Introduction

Suno has a new rival at the top of the vocal-music leaderboard. ACE Music v1, a closed text-to-music model from ACE Studio (the AI singing-voice company behind the ACE Studio DAW), debuted at #1 on Artificial Analysis' AA-Music-Vocal v1.1 leaderboard on November 11, 2026. It scored 1160 Elo to Suno v6's 1144. It makes full songs with vocals, or instrumentals, from a text prompt, your own lyrics, a MIDI file or a hummed melody. You can use it today in the ACE Music web app. There are no open weights and no public API.

The source here is Artificial Analysis' own vocal leaderboard, plus ACE Music's pricing and model pages. ACE teased the launch on X on November 3 with "Something BIG is coming."

The Leaderboard

AA-Music-Vocal v1.1 uses blind pairwise votes. Validated evaluators hear two clips made from the same prompt and pick the one they prefer without knowing which model made either. MiniMax Music 3.0 is pinned at 1000 as the anchor.

  • ACE Music v1: 1160 Elo, ±21 (95% interval 1139 to 1181), 2,119 samples, rank range 1–2
  • Suno v6: 1144, ±18, 3,063 samples, rank range 1–3
  • Suno v6-mini: 1132
  • Mureka V9.5: 1101
  • Mureka V9: 1063
  • Lyria 3.5: 1050, with Lyria 3 Pro at 1048
  • Eleven Music v2.5: 1016
  • MiniMax Music 3.0: 1000 (anchor)

Read it honestly. The 16-point lead sits inside overlapping confidence intervals, and ACE has about a third fewer votes than the established models. AA lists it as rank 1–2 and Suno v6 as 1–3. So it's a new co-leader, not a runaway winner. It's also only on the vocal board for now. The instrumental leaderboard is still led by Suno v6 at 1148, and ACE Music v1 isn't listed there yet.

AA's launch thread shows how wide the test prompts go: seventies roots reggae with nyabinghi hand drums, a fast comic-opera patter aria, midwest-emo math rock, and Korean dance pop with a low rap verse.

What It Does

  • Text to song: describe the genre, mood, instruments, vocal style and subject. Write "instrumental, no vocals" if you don't want singing.
  • Lyrics to song: paste your own words and pick a style.
  • Melody to song: play notes on the in-browser keyboard, upload MIDI, or hum into the mic. ACE Music builds a full track around your melody.
  • Remix tools: Image to Song, AI Cover (restyle a reference song), Mashup Maker (two references in, one song out), and Stem Separation.
  • Two takes per generation: each request returns two versions, which land in your Library automatically.
  • ACE Music v1.1 Preview: a sibling model that first writes a score in ABC notation (melody, rhythm and chords) and then generates audio from it. ACE recommends v1 when you start from a description or lyrics, and v1.1 Preview when you already have a melody. You can edit the melody and chords in the Songwriting Assistant and regenerate.

Pricing and Rights

  • Free: 20 credits a day (up to 10 songs), shared queue, no downloads, no commercial use
  • Creator: $7.90 a month billed yearly, 1,000 credits a month (up to 500 songs), unlimited downloads, priority queue, stem splitter, commercial use rights
  • Artist: $16.58 a month billed yearly, 2,500 credits a month (up to 1,250 songs), plus the full ACE Studio DAW with AI vocals, AI instruments, VST3/AU plugins and voice cloning
  • The open option on the same site: ACE-Step v1.5 XL (4B diffusion transformer, co-led by ACE Studio and StepFun) runs in the same app with no credits, free MP3 downloads and commercial use included

Try It

Sign in at acemusic.ai, open Create, and paste this into the Idea box. It follows ACE's own recipe: genre, mood and pace, instruments, vocals, subject.

Seventies roots reggae, slow and proud like a steady march. Deep hand drums
thump under a thick round bass line, a guitar chops soft on the offbeat,
warm organ bubble in the background. A gruff male voice sings low and
patient, with a three-part harmony on the chorus. A song about rebuilding
a seaside town after the storm.

Then run the same prompt through ACE-Step v1.5 XL in the model picker. It's a quick way to hear how much the closed model adds over the open one you can run at home.

Where It Fits

ACE Studio isn't new to this. It co-develops the open ACE-Step 1.5 and co-built StepAudio 3 Music with StepFun, which already used ABC-notation planning. Five weeks ago this same board put Suno v6 in front. Suno has been answering with workflow features like starting songs from MIDI. ACE Music arrives with melody input from day one, and comes from a vocal-synthesis company.

Conclusion

ACE Music v1 is the first model in a while to reach the top of a blind vocal-music test without being called Suno. The lead is narrow and the vote count is still growing, so expect the number to move. If you write melodies first and prompts second, the hum-to-song and ABC-score workflow is worth a free afternoon. Just remember that free-tier songs can't be downloaded.

—Anabel ♡