Removing the embedding from my embedding: a byte transformer with a 0-parameter input layer (25M, single RTX 4070)

Update: I built two speech models on top of this 0-param substrate — tokenizer-free STT + TTS (HoLo-ToLk). Short version: substrate + a spectral lens beats a mel baseline on STT (CER 0.194 vs 0.213, multi-seed); TTS is a tokenizer-free single-speaker feasibility demo. Full writeup + combined demo here: [New Post]