arXiv AI

UL-UNAS: Ultra-Lightweight U-Nets for Real-Time Speech Enhancement via Network Architecture Search

arXiv:2503. 00340v2 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Lightweight models are essential for real-time speech enhancement applications.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

Beyond Model Size: Redesigning LiSenNet for embedded speech enhancement

The paper presents a redesign of the LiSenNet speech‑enhancement model for deployment on the STM32N6570‑DK Neural‑ART microcontroller accelerator. By replacing the recurrent bottleneck with convolutional mixers, converting unsupported operations to static int8 primitives, and using bounded decoder activations, the authors achieve an NPU‑compatible model that matches or surpasses the original LiSenNet in quality (PESQ 3.08 vs 3.01 FP32) while running each 16 ms input hop in 4.83 ms (real‑time factor 0.30). The study demonstrates that co‑designing parameter count, operator compatibility, quantization range, and streaming state is essential for efficient real‑time speech enhancement on constrained NPUs.

By Cl\'ement Laroche, Rasmus Kongsgaard Olsson
arXiv AI
Sep 17

Performance and Complexity Trade-off Optimization of Speech Models During Training

The paper introduces a reparameterization technique that injects feature noise to jointly optimize speech model performance and computational complexity during training. Unlike traditional pruning, this method dynamically adjusts model size for a desired performance‑complexity trade‑off without heuristic weight removal. The authors validate their approach with a synthetic example and two real‑world applications—voice activity detection and audio anti‑spoofing—providing publicly available code for further research.

By Esteban G\'omez, Tom B\"ackstr\"om
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

Does per-frame early exit pay? A compute-matched study of dynamic depth for on-device speech enhancement

The paper investigates whether per‑frame early exit can improve compute‑matched performance for on‑device speech enhancement. By supervising every intermediate depth of a causal model and fine‑tuning output heads, the authors produce a family of static models that are more Pareto‑efficient than those trained from scratch, achieving up to 0.11 higher PESQ for equivalent compute and matching the best PESQ at 30% less compute. After int8 quantization, the dynamic enhancer performs on the same latency‑quality frontier as static models on an STM32N6 microcontroller, with the policy execution adding only 26 µs per frame and a 2.2% latency overhead from graph splitting.

By Cl\'ement Laroche, Riccardo Miccini
arXiv Computation and Language
6d ago

Symbiotic Architecture for Post-Hoc Audio Extension of Frozen Language Models

The paper introduces a symbiotic architecture that equips large language models with audio‑understanding abilities without fine‑tuning their weights. It uses an injector module to write audio‑conditioned vectors into the LLM’s key‑value cache, allowing the model to act as an audio language model while keeping the backbone unchanged. The approach improves scalability—since injection cost depends on the injector width—and preserves the LLM’s original text performance, outperforming conventional frozen‑LLM methods and approaching fine‑tuned ALM results on audio tasks.

By Yotaro Kubo, Qi Sun, Yujin Tang
arXiv AI
Jul 14

Breaking the Quality--Intelligibility Trade-off in Streaming Target Speaker Extraction via Deep-Feature-Anchored Preference Optimization

arXiv:2607. 10191v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Generative streaming models for Target Speaker Extraction (TSE) commonly exhibit a quality--intelligibility trade-off, wherein naive optimization for perceptual audio quality tends to degrade speech intelligibility, and conversely.

By Shuhai Peng, Jinjiang Liu, Hui Lu, Liyang Chen, Guiping Zhong, Jiakui Li, Shiyin Kang, Zhiyong Wu