zero. For the purpose
+	of minimizing steps, it turns out to be empirically effective to keep increasing the slope at
+	zero even beyond the point where the iteration no longer converges all the way to one everywhere
+	on the interval. This iteration therefore does not produce UV^T but rather something like US'V^T
+	where S' is diagonal with S_{ii}' ~ Uniform(0.5, 1.5), which turns out not to hurt model
+	performance at all relative to UV^T, where USV^T = G is the SVD.
+	"""
+	assert len(G.shape) == 2
+	a, b, c = (3.4445, -4.7750, 2.0315)
+	X = G.bfloat16()
+	if G.size(0) > G.size(1):
+		X = X.T
+	# Ensure spectral norm is at most 1
+	X = X / (X.norm() + 1e-7)
+	# Perform the NS iterations
+	for _ in range(steps):
+		A = X @ X.T
+		B = (
+			b * A + c * A @ A
+		)  # adapted from suggestion by @jxbz, @leloykun, and @YouJiacheng
+		X = a * X + B @ X
+
+	if G.size(0) > G.size(1):
+		X = X.T
+	return X
+
+
+class Muon(torch.optim.Optimizer):
+	"""
+	Muon - MomentUm Orthogonalized by Newton-schulz
+
+	Muon internally runs standard SGD-momentum, and then performs an orthogonalization post-
+	processing step, in which each 2D parameter's update is replaced with the nearest orthogonal
+	matrix. To efficiently orthogonalize each update, we use a Newton-Schulz iteration, which has
+	the advantage that it can be stably run in bfloat16 on the GPU.
+
+	Some warnings:
+	- We believe this optimizer is unlikely to work well for training with small batch size.
+	- We believe it may not work well for finetuning pretrained models, but we haven't tested this.
+
+	Arguments:
+		muon_params: The parameters to be optimized by Muon.
+		lr: The learning rate. The updates will have spectral norm of `lr`. (0.02 is a good default)
+		momentum: The momentum used by the internal SGD. (0.95 is a good default)
+		nesterov: Whether to use Nesterov-style momentum in the internal SGD. (recommended)
+		ns_steps: The number of Newton-Schulz iterations to run. (6 is probably always enough)
+		adamw_params: The parameters to be optimized by AdamW. Any parameters in `muon_params` which are
+		{0, 1}-D or are detected as being the embed or lm_head will be optimized by AdamW as well.
+		adamw_lr: The learning rate for the internal AdamW.
+		adamw_betas: The betas for the internal AdamW.
+		adamw_eps: The epsilon for the internal AdamW.
+		adamw_wd: The weight decay for the internal AdamW.
+	"""
+
+	def __init__(
+		self,
+		lr=1e-3,
+		wd=0.1,
+		muon_params=None,
+		momentum=0.95,
+		nesterov=True,
+		ns_steps=5,
+		adamw_params=None,
+		adamw_betas=(0.95, 0.95),
+		adamw_eps=1e-8,
+	):
+
+		defaults = dict(
+			lr=lr,
+			wd=wd,
+			momentum=momentum,
+			nesterov=nesterov,
+			ns_steps=ns_steps,
+			adamw_betas=adamw_betas,
+			adamw_eps=adamw_eps,
+		)
+
+		params = list(muon_params)
+		adamw_params = list(adamw_params) if adamw_params is not None else []
+		params.extend(adamw_params)
+		super().__init__(params, defaults)
+		# Sort parameters into those for which we will use Muon, and those for which we will not
+		for p in muon_params:
+			# Use Muon for every parameter in muon_params which is >= 2D and doesn't look like an embedding or head layer
+			assert p.ndim == 2, p.ndim
+			self.state[p]["use_muon"] = True
+		for p in adamw_params:
+			# Do not use Muon for parameters in adamw_params
+			self.state[p]["use_muon"] = False
+
+	def adjust_lr_for_muon(self, lr, param_shape):
+		A, B = param_shape[:2]
+		# We adjust the learning rate and weight decay based on the size of the parameter matrix
+		# as describted in the paper
+		adjusted_ratio = 0.2 * math.sqrt(max(A, B))
+		adjusted_lr = lr * adjusted_ratio
+		return adjusted_lr
+
+	def step(self, closure=None):
+		"""Perform a single optimization step.
+
+		Args:
+			closure (Callable, optional): A closure that reevaluates the model
+				and returns the loss.
+		"""
+		loss = None
+		if closure is not None:
+			with torch.enable_grad():
+				loss = closure()
+
+		for group in self.param_groups:
+
+			############################
+			#		   Muon		   #
+			############################
+
+			params = [p for p in group["params"] if self.state[p]["use_muon"]]
+			# import pdb; pdb.set_trace()
+			lr = group["lr"]
+			wd = group["wd"]
+			momentum = group["momentum"]
+
+			# generate weight updates in distributed fashion
+			for p in params:
+				# sanity check
+				g = p.grad
+				if g is None:
+					continue
+				if g.ndim > 2:
+					g = g.view(g.size(0), -1)
+				assert g is not None
+
+				# calc update
+				state = self.state[p]
+				if "momentum_buffer" not in state:
+					state["momentum_buffer"] = torch.zeros_like(g)
+				buf = state["momentum_buffer"]
+				buf.mul_(momentum).add_(g)
+				if group["nesterov"]:
+					g = g.add(buf, alpha=momentum)
+				else:
+					g = buf
+				u = zeropower_via_newtonschulz5(g, steps=group["ns_steps"])
+
+				# scale update
+				adjusted_lr = self.adjust_lr_for_muon(lr, p.shape)
+
+				# apply weight decay
+				p.data.mul_(1 - lr * wd)
+
+				# apply update
+				p.data.add_(u, alpha=-adjusted_lr)
+
+			############################
+			#	   AdamW backup	   #
+			############################
+
+			params = [p for p in group["params"] if not self.state[p]["use_muon"]]
+			lr = group['lr']
+			beta1, beta2 = group["adamw_betas"]
+			eps = group["adamw_eps"]
+			weight_decay = group["wd"]
+
+			for p in params:
+				g = p.grad
+				if g is None:
+					continue
+				state = self.state[p]
+				if "step" not in state:
+					state["step"] = 0
+					state["moment1"] = torch.zeros_like(g)
+					state["moment2"] = torch.zeros_like(g)
+				state["step"] += 1
+				step = state["step"]
+				buf1 = state["moment1"]
+				buf2 = state["moment2"]
+				buf1.lerp_(g, 1 - beta1)
+				buf2.lerp_(g.square(), 1 - beta2)
+
+				g = buf1 / (eps + buf2.sqrt())
+
+				bias_correction1 = 1 - beta1**step
+				bias_correction2 = 1 - beta2**step
+				scale = bias_correction1 / bias_correction2**0.5
+				p.data.mul_(1 - lr * weight_decay)
+				p.data.add_(g, alpha=-lr / scale)
+
+		return loss
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/vall_e/utils/ml.py b/vall_e/utils/ml.py
index fa4502f..1b05feb 100755
--- a/vall_e/utils/ml.py
+++ b/vall_e/utils/ml.py
@@ -130,7 +130,7 @@ except Exception as e:
 	pass
 
 try:
-	from muon import Muon as Muon
+	from .ext.muon import Muon
 except Exception as e:
 	_logger.warning(f'Error while importing Muon: {str(e)}')
 	pass