diff --git a/vall_e/demo.py b/vall_e/demo.py
index 38a17b7..9244958 100644
--- a/vall_e/demo.py
+++ b/vall_e/demo.py
@@ -67,7 +67,6 @@ def process_batch( tts, inputs, kwargs={} ):
 		languages=[ x[2] for x in inputs ],
 		out_paths=[ x[3] for x in inputs ],
 	)
-
 	safe_batched_inference( tts, **kwargs )
 
 # Would be downright sugoi if I could incorporate this with into __main__
@@ -136,7 +135,7 @@ def main():
 	parser.add_argument("--comparison", type=str, default=None)
 	
 	parser.add_argument("--transcription-model", type=str, default="base")
-	parser.add_argument("--speaker-similarity-model", type=str, default="wavlm_base_plus")
+	parser.add_argument("--speaker-similarity-model", type=str, default="microsoft/wavlm-base-sv")
 	
 	args = parser.parse_args()
 
@@ -397,7 +396,7 @@ def main():
 	total_metrics = (0, 0)
 	for text, language, out_path, reference_path in tqdm(metrics_inputs, desc="Calculating metrics"):
 		wer_score, cer_score = wer( out_path, text, language=language, device=tts.device, dtype=tts.dtype, model_name=args.transcription_model )
-		sim_o_score = sim_o( out_path, reference_path, device=tts.device, dtype=tts.dtype, feat_type=args.speaker_similarity_model )
+		sim_o_score = sim_o( out_path, reference_path, device=tts.device, dtype=tts.dtype, model_name=args.speaker_similarity_model )
 		metrics_map[out_path] = (wer_score, cer_score, sim_o_score)
 
 	# collate entries into HTML
diff --git a/vall_e/emb/similar.py b/vall_e/emb/similar.py
index 8648770..fc921ae 100644
--- a/vall_e/emb/similar.py
+++ b/vall_e/emb/similar.py
@@ -46,29 +46,20 @@ tts = None
 
 # this is for computing SIM-O, but can probably technically be used for scoring similar utterances
 @cache
-def _load_sim_model(device="cuda", dtype="float16", feat_type="wavlm_base_plus", feat_dim="auto"):
+def _load_sim_model(device="cuda", dtype="float16", model_name='microsoft/wavlm-base-sv'):
 	logging.getLogger('s3prl').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
 	logging.getLogger('speechbrain').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
 
-	from ..utils.ext.ecapa_tdnn import ECAPA_TDNN_SMALL
+	#from ..utils.ext.ecapa_tdnn import ECAPA_TDNN_SMALL
+	from transformers import Wav2Vec2FeatureExtractor, WavLMForXVector
 
-	if feat_dim == "auto":
-		if feat_type == "fbank":
-			feat_dim = 40
-		elif feat_type == "wavlm_base_plus":
-			feat_dim = 768
-		elif feat_type == "wavlm_large":
-			feat_dim = 1024
-		elif feat_type == "hubert_large_ll60k":
-			feat_dim = 1024
-		elif feat_type == "wav2vec2_xlsr":
-			feat_dim = 1024
-
-	model = ECAPA_TDNN_SMALL(feat_dim=feat_dim, feat_type=feat_type, config_path=None)
+	model = WavLMForXVector.from_pretrained(model_name)
 	model = model.to(device=device, dtype=coerce_dtype(dtype))
 	model = model.eval()
+	
+	feature_extractor = Wav2Vec2FeatureExtractor.from_pretrained(model_name)
 
-	return model
+	return model, feature_extractor
 
 @torch.no_grad()
 def speaker_similarity_embedding(
@@ -78,15 +69,19 @@ def speaker_similarity_embedding(
 	device = model_kwargs.get("device", "cuda")
 	dtype = model_kwargs.get("dtype", "float16")
 
-	model = _load_sim_model(**model_kwargs)
+	model, feature_extractor = _load_sim_model(**model_kwargs)
+	
 	if isinstance(audio, str) or isinstance(audio, Path):
 		audio = load_audio(audio, 16000)
 
 	audio, sr = audio
-	audio = audio.to(device=device, dtype=coerce_dtype(dtype))
-
-	return model(audio)
-
+	features = feature_extractor(audio, return_tensors="pt", sampling_rate=sr)
+	features = features.input_values.squeeze(0).to(dtype=coerce_dtype(dtype), device=device)
+	
+	output = model(input_values=features)
+	embeddings = output.embeddings
+	embeddings = torch.nn.functional.normalize(embeddings, dim=-1).cpu()
+	return embeddings
 
 def batch_similar_utterances(
 	speaker_path,
diff --git a/vall_e/inference.py b/vall_e/inference.py
index cd10384..d8d9141 100755
--- a/vall_e/inference.py
+++ b/vall_e/inference.py
@@ -280,7 +280,7 @@ class TTS():
 				buffer[i].append(x)
 
 		# flush
-		if len(buffer[0]) >= batch_size:
+		if buffer:
 			batches.append(buffer)
 			buffer = ([], [], [], [])
 
diff --git a/vall_e/metrics.py b/vall_e/metrics.py
index 032e38b..c38107d 100644
--- a/vall_e/metrics.py
+++ b/vall_e/metrics.py
@@ -10,7 +10,12 @@ import torch.nn.functional as F
 
 from pathlib import Path
 from torcheval.metrics.functional import word_error_rate
-from torchmetrics import CharErrorRate
+
+# cringe warning message
+try:
+	from torchmetrics.text import CharErrorRate
+except Exception as e:
+	from torchmetrics import CharErrorRate
 
 def wer( audio, reference, language="auto", normalize=True, phonemize=True, **transcription_kwargs ):
 	if language == "auto":
@@ -45,4 +50,4 @@ def sim_o( audio, reference, **kwargs ):
 	audio_emb = speaker_similarity_embedding( audio, **kwargs )
 	reference_emb = speaker_similarity_embedding( reference, **kwargs )
 
-	return F.cosine_similarity( audio_emb, reference_emb ).item()
\ No newline at end of file
+	return F.cosine_similarity( audio_emb, reference_emb, dim=-1 ).item()
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/vall_e/utils/ext/ecapa_tdnn.py b/vall_e/utils/ext/ecapa_tdnn.py
deleted file mode 100644
index 8f28f69..0000000
--- a/vall_e/utils/ext/ecapa_tdnn.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,468 +0,0 @@
-# borrowed with love from "https://github.com/keonlee9420/evaluate-zero-shot-tts/blob/master/src/evaluate_zero_shot_tts/utils/speaker_verification/models/ecapa_tdnn.py"
-# (which was from https://github.com/microsoft/UniSpeech/blob/main/downstreams/speaker_verification/models/ecapa_tdnn.py)
-# part of the code is borrowed from https://github.com/lawlict/ECAPA-TDNN
-
-import torch
-import torch.nn as nn
-import torch.nn.functional as F
-import torchaudio.transforms as trans
-
-#from .utils import UpstreamExpert
-
-""" Res2Conv1d + BatchNorm1d + ReLU
-"""
-
-
-class Res2Conv1dReluBn(nn.Module):
-	"""
-	in_channels == out_channels == channels
-	"""
-
-	def __init__(
-		self,
-		channels,
-		kernel_size=1,
-		stride=1,
-		padding=0,
-		dilation=1,
-		bias=True,
-		scale=4,
-	):
-		super().__init__()
-		assert channels % scale == 0, "{} % {} != 0".format(channels, scale)
-		self.scale = scale
-		self.width = channels // scale
-		self.nums = scale if scale == 1 else scale - 1
-
-		self.convs = []
-		self.bns = []
-		for i in range(self.nums):
-			self.convs.append(
-				nn.Conv1d(
-					self.width,
-					self.width,
-					kernel_size,
-					stride,
-					padding,
-					dilation,
-					bias=bias,
-				)
-			)
-			self.bns.append(nn.BatchNorm1d(self.width))
-		self.convs = nn.ModuleList(self.convs)
-		self.bns = nn.ModuleList(self.bns)
-
-	def forward(self, x):
-		out = []
-		spx = torch.split(x, self.width, 1)
-		for i in range(self.nums):
-			if i == 0:
-				sp = spx[i]
-			else:
-				sp = sp + spx[i]
-			# Order: conv -> relu -> bn
-			sp = self.convs[i](sp)
-			sp = self.bns[i](F.relu(sp))
-			out.append(sp)
-		if self.scale != 1:
-			out.append(spx[self.nums])
-		out = torch.cat(out, dim=1)
-
-		return out
-
-
-""" Conv1d + BatchNorm1d + ReLU
-"""
-
-
-class Conv1dReluBn(nn.Module):
-	def __init__(
-		self,
-		in_channels,
-		out_channels,
-		kernel_size=1,
-		stride=1,
-		padding=0,
-		dilation=1,
-		bias=True,
-	):
-		super().__init__()
-		self.conv = nn.Conv1d(
-			in_channels,
-			out_channels,
-			kernel_size,
-			stride,
-			padding,
-			dilation,
-			bias=bias,
-		)
-		self.bn = nn.BatchNorm1d(out_channels)
-
-	def forward(self, x):
-		return self.bn(F.relu(self.conv(x)))
-
-
-""" The SE connection of 1D case.
-"""
-
-
-class SE_Connect(nn.Module):
-	def __init__(self, channels, se_bottleneck_dim=128):
-		super().__init__()
-		self.linear1 = nn.Linear(channels, se_bottleneck_dim)
-		self.linear2 = nn.Linear(se_bottleneck_dim, channels)
-
-	def forward(self, x):
-		out = x.mean(dim=2)
-		out = F.relu(self.linear1(out))
-		out = torch.sigmoid(self.linear2(out))
-		out = x * out.unsqueeze(2)
-
-		return out
-
-
-""" SE-Res2Block of the ECAPA-TDNN architecture.
-"""
-
-
-# def SE_Res2Block(channels, kernel_size, stride, padding, dilation, scale):
-#	 return nn.Sequential(
-#		 Conv1dReluBn(channels, 512, kernel_size=1, stride=1, padding=0),
-#		 Res2Conv1dReluBn(512, kernel_size, stride, padding, dilation, scale=scale),
-#		 Conv1dReluBn(512, channels, kernel_size=1, stride=1, padding=0),
-#		 SE_Connect(channels)
-#	 )
-
-
-class SE_Res2Block(nn.Module):
-	def __init__(
-		self,
-		in_channels,
-		out_channels,
-		kernel_size,
-		stride,
-		padding,
-		dilation,
-		scale,
-		se_bottleneck_dim,
-	):
-		super().__init__()
-		self.Conv1dReluBn1 = Conv1dReluBn(
-			in_channels, out_channels, kernel_size=1, stride=1, padding=0
-		)
-		self.Res2Conv1dReluBn = Res2Conv1dReluBn(
-			out_channels, kernel_size, stride, padding, dilation, scale=scale
-		)
-		self.Conv1dReluBn2 = Conv1dReluBn(
-			out_channels, out_channels, kernel_size=1, stride=1, padding=0
-		)
-		self.SE_Connect = SE_Connect(out_channels, se_bottleneck_dim)
-
-		self.shortcut = None
-		if in_channels != out_channels:
-			self.shortcut = nn.Conv1d(
-				in_channels=in_channels,
-				out_channels=out_channels,
-				kernel_size=1,
-			)
-
-	def forward(self, x):
-		residual = x
-		if self.shortcut:
-			residual = self.shortcut(x)
-
-		x = self.Conv1dReluBn1(x)
-		x = self.Res2Conv1dReluBn(x)
-		x = self.Conv1dReluBn2(x)
-		x = self.SE_Connect(x)
-
-		return x + residual
-
-
-""" Attentive weighted mean and standard deviation pooling.
-"""
-
-
-class AttentiveStatsPool(nn.Module):
-	def __init__(
-		self, in_dim, attention_channels=128, global_context_att=False
-	):
-		super().__init__()
-		self.global_context_att = global_context_att
-
-		# Use Conv1d with stride == 1 rather than Linear, then we don't need to transpose inputs.
-		if global_context_att:
-			self.linear1 = nn.Conv1d(
-				in_dim * 3, attention_channels, kernel_size=1
-			)  # equals W and b in the paper
-		else:
-			self.linear1 = nn.Conv1d(
-				in_dim, attention_channels, kernel_size=1
-			)  # equals W and b in the paper
-		self.linear2 = nn.Conv1d(
-			attention_channels, in_dim, kernel_size=1
-		)  # equals V and k in the paper
-
-	def forward(self, x):
-		if self.global_context_att:
-			context_mean = torch.mean(x, dim=-1, keepdim=True).expand_as(x)
-			context_std = torch.sqrt(
-				torch.var(x, dim=-1, keepdim=True) + 1e-10
-			).expand_as(x)
-			x_in = torch.cat((x, context_mean, context_std), dim=1)
-		else:
-			x_in = x
-
-		# DON'T use ReLU here! In experiments, I find ReLU hard to converge.
-		alpha = torch.tanh(self.linear1(x_in))
-		# alpha = F.relu(self.linear1(x_in))
-		alpha = torch.softmax(self.linear2(alpha), dim=2)
-		mean = torch.sum(alpha * x, dim=2)
-		residuals = torch.sum(alpha * (x**2), dim=2) - mean**2
-		std = torch.sqrt(residuals.clamp(min=1e-9))
-		return torch.cat([mean, std], dim=1)
-
-
-class ECAPA_TDNN(nn.Module):
-	def __init__(
-		self,
-		feat_dim=80,
-		channels=512,
-		emb_dim=192,
-		global_context_att=False,
-		feat_type="fbank",
-		sr=16000,
-		feature_selection="hidden_states",
-		update_extract=False,
-		config_path=None,
-	):
-		super().__init__()
-
-		self.feat_type = feat_type
-		self.feature_selection = feature_selection
-		self.update_extract = update_extract
-		self.sr = sr
-
-		if feat_type == "fbank" or feat_type == "mfcc":
-			self.update_extract = False
-
-		win_len = int(sr * 0.025)
-		hop_len = int(sr * 0.01)
-
-		if feat_type == "fbank":
-			self.feature_extract = trans.MelSpectrogram(
-				sample_rate=sr,
-				n_fft=512,
-				win_length=win_len,
-				hop_length=hop_len,
-				f_min=0.0,
-				f_max=sr // 2,
-				pad=0,
-				n_mels=feat_dim,
-			)
-		elif feat_type == "mfcc":
-			melkwargs = {
-				"n_fft": 512,
-				"win_length": win_len,
-				"hop_length": hop_len,
-				"f_min": 0.0,
-				"f_max": sr // 2,
-				"pad": 0,
-			}
-			self.feature_extract = trans.MFCC(
-				sample_rate=sr,
-				n_mfcc=feat_dim,
-				log_mels=False,
-				melkwargs=melkwargs,
-			)
-		else:
-			"""
-			if config_path is None:
-				self.feature_extract = torch.hub.load("s3prl/s3prl", feat_type)
-			else:
-				self.feature_extract = UpstreamExpert(config_path)
-			"""
-			self.feature_extract = torch.hub.load("s3prl/s3prl", feat_type)
-			if len(self.feature_extract.model.encoder.layers) == 24 and hasattr(
-				self.feature_extract.model.encoder.layers[23].self_attn,
-				"fp32_attention",
-			):
-				self.feature_extract.model.encoder.layers[
-					23
-				].self_attn.fp32_attention = False
-			if len(self.feature_extract.model.encoder.layers) == 24 and hasattr(
-				self.feature_extract.model.encoder.layers[11].self_attn,
-				"fp32_attention",
-			):
-				self.feature_extract.model.encoder.layers[
-					11
-				].self_attn.fp32_attention = False
-
-			self.feat_num = self.get_feat_num()
-			self.feature_weight = nn.Parameter(torch.zeros(self.feat_num))
-
-		if feat_type != "fbank" and feat_type != "mfcc":
-			freeze_list = [
-				"final_proj",
-				"label_embs_concat",
-				"mask_emb",
-				"project_q",
-				"quantizer",
-			]
-			for name, param in self.feature_extract.named_parameters():
-				for freeze_val in freeze_list:
-					if freeze_val in name:
-						param.requires_grad = False
-						break
-
-		if not self.update_extract:
-			for param in self.feature_extract.parameters():
-				param.requires_grad = False
-
-		self.instance_norm = nn.InstanceNorm1d(feat_dim)
-		# self.channels = [channels] * 4 + [channels * 3]
-		self.channels = [channels] * 4 + [1536]
-
-		self.layer1 = Conv1dReluBn(
-			feat_dim, self.channels[0], kernel_size=5, padding=2
-		)
-		self.layer2 = SE_Res2Block(
-			self.channels[0],
-			self.channels[1],
-			kernel_size=3,
-			stride=1,
-			padding=2,
-			dilation=2,
-			scale=8,
-			se_bottleneck_dim=128,
-		)
-		self.layer3 = SE_Res2Block(
-			self.channels[1],
-			self.channels[2],
-			kernel_size=3,
-			stride=1,
-			padding=3,
-			dilation=3,
-			scale=8,
-			se_bottleneck_dim=128,
-		)
-		self.layer4 = SE_Res2Block(
-			self.channels[2],
-			self.channels[3],
-			kernel_size=3,
-			stride=1,
-			padding=4,
-			dilation=4,
-			scale=8,
-			se_bottleneck_dim=128,
-		)
-
-		# self.conv = nn.Conv1d(self.channels[-1], self.channels[-1], kernel_size=1)
-		cat_channels = channels * 3
-		self.conv = nn.Conv1d(cat_channels, self.channels[-1], kernel_size=1)
-		self.pooling = AttentiveStatsPool(
-			self.channels[-1],
-			attention_channels=128,
-			global_context_att=global_context_att,
-		)
-		self.bn = nn.BatchNorm1d(self.channels[-1] * 2)
-		self.linear = nn.Linear(self.channels[-1] * 2, emb_dim)
-
-	def get_feat_num(self):
-		self.feature_extract.eval()
-		wav = [
-			torch.randn(self.sr).to(
-				next(self.feature_extract.parameters()).device
-			)
-		]
-		with torch.no_grad():
-			features = self.feature_extract(wav)
-		select_feature = features[self.feature_selection]
-		if isinstance(select_feature, (list, tuple)):
-			return len(select_feature)
-		else:
-			return 1
-
-	def get_feat(self, x):
-		if self.update_extract:
-			x = self.feature_extract([sample for sample in x])
-		else:
-			with torch.no_grad():
-				if self.feat_type == "fbank" or self.feat_type == "mfcc":
-					x = (
-						self.feature_extract(x) + 1e-6
-					)  # B x feat_dim x time_len
-				else:
-					x = self.feature_extract([sample for sample in x])
-
-		if self.feat_type == "fbank":
-			x = x.log()
-
-		if self.feat_type != "fbank" and self.feat_type != "mfcc":
-			x = x[self.feature_selection]
-			if isinstance(x, (list, tuple)):
-				x = torch.stack(x, dim=0)
-			else:
-				x = x.unsqueeze(0)
-			norm_weights = (
-				F.softmax(self.feature_weight, dim=-1)
-				.unsqueeze(-1)
-				.unsqueeze(-1)
-				.unsqueeze(-1)
-			)
-			x = (norm_weights * x).sum(dim=0)
-			x = torch.transpose(x, 1, 2) + 1e-6
-
-		x = self.instance_norm(x)
-		return x
-
-	def forward(self, x):
-		x = self.get_feat(x)
-
-		out1 = self.layer1(x)
-		out2 = self.layer2(out1)
-		out3 = self.layer3(out2)
-		out4 = self.layer4(out3)
-
-		out = torch.cat([out2, out3, out4], dim=1)
-		out = F.relu(self.conv(out))
-		out = self.bn(self.pooling(out))
-		out = self.linear(out)
-
-		return out
-
-
-def ECAPA_TDNN_SMALL(
-	feat_dim,
-	emb_dim=256,
-	feat_type="fbank",
-	sr=16000,
-	feature_selection="hidden_states",
-	update_extract=False,
-	config_path=None,
-):
-	return ECAPA_TDNN(
-		feat_dim=feat_dim,
-		channels=512,
-		emb_dim=emb_dim,
-		feat_type=feat_type,
-		sr=sr,
-		feature_selection=feature_selection,
-		update_extract=update_extract,
-		config_path=config_path,
-	)
-
-
-if __name__ == "__main__":
-	x = torch.zeros(2, 32000)
-	model = ECAPA_TDNN_SMALL(
-		feat_dim=768,
-		emb_dim=256,
-		feat_type="hubert_base",
-		feature_selection="hidden_states",
-		update_extract=False,
-	)
-
-	out = model(x)
-	# print(model)
-	print(out.shape)
\ No newline at end of file