# Unsupervised Blind Joint Dereverberation and Room Acoustics Estimation with Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07472 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07472/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Audio, speech and music, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 48 of its 104 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Aug 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Audio, speech and music](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/audio-speech-and-music/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11793/) (2022)
- [Neural Controlled Differential Equations for Irregular Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.08926/) (2020)
- [SDR - half-baked or well done?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02508/) (2018)
- [DNSMOS: A Non-Intrusive Perceptual Objective Speech Quality metric to evaluate Noise Suppressors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.15258/) (2020)
- [Fr'echet Audio Distance: A Metric for Evaluating Music Enhancement Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08466/) (2018)
- [A Variational Perspective on Solving Inverse Problems with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04391/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Pyroomacoustics: A Python package for audio room simulations and array processing algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04196/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Model Made Slim](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17106/) (2022)
- [Parallel Diffusion Models of Operator and Image for Blind Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10656/) (2022)
- [StoRM: A Diffusion-based Stochastic Regeneration Model for Speech Enhancement and Dereverberation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11851/) (2022)
- [Speech Enhancement with Score-Based Generative Models in the Complex STFT Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17004/) (2022)
- [Adapting Frechet Audio Distance for Generative Music Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01616/) (2023)
- [Solving Audio Inverse Problems with a Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.15228/) (2022)
- [Multi-Singer: Fast Multi-Singer Singing Voice Vocoder With A Large-Scale Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10358/) (2021)
- [GibbsDDRM: A Partially Collapsed Gibbs Sampler for Solving Blind Inverse Problems with Denoising Diffusion Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12686/) (2023)
- [Opencpop: A High-Quality Open Source Chinese Popular Song Corpus for Singing Voice Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07429/) (2022)
- [Building and Evaluation of a Real Room Impulse Response Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06795/) (2018)
- [Fast Diffusion EM: a diffusion model for blind inverse problems with application to deconvolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00287/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Models for Audio Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09821/) (2024)
- [Blind Audio Bandwidth Extension: A Diffusion-Based Zero-Shot Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01433/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Unsupervised Estimation of Nonlinear Audio Effects: Comparing Diffusion-Based and Adversarial approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04751/) (2025)
- [HRTF Estimation using a Score-based Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01562/) (2024)
- [Solving Room Impulse Response Inverse Problems Using Flow Matching with Analytic Wiener Denoiser](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00652/) (2026)
- [EchoMark: Perceptual Acoustic Environment Transfer with Watermark-Embedded Room Impulse Response](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06458/) (2025)
- [Ambisonics Encoding of Room Impulse Responses using a Device-Agnostic Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14097/) (2026)
- [VINP: Variational Bayesian Inference with Neural Speech Prior for Joint ASR-Effective Speech Dereverberation and Blind RIR Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07205/) (2025)
- [U-DREAM: Unsupervised Dereverberation guided by a Reverberation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14237/) (2025)
- [Unsupervised Multi-channel Speech Dereverberation via Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02071/) (2025)
- [On the Application of Diffusion Models for Simultaneous Denoising and Dereverberation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18833/) (2025)
- [SE-MSB: End-to-End Unpaired Speech Enhancement using Mamba Schr"odinger Bridges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.26000/) (2026)
- [Livin' on a Prior: Likelihood Score Approximation for Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34446/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper presents an unsupervised method for single-channel blind dereverberation and room impulse response (RIR) estimation, called BUDDy. The algorithm is rooted in Bayesian posterior sampling: it combines a likelihood model enforcing fidelity to the reverberant measurement, and an anechoic speech prior implemented by an unconditional diffusion model. We design a parametric filter representing the RIR, with exponential decay for each frequency subband. Room acoustics estimation and speech dereverberation are jointly carried out, as the filter parameters are iteratively estimated and the speech utterance refined along the reverse diffusion trajectory. In a blind scenario where the RIR is unknown, BUDDy successfully performs speech dereverberation in various acoustic scenarios, significantly outperforming other blind unsupervised baselines. Unlike supervised methods, which often struggle to generalize, BUDDy seamlessly adapts to different acoustic conditions. This paper extends our previous work by offering new experimental results and insights into the algorithm's versatility. We demonstrate the robustness of our proposed method to new acoustic and speaker conditions, as well as its adaptability to high-resolution singing voice dereverberation, using both instrumental metrics and subjective listening evaluation. We study BUDDy's performance for RIR estimation and observe it surpasses a state-of-the-art supervised DNN-based estimator on mismatched acoustic conditions. Finally, we investigate the sensitivity of informed dereverberation methods to RIR estimation errors, thereby motivating the joint acoustic estimation and dereverberation design. Audio examples and code can be found online.