# A Mask Free Neural Network for Monaural Speech Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04286 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04286/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Simple Baselines for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04676/) (2022)
- [MetaFormer Is Actually What You Need for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11418/) (2021)
- [Conv-TasNet: Surpassing Ideal Time-Frequency Magnitude Masking for Speech Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07454/) (2018)
- [Supervised Speech Separation Based on Deep Learning: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07524/) (2017)
- [DCCRN: Deep Complex Convolution Recurrent Network for Phase-Aware Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00264/) (2020)
- [The INTERSPEECH 2020 Deep Noise Suppression Challenge: Datasets, Subjective Testing Framework, and Challenge Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13981/) (2020)
- [Wave-U-Net: A Multi-Scale Neural Network for End-to-End Audio Source Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03185/) (2018)
- [Phase-aware Speech Enhancement with Deep Complex U-Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03107/) (2019)
- [FullSubNet: A Full-Band and Sub-Band Fusion Model for Real-Time Single-Channel Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.15508/) (2020)
- [ICASSP 2022 Deep Noise Suppression Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13288/) (2022)
- [PHASEN: A Phase-and-Harmonics-Aware Speech Enhancement Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04697/) (2019)
- [Interspeech 2021 Deep Noise Suppression Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01902/) (2021)
- [DeepFilterNet: A Low Complexity Speech Enhancement Framework for Full-Band Audio based on Deep Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05588/) (2021)
- [ICASSP 2021 Deep Noise Suppression Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06122/) (2020)
- [FRCRN: Boosting Feature Representation using Frequency Recurrence for Monaural Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07293/) (2022)
- [DeepFilterNet2: Towards Real-Time Speech Enhancement on Embedded Devices for Full-Band Audio](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05474/) (2022)
- [DPCRN: Dual-Path Convolution Recurrent Network for Single Channel Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05429/) (2021)
- [A Simultaneous Denoising and Dereverberation Framework with Target Decoupling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12743/) (2021)
- [Taylor, Can You Hear Me Now? A Taylor-Unfolding Framework for Monaural Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00206/) (2022)
- [ICASSP 2021 Deep Noise Suppression Challenge: Decoupling Magnitude and Phase Optimization with a Two-Stage Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04198/) (2021)
- [Rethinking complex-valued deep neural networks for monaural speech enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04320/) (2023)
- [Real-time Monaural Speech Enhancement With Short-time Discrete Cosine Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04629/) (2021)
- [Harmonic gated compensation network plus for ICASSP 2022 DNS CHALLENGE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12643/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Knowing When to Quit: Probabilistic Early Exits for Speech Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09768/) (2025)
- [Leveraging Discriminative Latent Representations for Conditioning GAN-Based Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20859/) (2025)
- [DBHN-Net: Dual-Branch Hybrid Neural Network For Low-Complexity Monaural Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05911/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In speech enhancement, the lack of clear structural characteristics in the target speech phase requires the use of conservative and cumbersome network frameworks. It seems difficult to achieve competitive performance using direct methods and simple network architectures. However, we propose the MFNet, a direct and simple network that can not only map speech but also map reverse noise. This network is constructed by stacking global local former blocks (GLFBs), which combine the advantages of Mobileblock for global processing and Metaformer architecture for local interaction. Our experimental results demonstrate that our network using mapping method outperforms masking methods, and direct mapping of reverse noise is the optimal solution in strong noise environments. In a horizontal comparison on the 2020 Deep Noise Suppression (DNS) challenge test set without reverberation, to the best of our knowledge, MFNet is the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) mapping model.