# Posterior sampling algorithms for unsupervised speech enhancement with recurrent variational autoencoder

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.10439 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10439/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 25 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [SDR - half-baked or well done?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02508/) (2018)
- [Supervised Speech Separation Based on Deep Learning: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07524/) (2017)
- [Speech Enhancement and Dereverberation with Diffusion-based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05830/) (2022)
- [Conditional Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05256/) (2022)
- [A Recurrent Variational Autoencoder for Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10942/) (2019)
- [Statistical Speech Enhancement Based on Probabilistic Integration of Variational Autoencoder and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11439/) (2017)
- [Cold Diffusion for Speech Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02527/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Speech Enhancement using Dynamical Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12271/) (2021)
- [Guided Variational Autoencoder for Speech Enhancement With a Supervised Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06454/) (2021)
- [Fast and efficient speech enhancement with variational autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02728/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we address the unsupervised speech enhancement problem based on recurrent variational autoencoder (RVAE). This approach offers promising generalization performance over the supervised counterpart. Nevertheless, the involved iterative variational expectation-maximization (VEM) process at test time, which relies on a variational inference method, results in high computational complexity. To tackle this issue, we present efficient sampling techniques based on Langevin dynamics and Metropolis-Hasting algorithms, adapted to the EM-based speech enhancement with RVAE. By directly sampling from the intractable posterior distribution within the EM process, we circumvent the intricacies of variational inference. We conduct a series of experiments, comparing the proposed methods with VEM and a state-of-the-art supervised speech enhancement approach based on diffusion models. The results reveal that our sampling-based algorithms significantly outperform VEM, not only in terms of computational efficiency but also in overall performance. Furthermore, when compared to the supervised baseline, our methods showcase robust generalization performance in mismatched test conditions.